In this tutorial we will show you how to back up your CMS Made Simple and how to restore it from an existing backup.

CMSMS backup creationdivider

Creating a backup of your CMSMS installation includes 2 steps. Backing up the CMSMS installation database and the website files for it.

Database backupdivider

There are 2 possible ways to back up the database. First of all you need to know which is the database used by your installation. This information can be acquired by checking the CMSMS configuration file. The configuration file is called config.php and can be found inside the main installation directory of your CMSMS.

You should look for the db_name option. Here is a sample line that shows the needed information:

$config['db_name'] = 'user_cmsms';

In our case the database is user_cmsms. Note that user will be your cPanel username (all databases for your account will have this prefix) and cmsms is the actual name you specified for the database. So, we need to create a backup for the user_cmsms database. As mentioned above, there are 2 ways to create the backup:

  1. Use the cPanel backup functionality. To do so, log in to your cPanel and go to Backups. Under Download a MySQL Database Backup all databases for your hosting account will be listed. Click on the CMSMS database name and a download window will pop up. Use it to download and save the backup locally to your computer.
  2. You can also use cPanel -> phpMyAdmin in order to create a backup of the database.

Website Files Backupdivider

You can back up your CMSMS files by simply downloading them locally to your computer.

Prior to downloading the website files backup, it is recommended to create an archive of the files. It is not a mandatory step but it helps for easier upload/download. Downloading a single archive file is faster than downloading all files one by one.To create an archive of your CMSMS installation files, follow these steps:

STEP 1 Log in to your cPanel.

STEP 2 Choose File Manager.

STEP 3 Navigate to the CMSMS installation directory.

STEP 4 You can use the ‘Select all’ button to select all files in the directory.

STEP 5 Click the ‘Compress’ button. You will be asked for the directory where you would like the archive saved.

To download the backup of your CMSMS files locally to your computer, you can use either an FTP client or cPanel -> File Manager.

CMSMS backup restoredivider

Now that you have a backup of your website, follow these instructions in case you need to restore your pages from an existing backup.

CMSMS Database Restoredivider

The Database Restore can be completed using the same tools you have used for exporting it.

Again the preferred option is the cPanel -> Backup tool. You will see the ‘Restore a MySQL Database’ option. All you need to do is browse to the database backup you have downloaded and once you have selected it, click the Upload button.

The other option is to use phpMyAdmin. More information on how to restore the database from phpMyAdmin can be found in our MySQL tutorial.

CMSMS Website Files Restoredivider

Restoring the website files is a relatively simple task. You should upload the website files you have downloaded to their initial location, overwriting any existing files if needed. Again, this can be accomplished via an FTP client or cPanel -> File Manager.