How To Backup or Transfer Your Joomla Database Using phpMyAdmin

If you want a backup of your Joomla site's database, or if you need to transfer your Joomla database to a different sql server, phpMyAdmin is a great tool for doing so. This tutorial shows how to use phpMyAdmin to download and upload (if need be) your Joomla Database.

The first step of course is to get a copy of your existing database so that you can move it over to a new database that you've created for it. Here I am in the Islandnet control panel and with the tool that we want, called phpMyAdmin. On Islandnet you get to it in the control panel. If you're not hosting with Islandnet you probably will have a control panel that you can go to and access phpMyAdmin.

So, there's two ways on Islandnet that I can get to this database tool. There's phpMyAdmin 3 (for MySQL 5.x). Now that's where the old database is. But you can also get to it through a database manager and this is in Control Panel, MySQL Manager or you can go Control Panel, Database Management and MySQL Manager.

So here we have a SQL user on mysql55 and then we also have a user on the server mysql. Now I have created a user on mysql which has the same name and password as the old user (and I'll show you why that just saves a couple steps later on) and then down here the mysql databases there was the old database on mysql55. Once again I've created a database on mysql server, that's the newer one, and it is the same database name. I'll show you why later on.

Now to get to phpMyAdmin we saw that you could do it through Control Panel. I'm just going to drop down to Database Management and the phpMyAdmin 3. That will bring up this window. I type in the username for the client and the password and we're looking at MySQL5.5. I click Go and we get into phpMyAdmin. Over here we see the databases that are created: information schema is included, and here is the database. Select the database that you want to see and then it will show you a whole list of tables. These are all the tables for your database and we just simply want to go up to the Export tab. All the tables are selected. We're going to Save to an output file, the format sql. We click Go, and now a file is going to be downloaded. Let's download it to the Downloads folder here - to the delete folder - and it's called ____ and now I have that file on my computer.

Now we import that file I've just downloaded into the new database. To do that I use the Import tab, but I first I need to log out of phpMyAdmin, and then log in to a phpMyAdmin on the other servers. So first of all, let me put in the password and now I want to go to mysql. Click go. And now, it looks all the same as before but this database that I've created is actually empty; there's nothing in it. So that's great.

I'm going to go to Import and then Choose File. Go to “delete” and there's the database we just downloaded. I'll open that up and I will click Go.

Now if your Joomla site is very big it may timeout if it takes a super long time to upload and be processed on the server. But this is not a large database and the servers are really cranking out good speed right now so we will upload that and just wait and be patient. There we go.

We can take a quick look now. All the database tables are there and now we've got an SQL database on the new server. Now the only thing that's left is to point the Joomla site to the new database and this is where having the same username password and database name comes in really handy.

I'm already logged into the back end of the client site. I'm going to go to Global Configuration, and go to Server. Here is the information on the database and because the only thing that is changing is the server - because the username, the password, and the database name are the same, but they're on different servers - instead of this mysql55.islandnet, I'm going to put in the name of the other server which is simply mysql. I click save and now it's changed and I know that when I look at this site it will now be pulling from the new database and is going to be running a lot faster than the other site was.

Now if you get kicked out during this process, just log in again and there should be no problem.

So, if you want to back-up your Joomla database all you need to do is go to the location where it exists and you could go Export and just go through all of the steps, download it to your computer and then you have a backup in case something happens where you need it down the road.

That's how to use phpMyAdmin to download your Joomla database so you can back it up somewhere safe and how to transfer it to a different mysql server whether on the same host or if you were transferring hosts. If you're looking for good speedy host that runs Joomla sites quickly, contact me.

Enjoy your Joomla sites! God bless.

Tutorial Theme Song "Bluewater" courtesy of http://www.freestockmusic.com

Looping Background "Teal Tiles" courtesy of http://www.motionbackgroundsforfree.com

#joomla
#basicjoomla
#cybersalt