By Steady on

Hello,

Fairly new to drupal.

I have been developing a new website locally on my lamp setup.

Now I want to put it onto a live webserver on the internet, but under a development domain of mine that I use for testing stuff, before then going live on the correct domain name.

I am trying to understand what the Backup and Migrate module actually does.

I know there is a quick backup and advanced backup available. I have done both and obviously the advanced backup is much bigger.

But what does this "full" backup contain?

On my development domain, do I have to install drupal in the normal way, and then restore from the backup using the Backup and Migrate module on the development domain?

Or,

Can I avoid having to install drupal, and just go strainght into PHPadmin and import the "full" backup?

In other words, does the "full" backup done by Backup & Migrate include all of drupal core, additional modules I may have installed, as well as all of my content held in the drupal database and all the drupal configuration changes I may have made when building the site locally?

I hope my questions make sense.

Please help as I want to move this forward tomorrow.

Thanks,

Sam

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

Jaypan’s picture

Jaypan commented

No.

This is how you use backup and migrate to migrate a Drupal system:

1) Push a copy of your site files to the target server.
2) Install Drupal on the target server, as if you were installing it for the first time.
3) Enable the Backup and Migrate module on both servers (source and target).
4) Take a database backup on source server using the Backup and Migrate module.
5) Import that backup on the target server, using the Backup and Migrate module.

Backup and Migrate exports cannot be used with phpmyadmin or through the MySQL command line. They can only be used with the Backup and Migrate module.

Steady’s picture

Steady commented

I think that helps explain quite a bit.

When I install Drupal on the target server, do I have to install the modules I have already installed locally, or does Backup and Migrate install these when restoring?

Also, does Backup and Migrate also restore all of the settings and configuration things I will have setup locally?

Also, what about things like custom CSS files and themes I will have locally. Does Backup & Migrate restore these too?

Many thanks,
Sam

Jaypan’s picture

Jaypan commented

You need to migrate your entire file system.

B&M will enable all the modules and settings you have on the source system.

Make sure to clear your cache after installing the backup though.

Steady’s picture

Steady commented

Thanks once again.

Does it backup things such as images and pdf's etc? (Just the ones under the files directory, or also any others I have under the local site directory setup?)

To clarify then, I only need to do a basic drupal install on the remote server and Backup and Migrate will restore everything else?

Will there be any changes I need to make in any of the remote server files, because urls will now be different etc?

Thanks.

Jaypan’s picture

Jaypan commented

Backup and migrate only handles the database, not files. If it's a file you need to handle it yourself.

Steady’s picture

Steady commented

Thanks Jaypan,

I still have one or two confusions, but you have helped clear up a quite a few :-)

It's time to try it out and see what happens and hopefully that will clear up the remaining unknowns I have.

Cheers!