Do you know you can Backup your Website / WordPress Blog to Dropbox either by using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol)? Let’s check out in this post how to do so?
Backup Website / WordPress Blog to Dropbox using FTP or SFTP
1. Go to Backup Box and Directly Login there using your Email Address and a Password – The site requires NO Registration!
2. As soon as you are Logged in, you will be getting following Transfer Interface (click to enlarge):
3. Now, Login (Secure Login) to your cPanel Account and Click Backup Wizard under Files Category as shown below:
4. On the very next page, Click Backup Button:
Here you need to create a Full Backup of your cPanel Account. Click on the Full Backup Button and you will be redirected to the final step for generating a backup of your account:
The final page will ask you Where you want to store the generated Backup file of your Website / Blog? and your Email Address. Select Home Directory from the Drop Down Menu and Enter your Email Address (if not already present by default):
Hit the Generate Backup Button and cPanel will start backing up your whole account. You will also get a Backup Confirmation Email once the full backup has been generated. The completed backup file will be in .tar.gz format and will be present in your Home Directory.
5. (Important) You need to MOVE this Backup File to some other directory (say BACKUP) in public_html folder and change the permission of the Backup File (.tar.gz file) to 755:
* Here we are moving the generated backup file to another newly created folder in public_html, so that Backup Box doesn’t start transferring your whole Home Directory (EVERYTHING) to Dropbox! As of now, Backup Box doesn’t allow selecting single file from any specific folder for transfer, instead it transfers whole content of a specific folder!
As soon as you have done moving the file to BACKUP folder in public_html and have changed the permission of .tar.gz file, we are now ready to move the backup file to Dropbox!
6. On the Left Hand Side of Backup Box Transfer Interface, select your preferred Transfer Protocol which can be either FTP or SFTP. As per your selection, you need to enter following information in order to authorize Backup Box with your Web Hosting Server:
The above information includes:
- Server Name
- Port Number (In my case, the Port Number for HostGator Server is 2222 for SFTP)
- Username
- Password/Pass phrase
- Initial Directory – You can leave this field blank
* In case you don’t know the Server Name and Port Number, open a support ticket with your Web Host and ask them these details.
Once you have entered the FTP or SFTP Credentials correctly, click on Authorize FTP / SFTP Button and the interface will now load various directories present in your Account:
7. Now browse through directories and when you reach the NEWLY created BACKUP Folder, select any of the following option, as per your requirements, from the center of Backup Box Interface:
- Transfer home/<Account Name>/public_html/backup as a folder.
- Transfer only the contents of home/<Account Name>/public_html/backup.
- Archive (ZIP) Files First – Backup Box will ZIP everything and will name it as BackupBox.zip
- Add a Timestamp - Backup Box will add a timestamp to your archive. E.g. BackupBox-201203072156.zip
8. Now, On the Right Hand Side of Backup Box, select Dropbox and Authorize Backup Box with your Dropbox Account (Dropbox Login required)
9. From Center Interface, select When would you like to make this transfer? Instant (Now) and Monthly Transfers (on a specific date) are completely FREE, while there’s a small monthly charge for scheduling Weekly and Daily Transfers with Backup Box:
10. As soon as you have performed all the above mentioned steps >> hit the Review Button >> Backup Box server will now verify everything and if everything is correct, your backup file is ready to be transferred to Dropbox by means of either FTP or SFTP. Wait for few hours and the Backup file will magically appear in your Dropbox Account!
Overall, Backup Box is a very useful service for Bloggers and Webmasters, who want to directly backup or transfer various types of files to / from their Dropbox Account and other popular online services.
Thanks to Eric Warnke and Mark Fossen for creating Backup Box!
Important Notes:
- Using Backup Box, you can even transfer Files from your Dropbox Account to your Web Hosting Account using either FTP or SFTP. The service is actually a middleman between various popular web technologies, that don’t play nice together. Backup Box takes your files from one place and transfers / converts them to another!
- The connection between your Browser and Backup Box is fully encrypted by means of SSL Certificate, so there’s NO need to worry. If you want more information, you can always check out the Privacy Policy page of the service.
- Backup Box will first transfer content from your Web Server to its own server, then it will transfer the content to Dropbox.
- There’s NO FTP file size limit with Backup Box. But, some FTP servers might impose their own limits which will therefore cause a transfer to fail!
- With Backup Box there’s zero file size limit to or from Dropbox!
- Transfer time to Dropbox will depend on various factors like total number of Files, Size of File(s) you are transferring and any special request to Backup Box like ZIPPING everything before the transfer. For example, transferring 1.8 GB data consisting of around 4100 directories and 5000 files from an FTP server will take around 30 minutes for Backup Box to index, and then around another 1.5 hours for transfer to Dropbox!
- You can transfer almost anything (any file) from your Web Hosting Server / Account to Dropbox via FTP / SFTP using Backup Box. For illustration purpose, we transferred cPanel Backup to Dropbox.
- If you want, there’s also an option to Deauthorize your connected Accounts with Backup Box. For this, just click on the small Settings button in front of the service name.
- The service also supports transfer to / from SugarSync, Google Drive, Box, GitHub, MySQL, Mango DB, Flickr and Amazon S3.
For more information and updates, you can always follow Backup Box’s Blog, Twitter and Facebook Account.