Joomla needs… an integrated back-up system

Note:  This is a blog post about something I’d like to see in Joomla.  Any future post starting with “Joomla Needs:” will be a post where I discuss what I’d like to see to be added to Joomla, and won’t contain any solutions.  Just a heads up. 

Every monday, a boring task awaits me.  A task that I’d gladly “forget about” if I hadn’t created a re-occurring task in Thunderbird.  Monday is when I make the manual back-ups of our client’s Joomla databases.  This means I’ve got to go to the PHPMyadmin panel of the website of my clients – spread out over 3 hosting providers and 5 servers – to export the database and store it somewhere safely.  Because our customers all have their “own” hosting package; I’ve got to do this for every individual website – all 30 of them.  Luckily our own two servers – one for development; one for production – allow me to use a mass back-up tool.  But that’s besides the point.

This made me think.  Shouldn’t Joomla have a built-in option to back-up your database?  The technology to quickly make back-ups of mysql databases already exists – one fine example is phpmybackuppro –, so how hard can it be for the Joomla developers to create a derivate of this technology and add it to the Joomla Core?  Now, before you start cursing at me:  I’m aware that it could be hard. I don’t know, I’m not a programmer myself.  But I know for a fact that this functionality would make my life easier. 

You might wonder why I’m only mentioning database back-ups.  That’s because, imho, the database is the heart of the Joomla CMS.  Any and all of the files can be replaced, but your database can’t simply be replaced by an other one.  Unlike all the files, every bit of data stored in your database could be crucial to your site.  And that’s why I think a built-in back-up option for your database would be an excellent idea.

edit in big red letters:

Brian Teeman  pointed out that I didn’t do my research well, because there ARE plug-ins that do just what I suggest – make a fast, simple back-up of your database. 

He’s absolutely right.  A quick search learns me that there are indeed many plug-ins to back-up your database.  My bad.  I don’t know, but for some reason, I never even thought about looking for such a plug-in…  Thank Joomla for people smarted than me 😉   

2 thoughts on “Joomla needs… an integrated back-up system”

  1. I guess you havent searched very hard for a better solution. There are several joomla plugins that will automaticaly create a mysql dump of a site on a timed interval and email it to you. Personaly I use one called lazybackup but there are others.

    1. Brian,

      my bad, and excellent suggestion. It just slipped my mind to do any research, at all. How this is possible, is beyond me 😉 This’ll certainly make things easier in the future!

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