Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 14 ■ Administering Your Drupal Site
There are three paths to take to address backups on your new site:
• You can use utilities that your hosting provider gives to you to back up your database
and directories.
• You can use a Drupal module called Backup and Migrate to automatically back up
your site’s database on a defined schedule, and, just as important, to easily restore
your site from a previous backup.
• You can use Drush to download a copy of your site and database.
All three approaches work equally well, and the Backup and Migrate module is a perfect solution for
those who are less inclined to use operating system–level commands to schedule backups and to create the
scripts necessary to back up your Drupal site. The first approach is too broad to cover here because it varies
widely depending on your hosting provider, so I’ll present only the latter two approaches. I’ll then show you
how to restore a site you’ve backed up with either method.
Backing Up with the Backup and Restore Module
You will need to install the Backup and Migrate module, because it is not part of Drupal core. You can find
details for this module at www.drupal.org/project/backup_migrate. To install the module, follow the steps
covered in Chapter 11.
To access the Backup and Migrate configuration page, go to http://localhost/admin/content/
backup_migrate (replacing http://localhost with the actual URL where your site resides). After pressing
Enter, you will see the configuration panel for the Backup and Migrate module.
The first step in configuring the Backup and Migrate module is to define where backup files will be stored
on the server. Click the Destinations tab at the top of the page, revealing the page shown in Figure 14-1.
There are two settings for where files will be stored: one for manual backups, where the site administrator
clicks a “Backup now” link to perform the backup, and the automatic backup. I’ll explain how to set up
automatic backups in a minute. You can also set the database that you want backed up. By default, the
module automatically detects the database that your site is running on and sets the parameter. You may
choose to override the default directories and database that are set during the process of installing the
module, or you may, as I do, leave the defaults.
Figure 14-1. Setting the destination directories for backups
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