Right now I am manually backing up my aMember database through the aMember Administration area, as well as my database through cPanel with my hosting provider. Is this redundant? Looking at the two files, the database backup through my host is twice the size of the aMember database, so my thinking is that these are not the same. Under what circumstances would I need to restore the aMember database but not the database on my web host, and vice versa? I have set cron jobs to run in cPanel, backing up the database there daily, but aMember doesn't have such a function. A reply from Alex in another thread stated that automated backups should be handled through the host, which leads to my confusion as stated above.
Your host is probably backing up your whole site, not just the tables which is being done when you manually do it in amember. You can use this program to automate the backup of specific database tables http://www.dwalker.co.uk/phpmysqlautobackup/ I have it email me the files 2x a day. David
I might suggest that you coordinate through your host a "test restore" to a test environment to validate exactly what is being backed up (and better understand the process should you need to execute it at some point.
Deciding on a strategy for backing up is very dependent on your site specifics. If your site has a lot of volatile content (eg blogs and comments, automatic content pages being produced etc then your requirements for backing up the entire site as a whole are fairly important. However if your site content is somewhat or completely static (no changes being made often) then backing up of MySQL tables is probably all that needs to be done OFTEN. I would suggest automating the process as is ALWAYS the case (NEVER FAILS TO HAPPEN) is that the ONLY time you forget to backup a days transactions is the very day the system ignites the drives. There are a number of ways to automate the backup, depending on your level of expertise and resources available via your hosting service
Thanks, David. It is a .sql file that I'm getting from the host, but it might be 2.4 MB instead of 1.1 MB that I get from aMember, for example. My entire site would be multiple GBs if it were all backed up, and I am specifying the database only from the host. I have setup some cron jobs through cPanel to backup the database file there, so if that's all I should worry about then I won't do manual backups through the aMember CP anymore. I'm not concerned with the full site backup as I have that taken care of. It's simply the database that I'm concerned with, and whether or not backing up through the aMember CP is needed in addition to the automated database backups I have setup through the host.