In this tutorial we will show you how to back up and restore your Freeway.

Creating a Backup of your Freeway installationdivider

Creating a backup of your Freeway installation includes 2 major steps. Backing up the Freeway installation database and the web site files for it. Both steps are reviewed in details below.

Creating Freeway Database Backup.divider

There are 2 possible ways to create the backup. First of all you need to know which is the database used by your installation. This information can be acquired by checking the Freeway configuration file. Note that there are 2 separate files where database information is stored. One for the Freeway front end and one for the administration backend. By default the database used for both is the same and we will review this case.

The files where database information is stored are directly under the Freeway installation folder respectively:

  • includes/configure.php
  • admin/includes/configure.php

The information that we need is at the end of the files. We are looking for the DB_DATABASE variable.

Here is a sample line that shows the needed information:

define('DB_DATABASE', 'user_freeway');

In the particular case the database is ‘user_freeway’. Note that user will be your cPanel username (all databases for your account will have this prefix) and freeway is the actual name you specified for the database. So in the particular case we need to create a backup for the user_freeway database. As mentioned there are 2 ways to create the backup.

  • Use the cPanel backup functionality. To do so, log in to cPanel for your account -> Backups. Under Download a MySQL Database Backup all databases for your hosting account will be listed. Click on the freeway database name and a download window will pop up. Use it to download and save the backup locally to your computer. This is the preferred option for creating the backup.
  • You can also use cPanel -> phpMyAdmin in order to create the backup of the database. Detailed tutorial how to do so you can find here. Note that this option is relatively less reliable and you might experience issues downloading larger databases via phpMyAdmin.

Creating Freeway Website Files Backup.

Prior to downloading the web site files backup it is advisable 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 will be always faster than downloading all the files one by one.

To create an archive of your Freeway installation files follow these steps:

  • Log in to cPanel for your account.
  • Choose File Manager.
  • Navigate to the Freeway installation directory (note that if Freeway is accessible directly via your domain name the installation directory is public_html).
  • You can use the ‘Select all’ button to select all files in the directory.
  • Click the ‘Compress’ button. You will be asked for the directory where you would like the archive saved.

To download the backup of your Freeway store locally to your computer you can use either FTP client or cPanel -> File Manager.

Restoring Freeway from a previously created backup

Freeway Database Restoredivider

The Database Restore can be accomplished 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. How to restore the database from phpMyAdmin you can check here.

Freeway Website Files Restoredivider

Restoring the web site files is a relatively simple task. What needs to be done is upload the web site 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.