The following only applies to those with SSH access to their own server.

Important note: This will not work for those on Bryght's shared hosted service: only customers with their own virtual private server can follow these steps. If you are using the Bryght hosted service, contact us for a backup of your site's database.

1. ssh yourdomain.com -l admin
• if you have a different account name than 'admin', use that account. It will need 'sudo' privileges.
• replace yourdomain.com with the domain you have pointed to your server, or the IP address for your server. Then type in your password.
• We recommend Putty for Windows users. Those on a Mac or Linux computer can use their terminal (or an open source equivalent like iTerm for the Mac).
2. sudo su
• [type your password if necessary]
3. find your settings.php file. Possible locations are /var/www/html/sites/default or /var/www/html/sites/yourdomain.com
4. cat /var/www/html/sites/yourdomain.com/settings.php | grep "mysql"
• replacing the directory name as appropriate
5. you should see something like: mysql://username:password@localhost/databasename
6. mysqldump -uYourUser -pYourPassword Datbase_Name > yourdomain.com.MM.DD.YYYY.mysql
   • replace YourUser, YourPassword, Database_Name and the date (which is useful when going through old backups) as appropriate
7. tar -czvf yourdomain.com.MM.DD.YYYY.tar.gz yourdomain.com.MM.DD.YYYY.mysql
• again replace as appropriate
8. download the resulting file at http://yourdomain.com/yourdomain.com.MM.DD.YYYY.tar.gz
9. rm yourdomain.MM.DD.YYYY.*
• delete the files to conserve space on your server