Backup and Importing Joomla Database

In relevance to Moving Joomla Site From One Server To Another post the other day, today i wrote a simple guide on how to backup and importing your Joomla database. You could use phpMyAdmin to help you with the backup and import database process.

Ok, here we go. Enter phpMyAdmin, and choose your Joomla database from the database list on the left side of phpMyAdmin window. Click on the “Export” menu, you’ll see a list of all tables in your Joomla database. Select all of the tables (you could use Shift+click to select the tables).

phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin

Give a check mark on the “Save as file” option and choose “None” in the Compression option.

Hit the “Go“, in a moment there will be a pop up dialog box asking you to download or save a file. Save that file to any location you prefer in your hard drive. You’re done..well, for now.

Now let me show you how to import that database file into a new location. Open phpMyAdmin again (if you’ve closed it before) and select your Joomla database from the list. Click on the “SQL” menu and then click on the “Browse” button to select the .sql backup file you’ve created before an then hit the “Go” button.

Please note that if you have a huge Joomla database, sometimes you can’t use the import the .sql file directly because phpMyAdmin or your web host usually limit the size of the .sql file that will be imported. You can import your huge database set using the SQL Query.

Open your .sql file and copy-paste the SQL statement into the text area in the phpMyAdmin. Don’t copy-paste all at once, you have to split the copy-paste thing into several phase. You could copy-paste the .sql per table or per several lines (let say per 500 lines).

phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin

That way you can import you huge database file without have to worry MySQL will hang or stop working.

NOTE
This tutorial also applies if you want’ to backup or import any MySQL database, not only Joomla database.

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