Backups
It is strongly recommended that you backup your WHMCS Database regularly to ensure you always have a copy of your data should a server or system failure occur. Backing up the database is a very simply task with the built in backup tool and can even be fully automated.
Manual Database Backup
To manually download a backup of the WHMCS database at any time:
- Login to your WHMCS Admin Area
- Go to Utilities > Database Status
- Click the Download Full Database Backup button at the top of the page
- You should be prompted for a file to download. Save the file to your computer. Depending on the database size, this may take a few moments.
- Once the download is complete you have now backed up your database.
Automated Database Backup
WHMCS can automatically email a database backup to a designated email address or upload it to a remote location via FTP on a daily basis as part of the automation cron:
- Login to your WHMCS Admin Area
- Go to Setup > Database Backups
- To use the email backup facility simply enter an email address is the Daily Email Backups section.
- To use the remote FTP backup facility enter the FTP connection details in the Daily Remote FTP Backup section. In the 'FTP Destination' field enter the path relative to the login folder where you'd like the backups uploaded, this location must exist as WHMCS cannot create the directories itself.
Configuration.php Backup
The configuration.php file in the main whmcs directory contains the encryption hash value unique to your particular installation, it's used to encrypt sensitive data so should it be lost this data can no longer be decrypted. Therefore it is important for a backup of this file to be kept in a secure location in case re-installation is necessary.