Managing Database Backups
Dictator keeps most of your site in an SQL database. To ensure the safety of this database, we recommend making your own backups regularly.
When you login to Dictator, it saves a copy of the database automatically, though not more than once per day.
To manage your database backups, click the link from the main Config screen. You will be taken to a page showing all of your current database backups. You may see several files in there labeled “automatic_backup.sql”. These are Dictator’s automatic backups that it keeps.
To save your own backup, click on the Save New Backup link at the bottom of the screen. After that right-click on the download link and select “Save Target As…” for the backup that you just saved. This backup’s filename will start with the word “manual” to indicate it is a manual backup. Save the file to your local computer. This ensures that you have an off-site backup of your site’s database.
As database backups can sometimes consume a lot of space, you may want to click the trash can icon (dictator/images/5/icon_trash.jpg) to remove old backups.
Note that when you make a database backup, it is only backing up the database portion of your web site. Your web site also contains images, file attachments, design templates, and more. These should be backed up separately by using FTP, SCP, or another method of your choice.
