Backing up forum?

[Othafa]

How easy is it to back up your forum? With other forum software, I know that you just have to download all the files onto your computer (that goes for cgi-based forums). I know that vBulletin uses MySQL, so can you even back it up? If so, is it simple to do so?

Thanks

[Steve Machol]

It's very simple as long as your have shell access to your server via telnet or ssh. The instructions are here:

http://www.vbulletin.com/manual/movingservers.html

I set up cron jobs to automatically backup my database twice per day and once per week.

[Othafa]

Thanks for the speedy reply.

[filburt1]

You can back it up without Telnet or SSH too from the admin CP. You just need Telnet or SSH to easily restore it. You can restore it chunks at a time using phpmyadmin but it's brutal.

[tubedogg]

We do not recommend using the backup mechanism in the Admin CP unless absolutely necessary.