Hi, please post your views as to what is the BEST most correct way to backup and move a database driven site. HTML is easy just copy all the files locally and move it to the new server/location. Whats the best way to do this for a dynamic site?
I'm looking for manual backup methods and imagine you whole site is like 5gb in total when all files are accounted for. So the option from cpanel of creating a backup and then sending it to you via email would not be really an option.
use the mysql dump command to create a backup. Then use gz to compress it. Then secure copy it to the new server, gunzip it and restore it.
Create a cPanel backup and download. Using cPanel's backup interface, restore the backup on server. Move the files to appropriate places. Import the database by using "BIGDUMP" script. Its done if you've ssh access, then these steps are even easier and would take much less time!
SSH is a secure terminal protocol. It's built into most Linux/Unix systems. On windows you need to download a client like putty. SSH has secure file transfer and secure copy built in. To use this on Windows download WinSCP. It works just like FTP but everything is encrypted. If you loginto a Unix box then all you need to do is type sftp or scp at the command line to connect to another server and transfer files. I can't speak for people here, but in my circles, SSH is the standard and FTP is obsolete.
So in your case, I would get putty, ssh into your server, and then execute the mysql dump command to create dump of your database. Then type gzip to compress the file (it will transfer 2 to 3 times faster). Then type sftp to transfer the file to the new server.
To connect to a Linux system remotely there is a feature called SSH, it allows you to modify everything on the server. It is similar to that a Windows server's Remote Desktop or so..