Introduction

Keeping regular backups of your website is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure the safety and integrity of your data. Whether you want to restore your website after accidental changes, server issues, or simply maintain periodic copies of your content, Plesk provides a powerful and easy-to-use Backup Manager.

Plesk allows you to create full or partial backups, download them, schedule automated backups, and restore your website whenever needed.

In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of managing your website’s backups in Plesk.

Getting Started

Before you begin managing backups, please log in to your Plesk control panel. To perform that, please enter your IP address, hostname, or domain name inside your web browser’s search bar and add “:8443” at the end. It should look something like: “https://yourdomain.com:8443”. By doing so, you will be prompted by a login form that requests your username and password.

After logging in with your username and password, Plesk will automatically display the “Websites & Domains” page, which will serve as the index page from where you can manage everything related to your websites and domains on Plesk.

Accessing the Backup Manager

To access the backup functionality in Plesk, please locate the domain for which you would like to access the Backup Manager and expand its management settings by pressing the down arrow button at the far left side of the domain’s row.

Upon completing the above steps, various management options will be presented for your domain. Please click on the “Backup & Restore” option.

After clicking on the “Backup & Restore” functionality, you will be redirected to a page that shows all available backups for your domain and provides options to create or restore them.

Let’s begin with the most fundamental thing you can do, which is creating a new backup.

Creating a New Backup

To generate a new backup of your website, click on the "Back Up" button, located on the top left side of the screen.

Once you click on the “Back Up” button, you will be redirected to a new page, and you will see several configuration options.

Back Up

You may choose to back up the domain configuration only, or include the website files, databases, and mail settings.

• Configuration - This tickbox will always be checked, as the backup system will also back up the configuration files.

• Mail messages - Please check this tickbox to enable backups for email messages.

• User files - Please tick this checkbox to enable backups for user files.

• Databases - Please check this tickbox to enable backups for your account’s databases.

Store in

You can choose to store the backup on the server or send it to an external FTP storage. The default option will be local, and the remote FTP storage will be available only if a specific Plesk extension is installed. The default path where the backup is stored is “/var/lib/psa/dumps”

Type

You can select the account type here - full or incremental.

• Full - Please use the radio button to select the Full backup. Full backup means that each time a backup process is started, it will back up everything on the account. We recommend this option only if you have enough disk space available on the server, as backups tend to get very big.

• Incremental - Please use the radio button to select the Incremental backup. The Incremental backup will only back up files that were modified recently. This option is great if you wish to conserve as much disk space as possible. 

Backup Settings

Under this category, you can confirm additional backup settings.

• Comments - Please use this content box to add comments for your backups each time they run.

• Exclude log files - Please use the checkbox to exclude log files from the backup.
• Exclude specific files from the backup - Please use the checkbox to enable file exclusion from the backup. You can only exclude files within webspaces. Specify the path or paths relative to the webspace root, separating individual files with commas. Using the mask symbol is allowed (e.g. /somedir/log*)
• When a backup task is completed, send a notification email to - Please use this text field to type in an email address that will receive a notification upon task completion.

Once your preferences are selected, please click on the "OK" button to start the backup process.

Plesk will begin creating the backup, and it will be listed in the Backup Manager once complete.

Downloading a Backup

Now that we have a backup, we can download it locally and have a copy on our side as well.  To save a backup to your device, please locate the backup you want to download. Afterward, please click the arrow icon, located on the far right side.

The first time you perform the action above, you will be prompted to complete a password generation form, which serves as an additional layer of protection. You can choose to ignore it or set it up; it's completely optional.

Regardless of your choice, clicking on the “OK” button will start the download process.

Restoring a Backup

Naturally, Pleks provides an option to restore a backup from an already existing file. If you need to restore your website to a previous state, please go to the Backup Manager. From there, please click on the backup you wish to restore.

Performing this action will redirect you to a new page where you need to set your restoration settings. Let’s go over them:

• What would you like to restore - Please use the radio button to select the item you want to restore. You can choose everything or a specific item from the existing backup, such as SSL certificates, websites, DNS zones, and files for domains.
• When a backup task is completed, send a notification email to - Please use this text field to type in an email address that will receive a notification upon task completion.

Finally, please click the “Restore” button to start the process. Plesk will process the restoration and notify you once it is complete. Please note that restoring a backup may overwrite existing files.

Setting Up Scheduled Backups

Setting up a reliable backup schedule can be highly beneficial to your backup rotation, ensuring you always have a ready-to-use copy when needed. To ensure consistent protection, you can automate your backups by navigating to the Backup Manager and clicking on “Schedule”.

Performing the above wil redirect you to the backup scheduling screen where you can choose how often you want backups to run (daily, weekly, monthly) and, of course, set additional options based on your preference.

• Activate this backup task - Please use this checkbox to activate the backup schedule for this specific backup.

• Run this backup task - Please use the drop-down menus here to define the frequency of the backup and the exact time you want it to run at.

• Use Incremental backup - Please use this tickbox to use the incremental backup option, instead of the full backup option.

• Backup - Please use these checkboxes to select what you want this backup to actually make a copy of. You can choose emails, user field, and databases. The configuration will always be selected, and you cannot change it.

• Store in - You can choose to store the backup on the server or send it to an external FTP storage. The default option will be local, and the remote FTP storage will be available only if a specific Plesk extension is installed. The default path where the backup is stored is “/var/lib/psa/dumps”

• Exclude log files - Please use the checkbox to exclude log files from the backup.

• Exclude specific files from the backup - Please use the checkbox to enable file exclusion from the backup. You can only exclude files within webspaces. Specify the path or paths relative to the webspace root, separating individual files with commas. Using the mask symbol is allowed (e.g. /somedir/log*)
• If errors occur during the execution of this backup task, send notifications to - Please use this text field to type in an email address that will receive a notification if there is an error during the execution of this backup schedule.

After you are finished configuring the storage settings and retention limits, please click the “Save” button at the bottom of the page to save your schedule.

Scheduled backups are highly recommended to maintain ongoing protection without manual actions.

Conclusion

As you can see, Plesk provides a very user-friendly and powerful Backup Manager that allows you to create, restore, download, and automate your website’s backups with ease. By regularly backing up your website, you protect yourself from data loss, security issues, and accidental changes.

We hope this tutorial was helpful, and we kindly encourage you to take advantage of scheduled backups to ensure your website is always safe and recoverable.