Remember it is in your best interest to take a backup of your site:
- Before running an Update for any release of Joomla
- Before updating any existing Extensions
- Before installing any new Extensions.
- Before deleting any Extension (particular core Extensions)
- Before moving from subfolder/ to root/
- Before moving from localhost/ to remote host
- Before making changes to Access Control Levels.
- Before editing the core files of Joomla for any reason
- NOTE:this is not recommended anyway! Except on the rare occasion when an official, approved patch is released prior to a full update being available by the Joomla developers.
- On a regular basis for your site to protect new content that is added:
- Frequency for the regular backups varies depending on your site, it's traffic, and changes to the content:
- it may be every hour
- it may be 2/3 times a day or more
- it may be once a day
- it may be once a week
- it may be once a month
- Essentially, any time where if there is a chance for things to go wrong, you always have a backup to fall back to!
- On Joomla 2.5.x make sure that Components ⇒ Joomla Update ⇒ Options is set to the default Long Term Support (Recommended) setting.
- If you incorrectly/accidentally set this to Short Term Support you will get advised of Joomla 3.x Updates.
- You should only update to Joomla 3.x if you are an experienced user / developer / advanced early adopter.
- There is no automatic rewind option from Joomla 3.0.x to Joomla 2.5.x. and no easy manual way of doing this without a backup of the site and database.
