best pratices for complete backup?

So a complete FTP backup of all files and then ....Is it best to use the database backup in admin section of dolphin, or to do it via MYSQL export?

Any other things to watch for re backups and if needed, re-install/import database etc.

Thanks

phpmyadmin is best

make sure all groups and orca folders exist..sometimes you cant get them cause script makes them and the owner is 99

Thanks for your reply and the permissions tip!

That can be really annoying, not to be able to rename or delete those files and directories.  On one of my sites, the hosting company just installed suPHP and changed ownership of all those 99 files and directories to me.  Now scripts can write to directories that are 755 ..... 777 is no longer necessary.

Hi there. I agree 100% with that, sammie. It's the only proper & safe way to go!

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Example:

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Been working on a project for around 3 years now (gigantic project). In all of this time we've changed to a new server with a completely different company, changed some existing standard functions to new sub-domains, and had the site hacked successfully once, which caused us 48 hours of downtime before we found the actual problem (other more minor problems too).

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We were able to correct these situations and others (except for the hack) in a matter of a few hours! Nothing, and I mean NOTHING is more detrimental to a CLIENT DRIVEN site then ... downtime !!! All of that and more can be fixed with a few simple cron jobs that permit you to reinstall all of your files with automatically generated backup files. But since I don't know how to do that kind of stuff myself, we hired a linux administrator for a backup project (you can find them on sourceforge). It took this "linux whiz" admin a couple of hours ... cost us about 40.00 USD, and we're set as long as we're running our project, for years. It's perfect, because the reinstall provides you with the EXACT file info. and structure that you had 24, 48, or 72 hours earlier. In our case, we've had crons set up so that we always have 2 current backups. One from the past 24 hours, and one from 72 hours ago (not a big deal if you have dual 750 GB drives). 

Definitely money well spent.

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Greetings from Germany

Will look into this. thanks!