Welcome to RCF - WHF

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

I have a question, I was asked to help administer a forum, and its not a stand alone like mine, it requires a website data base. This is over my head and I have questions.

Is this rb nr forum a stand alone, or incorperated in with a website?

I have the option to backup the forum, which I want to do, but, am I getting source code?,

all text?

or will there be image files included that I will have to backup?

If so, backing up is out of the question, it would take a year with dialup to download image files.

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Fishead, I just back up the data base I don't know what it contains. LOL However, I'm pretty sure it contains images but couldn't swear to it. Blake knows more about this and will add his comments I'm sure.

It is in compressed format I think so that helps, I don't zip it up however. I have cable so it's not too bad, about 15 minutes. I think the data base is up to around 170 MB now.

Our entire web site is 700 MB and that takes about two hours to backup on cable.

This forum is on our web site.

sunny

Nightrider · Sep 25, 2004

A typical database will only contain data, not images. Â Your physical images are usually stored on a separate area called a file server. Â References to those images may be stored in the database though in the form of the path, filnames, file sizes, and other pertinent information about those images...

Fishead, RCF is a database driven community. It sounds like the forum you are planning to administer is much the same. So you will want to make backups of both your database and board code...

headbang

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

I just did a back up of the data base and it took 9 minutes.

Our board code is the phpBB2 folder, right? It's around 340 MB right now. That's the one that takes about 2 hours, the entire site takes about 4 hours if I remember. It's been a while since I've backed up the entire site but other than the forums there really aren't many changes to the rest of the site.

sunny

Nightrider · Sep 25, 2004

Yes, our board code is in the phpBB2 folder. If you only made backups of the board code and not the database, then if we ever lost the database, then restoring the board code would not work since all of the required database tables would be missing. There would be a list of error messages only. Neither the database data, nor the board code is useful without the other. That's why it's important to maintain good backups of both. Since the data in the database is likely to change more often than the board code, then it is important to backup the database much more often than the board code...

munky2

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Backing up the board code as I type.

sunny

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Back up took 1 hr and 17 minutes.

sunny

Nightrider · Sep 25, 2004

And you are using broadband. Imagine how long it would take me with my dial-up connection...

Shocked

Glenn I · Apr 22, 2005

I've been updating my database but not the board code. What is the easiest way to back up the board code. I've learned my lesson a few times by not backing up the database often.

By backing up the board code will that backup all the mods as well? Because with just backing up the database and you fluff the board up and start over, you get the data back but you have to install the mods again. That's what happened alst time my board went down.

Nightrider · Sep 25, 2004

The MOD files are just script instructions of how to modify the existing code. Once you install a MOD, it is part of the existing code. The files in your admin/mods folder are unused at that point and you can download them for backups and delete them...

So the easiest way to backup your board code is to backup all the files to your HDD and zip them up for safe keeping. You don't need to backup the admin/mods or cache folders, but you would want everything else...

If you have a good backup of all your files and the database, you are prepared for the worst disaster. There will never be a need to start over from scratch if your backups are good...

headbang