CMS Made Simple Forums

Is there a (easy) way how I could make static HTML version of CMSMS site? This would be a backup if the site is hacked.

The site that we are working on is a festival site. So it crucial that if problems occur, we could go with the static HTML version of the website.

Well I'm not answering directly your question, mainly because I never felt the need to have a static backup... a full database and files backup takes one minute, and restoring from a backup, pretty much the same. It's way more important to me to have a current backup than to have a static copy of it... my 2cents...

Jo Morg wrote:Well I'm not answering directly your question, mainly because I never felt the need to have a static backup... a full database and files backup takes one minute, and restoring from a backup, pretty much the same. It's way more important to me to have a current backup than to have a static copy of it... my 2cents...

Totally agree, but if the site is hacked and you restore it, the site is still vulnerable (Core updates take a few months and module... well...). And sometimes the hacker tries to hack the site again.

In this case it is important that the site is back ASAP, 'cause it is mainly used while the festival is going on.

Just a few steps.

- copy all the files, for example with a FTP-program to some local disk
- with phpmyadmin make a backup of the database and copy the file with an ftp-program to a local disk.

I hope you know how to do this.
Maybe you should ask your hoster if he doesn't make backups every day, most of them do and have some interface to put that backup back.

If you want to be 100% secure, copy the whole install to a new directory (and a new database) with your hoster, test it with a subdomain, then remove the subdomain. When the site gets hacked, you only have to point the domain to the other directory.

Good luck.

Jan

urheat wrote:(...) the site is still vulnerable (Core updates take a few months and module... well...). And sometimes the hacker tries to hack the site again.

In this case it is important that the site is back ASAP, 'cause it is mainly used while the festival is going on.

Well not that I have seen an important vulnerability in CMSMS lately, and most of the hacked sites I've seen either have a point of entry outside of CMSMS realm, or are vulnerable because the developer didn't take the necessary steps to secure it... but in any case if CMSMS gets compromised and the static files are being generated from a module installed in CMSMS you would probably have the static files easily hacked too....
I this case I would suggest a standalone web crawler so that you may be relatively secure... but access to a CMS (any CMS) usually means that the whole server can be easily compromised, including any static files.

Jo Morg wrote:

urheat wrote:(...) the site is still vulnerable (Core updates take a few months and module... well...). And sometimes the hacker tries to hack the site again.

In this case it is important that the site is back ASAP, 'cause it is mainly used while the festival is going on.

Well not that I have seen an important vulnerability in CMSMS lately, and most of the hacked sites I've seen either have a point of entry outside of CMSMS realm, or are vulnerable because the developer didn't take the necessary steps to secure it... but in any case if CMSMS gets compromised and the static files are being generated from a module installed in CMSMS you would probably have the static files easily hacked too....
I this case I would suggest a standalone web crawler so that you may be relatively secure... but access to a CMS (any CMS) usually means that the whole server can be easily compromised, including any static files.

Thanks Jo!

I think also that CMSMS is pretty secure if used properly. But for example this static HTML backup is sometimes asked feature. For example some bigger/important sites have daily static pages available for example if amount of traffic grows suddenly (for example somekind of crisis).

I just started the converstion if some one knows a way to handle this easily (for example with curl and with some server scripting)

If you are a Windows user, use HTTrack, https://www.httrack.com/
For Linux you have the wget-command