Hostgator “Full Website Backups”: Site Transfer Using This Content

  • I’ve had some disastrous experiences with Hostgator recently that necessitate the movement of what I have onto another platform. The last time I did anything like this was about ten years ago and done with the assistance of the hosts, plus questions on my part. For those of you familiar with Hostgator, I’d like to know about the chances of actually getting everything I need with the website backup they provide: full copies of my WordPress websites. Are there any tricks or “watch out for” situations I should be aware of? And If I choose a transferring service from a company I go with, what information will I need to provide? Thank you (I won’t be choosing Bluehost, Justhost, Hostmonster, Namecheap, SiteGround; all but the last are owned by the same company and the last may have an issue similar to what I went through).

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  • Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    I don’t trust host backups. ?? Back the site up yourself.

    1. Download *ALL* the files via FTP.
    2. From the host’s control panel, find the PHPMYADMIN application. Login to mysql, select the database and export it.

    That way, you have no question about what or how the host’s own stuff works.

    Since HostGator uses cPanel, you can go to cPanel -> Backup -> Download Full Website Backup and it’s going to actually extract ALL the data from your account and zip it in one file.

    Typically you can place this in your /home/ directory so you can download it to your computer or you can FTP it to your new web host (recommended if migrating to a new company)

    However, if you’re using more than 100,000 Inodes or 20GB I believe HostGator disables the cPanel Full Backup feature. Therefore you’d need to contact their support to get it generated.

    If you have SSH access, you can normally generate this with the command (not sure if they disable this as well but worth a shot):

    /scripts/pkgacct USERNAME

    Where the USERNAME is the username of your cPanel.

    Steve makes a good suggestion, that you may also want to do a manual backup, but the downside to this, is you’re not going to get all your cPanel settings including your emails, mySQL users, FTP accounts, etc.

    However, taking a manual backup is always a good idea to ensure your WordPress website is safe in your hands :).

    Good luck!

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