How to backup a website to Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud storage

Websites often allow you to back up your site via SFTP. This enables you to either retain a backup or migrate it to another platform while retaining your files. When combining SFTP with Couchdrop, you can backup your website content to any cloud storage, whether it is Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, or another cloud native storage platform.

How to backup your website to cloud storage

Keeping this guide short, Couchdrop is a simple and easy-to-configure cloud SFTP service that sits on top of your cloud storage and pushes your files or data to your cloud storage in real time. There is no hosting, or complex configuration to deal with, and Couchdrop handles all the infrastructure management for you. 

Guide to backing up a website to Google Drive

• Create Couchdrop account
• Connect storage to Couchdrop
• Create an SFTP user
• Configure website

1. Create a Couchdrop account

Head to our registration page and create an account if you don't have one already. You can try Couchdrop free for 14 days with no credit card required. 

2. Connect cloud storage to Couchdrop

Once you’ve created an account jump to connect a new storage integration. For this guide, we will use a simple personal Google Drive connector.

To connect to Google you will need to Connect with Google using OAuth and logging in with your Google account.

3. Create SFTP user

Head to User Accounts within Couchdrop SFTP. Here you will create an SFTP user that the website will use to authenticate and connect to Couchdrop with and a folder to isolate the user to within the Google Drive instance.  

For most websites to connect you will need the following at a minimum:

• Username
• Password
• Directory

4. Configure Website backup

Once you have the above configured you are now able to setup your website to backup your site to Google Drive. For this navigate to your website's hosting or administration configuration. Locate backups or SFTP within the console and provide the following information:

• Hostname: Your Couchdrop primary domain (found here)
• SFTP username: The username you created earlier for your SFTP user
• SFTP password: The password for the user you created earlier
• Port: 22

Backups for websites that don't support exporting to an SFTP server

If your website does not support exporting to an SFTP server but you can connect via SFTP to your website, then you could look at mounting your website to Couchdrop as an SFTP connection and then using Couchdrop’s automation functionality to pull files to your cloud storage on a daily basis.

For more information on website backups and other Couchdrop use cases, you can find more guides at community.couchdrop.io