(2009-09-09, 02:08 PM)dmpdesign link Wrote: As far as backups?? Well I dont know how to backup the forum anymore, so I havent done that since it moved to its new home?
Well I keep a backup of the forum files for my own purposes, though not so much the attachments folder (which also holds avatars)
You've stated before you regularly backup the database, which is pretty much only used for this forum (and the old one) afaik. So if that is what you're doing, then you are already backing up the forum.
It's hard to keep backups of everything if your webhost provider doesn't employ RAID technology, which is basically not practical for 1500GB accounts. You sort of just have to know what directories are important and which ones aren't and pick your battles. Fastest way to backup files is to use the control panels "archive gateway" to compress/archive a directory, then download the compressed archive for safe keeping.
I have a WordPress extension which also has an option to email you backups of the database, which I have done weekly. It seems to work. Gmail has a 20MB sending limit but seems to accept files of any size (so far as I can tell)
The control panels "Scheduled Jobs" runs cron jobs, however I think they're not allowed to run for more than like a minute. I can run a number of commands from a special wordpress page I programmed which allows me to use a number of commands on the server like a command line by using php's exec() function. It basically lets me have SSH-like access to the server, though I'm limited to the commands php code has a tendancy to require. But anyway, of course one of those commands is tar, and when I run tar it doesn't seem to have any restrictions on it's running time. So theoretically it should be possible to program some routine to regularly archive directories and email them.
If you really have a lot of files it might be possible to use a remote subversion server to back them up/mirror them somehow. Basically the idea there is to only back stuff up once as things change. Of course if you really fill up 1500GB ever you're gonna need 1500GB at least of backup storage. Needless to say that ain't going to come too cheap.