download backup website

hello, some months ago i started working on a website with a friend of mine who advised me to use contao. at the time i was totally new to web design, but now i am learning the basis to program simple websites and i would like to understand how he coded it, how can i change its structure and so on. i can not ask him because he's very busy with his graduation and i don't want to bother him to explain me by email all this over and over again.
the point is that the contao interface is not designed to reveal the code mechanisms at the base of a website, but rather conceal them in favor of a more simple usage. which is precisely what now prevents me to dig into the codes and learn from countless hours spent trying to understand the very structure of the website.
so i want to download a full backup of my site in order to work directly with the html and css codes, image folders, fonts and so on. i found the backup function in contao (picture 2), but i couldn't manage to download the full pack: only a .sql database which i honestly can't understand what it is for (only very long code, no html, no structure, no files) and a .cto archive which i couldn't open with my zip utility, that is anyway too light to contain the whole files of the website.

could anybody explain me how to download a folder with all the files, style sheets, html and so on (like picture 1)?
probably it's a silly question but i'm still very new to this... thank you very much
luca

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Originally Posted by omnifagos

so i want to download a full backup of my site

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Just follow the instructions from the manual: https://contao.org/en/manual/3.2/ins...n-installation (swap the two locations for the source and destination and replace "upload" by "download")

Many web hosting services (web provider) offer the possibility to create a full backup directly from the admin panel. You might want to look there for an appropriate option. If you have access to the shell, you can, of course, create the backup via SSH, too.

Furthermore, for a full backup of your web site you also need to create a dump of the database. You can do this with you favorite database management system (e.g. phpMyAdmin, Adminer, MySQLDumper etc.) or with the corresponding shell command. Of course, you can do this with the BackupDB extension as well (see your second screenshot).

With the above steps, you create a full backup of the entire Contao installation. However, if you just want to backup your (external) theme resources and assets you can consider using the theme export function. For that, however, you have to specify the corresponding (theme) "files" folder in the theme settings that is to be included when exporting the theme (that is, in your case, for example, the "final" directory from your first screenshot). The export function will then create a CTO file which is simple a ZIP archive. To unpack the archive just rename the theme file extension to "*.zip".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by omnifagos

could anybody explain me how to download a folder with all the files, style sheets, html and so on (like picture 1)?
probably it's a silly question but i'm still very new to this... thank you very much
luca

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This not exists as you shown us in picture one. On this picture you just see the data from a static website. Contao is a CMS and it helps you to manage your content (content management system).

In simple terms, it puts for you a page togheter from data you stored in a database. If you run your page, there are several templates who brings up your data on screen as you configured and feed it with Contao. If there a some files missing, you can inport your .cto file in the backend under the theme manager.

Picture two is a dump of the database from your website and the textfile informs you what extention you installed in contao to run it. So, to restore localy your website you just have to install the exact same Contao version, install the mentioned extentions and import, with the install.php you database into contao.

If you really want to learn about HTML and CSS you probably should buy you a book who explains you how this works and what it all means about a static website. If you got this, you will have it much easyer to anderstand what Contao really does.

he probably just needs to download all of the files via ftp and then the sql file via phpmyadmin?

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Originally Posted by jimmy2

he probably just needs to download all of the files via ftp and then the sql file via phpmyadmin?

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No, he wants to download a static HTML page with the resources so he can play directly with HTML and CSS (what he actually did not need). He can do this by downlading a page and its resources with a browser or hole web page with e.g. httrack, wget, winwget, easy-wget...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Andreas

No, he wants to download a static HTML page with the resources so he can play directly with HTML and CSS (what he actually did not need). He can do this by downlading a page and its resources with a browser or hole web page with e.g. httrack, wget, winwget, easy-wget...

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It looks like he got the content ... just put .com on his nick to see the page. If he really would be interested to do a Website with Contao he would give more details and ask more questions ;)

Ok? :eek: