This tutorial will illustrate how to create a MySQL dump file of a database you have on your domain. It utilizes the capabilities of phpMyAdmin which can be found in your Control Panel. A MySQL dump file is a plain text file, that contains all the necessary queries needed to rebuild a database.

To begin you will need to click on the MySQL Database link when you log into your Control Panel.

Scroll down to the bottom and click on the phpMyAdmin link.

At this screen you will see a drop down list at the top list that says (Databases) .... Clicking on this will give you a list of all the databases you have created on your account. You will need to click on the name of the database you want to backup.

After you have selected a database, the frame on the right will change. It will now display a list of tables that are in this database. You should also see some tabs at the top portion of the right most frame. One of these tabs will be called Export. Click on this link to bring up the next page.

Here again, you will see a list of the tables in the database. You can select the individual tables you want to backup, but more than likely you will want to back up the entire database, and thus all of the tables. You can click the Select All link that is below the combo area to select all the tables.

Most of the correct options should be checked by default, but you can insure that the following options are checked:

• Structure
• Enclose table and field names with backquotes
• Data
• SQL
• Save as file

If you scroll down towards the bottom you will see a section entitled Save as File. There will be a textbox beside File name template. Enter thename of the file you want the MySQL dump to be called. This is usually just the database name, but can be anything. As a rule of thumb, try to avoid using spaces in the filename.

Scroll down further and you will see the Go button. Click this and you will be prompted to save a file. This is the MySQL dump file for your database. You will need to save this file in a safe location

You will need to repeat these steps for any additional databases you have. The above steps only back up the database you selected. You can also use an archiving program such as Winzip to further compress the dump. You will want to keep a regular back up of your database, in case something happens to your database, you will have a recent back up of the information in the database.

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A tutorial on how to restore a MySQL dump backup is available here.