From time to time it is a good idea to save the site meta data (configuration) to a file. I do this every time I make a change to the site configuration. It’s also good to have a backup in case something bad happens to the server. I treat site configuration backups the same way I do a mysql backups. I download them to my dev server for safe keeping.

Let’s get started.

Open up IIS Manager, Start > Internet Information Services(IIS) Manager.

Once you have IIS manager started right click the website and select all tasks > save configuration to file.

A box will popup that you can fill in to save the file.

You’ll want to fill in the file name. I use site-name.xml since the file is an XML formatted document. Then you’ll want to browse to the directory where you want to save the file. Make it a place you can easily remember so you can send the file to your backup server.

You can also password protect the file so no one can access it except the person that knows the password. Set a password if you choose. I never set this option since I am the only one with access to the servers.

That’s it. You now have a backup of your site meta data. If you move servers or the data gets corrupted you can easily restore it using the file you just created.

If you find this info helpful or have any questions post a comment to this article. If you need one on one help start a thread on the forum.