Backing Up Your Course

The WebCT Backup tool is an important feature of your course. With the backup utility, you can:

• create snapshots of your course at various stages of development
• download a backup of your course for safekeeping
• restore a previously-made backup of your course if you have made unwanted changes or if your course has become corrupted
• move your course to a different WebCT server by making a backup on the current server and uploading
  the backup to the new server.

Creating a backup of your course

• Select Create Backup from the drop-down list below the Back Up Course heading, then click Go. The
  Create Backup screen appears.
• Type a brief description for the backup in the text box. This description will appear in the backup listing
  table.
• Click Continue.

Note: the time required to backup a course depends both on the size of the course, as well as on the speed of
the server. Large courses may take over 10 minutes to back up. Please be patient and consult with your system
administrator if backups seem to take a long time to complete.

Restoring a backup

Restoring a backup replaces the current course with the contents of the backed-up course.

Warning: Restoring a backup overwrites the entire current course, including:

• student management information (such as grades)
• access information (student passwords)
• bulletin and e-mail messages
• the set of uploaded files
• anything else associated with your course

Please create a backup of the current state of your course before restoring a backup. You can then
revert back if you don't like what has been restored.

To restore a backup:

• Select the option button next to the backup file you want to restore.
• Select Restore from the drop-down list below the Backup File Functions heading, then click Go.

Note: the time needed to restore a course depends on the size of the course and on the speed of the server.
Restoring a course takes longer than creating a backup, since the restore procedure creates some backup files
in case an error is encountered during the restoring process.

Deleting a backup
Course backups can take up a significant amount of disk space on the server, especially if the course contains a
large number of images or multimedia elements. Therefore, some WebCT administrators limit the number of
backups you can store on the WebCT server. Please consult your WebCT administrator to determine how large
your courses should be and how many backups you can store.

If you have reached your backup limit, you can download the backups to your computer and delete the backups
on the WebCT server. You will then be free to back up your course again.

To delete a backup:

• Select the option button next to the backup file you want to delete.
• Select Delete from the drop-down list below the Backup File Functions heading, then click Go.

Downloading a backup
It is good practice to keep copies of your course backups on your personal computer, instead of only on the
WebCT server. This way, if a hardware problem occurs on the server and your course becomes unreadable, you still have a copy of your complete course on your computer.

• Select the option button next to the backup file you want to download.
• Select Download from the drop-down list below the Backup File Functions heading, then click Go. Your browser will guide you through the rest of the download.

Uploading a backup
A previously downloaded course backup can be uploaded to the server, and then restored at a later time.

• Select Upload Backup from the drop-down list below the Back Up Course heading, then click Go. The
  Upload Backup File screen appears.
• Click Browse.
• Select the backup file you want to upload. The Upload Backup File screen reappears.
• Click Upload.

The time required to upload a course backup depends on the file size as well as on the speed of the Internet
connection of both the server and your computer.