There are multiple ways to create a full backup of your website's database for safe keeping or for importing into a local environment for development. If you are looking to do a two-step export and import to a different website is recommended to use our automated Copy Database feature which greatly simplifies the process.

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Export Database using the Dashboard

You can easily create a full database backup of your website's database by using the dedicated functionality provided in the Pressidium Dashboard. It will export all database objects into a single, self-contained file in SQL format (mysqldump compatible). The resulting file is compressed into a .zip archive. This is the recommended way, especially for large databases.

Select the Websites menu option from the Dashboard sidebar.
Click on your website's name to go to the website overview (or navigate to your website via our Quick Search modal).
Navigate to the Database tab, locate the MySQL Dump section and click Export.
Provide (an optional) password to protect the resulting zip archive. The password will be required to open the downloaded zip archive.
Click Export to start the export process. You can monitor the background job status by inspecting the Activity In Progress sidebar panel. When the process is finished you will receive a Dashboard notification and an email with a link to download the backup archive.

Export Database using phpMyAdmin (quick export)

For small databases, you can use phpMyAdmin to export your database.

Select the Websites menu option from the Dashboard sidebar.
Click on your website's name to go to the website overview (or navigate to your website via our Quick Search modal).
Navigate to the Database tab, locate the phpMyAdmin section and click Go to phpMyAdmin to open the management interface.

Locate your database in the left-hand sidebar and select it (e.g the preview database in the example screenshot below).
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select the “Check all” box (to select all tables for export), and then choose the Export option from the drop-down menu.
At the new screen press Go to start the export process and download a copy of your database in plain text SQL format.

Export Database using phpMyAdmin (custom export)

A custom export is recommended when you want to import the database backup to an already populated database, i.e. a database that contains existing tables and data. The initial steps are the same until the final export step.

To choose a custom export select the Custom - display all possible options option to display an extended set of options.
Scroll down to the Object creation options section and select Add DROP TABLE / VIEW / PROCEDURE / FUNCTION / EVENT / TRIGGER statement. This will ensure that the backup contains proper statements to overwrite any existing tables or database objects of the same name.
Scroll down and press Go to start the export process.