This week I seriously damaged the database on my Drupal website and I don't think I know how to fix it in any reasonable amount of time. I am probably going to get the database and file directory reset by my host, GoDaddy, to the previous day, the day prior to my site's crash. Question: I think of my Drupal site as having two components: file directory and database. So, if I pay to have the database and file directory restored to a previous state, will that restore the site? I mean, should it function/behave/appear exactly as it did at that restore point? I need to learn from this experience, what exactly does it takes to backup a Drupal site? When I did a backup, I got a .sql file. So with my all of my directories and this .sql file can I upload the database and directories to another host? I believe that file directories and database sums it up; but, when I got GoDaddy on the phone, they boggled my mind with technical terms and left me unsure.
You need the database backup and all the files and folders in the sites directory. You don't need the other files so long as you haven't changed them which you shouldn't have, you can download the latest version of these from the drupal website. When changing hosts just be sure to update settings.php with the new hosts settings.
Thanks for the tips buzza_gts. I heard about the sites directory somewhere else as well. I think you forgot to mention the themes; I think a lot of people make some minor changes to the page template.
Most developers never change Drupal core themes, but they make copy of the themes and make changes on it. So when they move to another web host, they just copy the modified theme to the same directory.
Yep. There's the file/directory structure, and the database. I tend to use mysqldump to dump the database, and tar for archiving the files. There's also some hostnames embedded in the config files for database location unless you are pointed at "localhost".