Dolphin Tutorial

Backup and Restore Dolphin community

We, at TMDHosting, do as much backups and as frequently as possible and we even transfer them to a remote location, in order to be prepared for the worst. This, however, does not mean you should forget about doing backups. Having a backup, independent from your hosting provider is something, which you would like to have and which, in fact, every decent hosting provider recommends. It is just that everything happens and you should be always prepared for the worst. Having your own backups is one of the steps to this nirvana or, if you prefer, the step out of it.

Dolphin comes with pretty good, built in, backup system. You can find it at “Tools” > “Database backup” menu:

You are given the ability to backup either a certain table of your database or your entire database. In addition, you are able to choose either to download it on your computer, save it on the server or show it on the screen (which we do not recommend at all, as it will hog your browser most likely).
We suggest that you take backups of your entire database, unless you know which table you would like specifically to backup. To create a backup, choose the “Database Backup Tools” from the topmost tab menu:

At the “Choose operation” drop down menu choose “Backup Structure and Content” and at the “Action” part choose either to “Save to server” or “Save to your PC”. We generally recommend that when you do a backup to do a copy to the server first:

Тhen save one copy to your PC, as well:

If you have been performing backups at a regular basis, restoration is pretty straight forward. You need to advance to the same place where backups are taken, as explained above, but use the “Restore” section from it:

From the drop down menu you will be able to choose which copy you would like to restore from. The format of the file name is “YEAR-MONTH-DAY_HOUR_MINUTE_SECOND”, so you can easily recognize when a certain backup is taken an would it work for you. Before stepping into a restoration, make sure that the “Action” selected is “Restore data from dump”.
You can also restore from a backup created on your computer:

All you need to do is to use the “Browse” button, in order to locate the previously saved database backup on your computer and then submit it to the server using the “Send” button.