How Do I properly backup database for my Forum

Hello,

I have an SMF based forum that is gradually increasing in it's membership, however, I haven't performed any Mysql datase backup, or I don't know whether what I did is actually a backup. If I login to my Cpanel, I see MySQL Disk Space: 10.18 Megabytes but I tried to perform the backup using the backup Icon on my Cpanel ie (Download a MySQL Database Backup) and I got about 1.51 MB.

I thought the way of doing this is by going to PhpMyAdmin, if that is true, how do I do this, I will need step by step b/c I went to PhpMyAdmin and I couldn't figure out exactly what to do there.

The size of your backup doesn't sound too much off. Database files generaly allow a very good compression and I bet your backup file is compressed as a .zip or .tar

The mysql disk space you see at the control panel indicates the size of the binary mysql files, which is much more than the actual data, as the binary files has also indexes and duplicate records for faster response of the database server.

So the file that you get on the backup is propably right. Just be sure that you get both schema and data when you backup and it will be fine.

ok thanks, but I can't see any Schema or data when I click backups, all I can see is "Download a MySQL Database Backup" and it starts backing up

why not using the cpanel backup? that look more safe for you...

When you open the backup file (you will probably have to unzip it first) you should be able to see the database file description (create table statement) and after that there should be a lot of INSERT statements containing your data