At present, I have no way of scheduling a regular backup to an off-server storage, so I have to manually download each backup. Can I send the backups as an attachment to my email somehow?
Sending via email IMO is a real bad idea as emails are not encrypted and that data could be easily intercepted. There's tons of articles online on how to transfer backups from one server to another with various authentication methods... your safer bet would be to employ one of those methods.
My problem is that I don't have access to another server that is consistently on at the same time every time.
Unless I can set something up so that it can continually retry sending a backup every 2 or 3 hours, until my computer is on and the transfer is successful. Even then, there might be a problem with my local computer having a dynamic IP.
That's the only reason why I considered this alternative.
you will blow up most email boxes with a attachment of that size. plus you can get free account at dyndns or similar and if you router at home supports it, it will automatically update the service of your new IP.
this way you can use myaccount.dyndns.com type hostnames that will resolve automatically to your current IP.
I don't have a router. The way the internet works here is that you plug the ethernet cable directly into the wall.
Even then, it still doesn't solve the problem of how to get the backup onto another computer, when the only computer available is one that isn't on all the time. Basically, my personal computer.
do you have shell or ftp access to your server that has your forum? you can always pull the data with a scheduled task on your computer, just set it up to run how often you want and if its windows, make it attempt to run after the next login/start if it is missed.
I'm on windows, and use FileZilla for FTP. Not sure how I can set up a scheduled task with FZ, so if there is another program I could use, please suggest it.
For emails, you could devise a system that does incremental backups, which only contain posts created/edited since the last backup. (push backup with size constraints)
For a full backup solution, I use the regular backup task (creates a full backup on the server - unless it hits the memory limit
), and a cron job runs 'lftp mirror' every day to download all new files from the server (pull backup).
You could just as well make a script that logs into your Admin CP, or into phpMyAdmin, and downloads a new export of the database. FTP is just quite a lot simpler.
Eh, I'll just let my co-admin do the work. I despise Linux, and just my luck, the server runs it. I haven't got the patience to learn that damnable system and its silly terminal stuff.
simple solution for windows users:
1) make folder c:\mybackups
2) create file called myftp.bat in your windows user folder (c:\users\<username>)
3) paste into that file
cd c:\mybackups
ftp -s:c:\users\<username>\myftp.txt your.ftp.host
example:
cd c:\mybackups
ftp -s:c:\users\George\myftp.txt ftp.domain.com
4) create new file called myftp.txt in your windows user folder
5) paste into that file
<ftp username>
<ftp password>
prompt
cd public_html/forum/admin/backups
mget *
bye
exit
obviously change <ftp username> and <ftp password> to whatever credentials you need for your site (and drop the < and >) and change the path to your admin backups folder
6) create a scheduled task in Windows that runs when you want. Don't be lazy, Google it if you don't know how, and make it run c:\users\<username>\myftp.bat
please note that this will repeatedly copy the same backup files over and over again. to prevent this, if you are brave, you can insert a delete statement in the myftp.txt file and also handle the index.html placeholder
7) create new file called index.html in your windows user folder
8) paste into it
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
then edit myftp.txt (from step 5) to be the following
<ftp username>
<ftp password>
prompt
cd public_html/forum/admin/backups
mget *
mdelete *
lcd c:\users\<username>
put index.html
bye
exit
and
this will delete every file in the backups folder SO PLEASE USE CAUTION DOING THIS. If you mess up this file or something else during debugging you can delete more than just the backups...... Be warned.
Otherwise enjoy your windows based ftp download of your backups.
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR MISUSE OR OTHER ERRORS.