Backup, restore and migration of sites on SharePoint 3 pt. 1/3

SharePoint Designer Backup and Restore

To backup:
  1. Open the site with SharePoint Designer
  2. Select Menu "Site" --> "Administration" --> Backup web site
  3. You can select to backup also the subsites
  4. Select where to save the backup file and write file name

To restore:
  1. You have to have the created blank site (in the same language)
  2. Open the blank site with SharePoint Designer
  3. Select Menu "Site" --> "Administration" --> "Restore web site"
  4. Browse the file from your local computer
  5. After backup is made you can delete SharePoint's temp file on site

PROS:
1. Easy backup, keeps meta data (like "Created" and "Modified" dates, "Created by" and "Modified by") - Even if restoring to different sites. Can migrate between different sub-versions of same WSS 3.
2. You don't need access to the server, just administrative rights on the site.

CONS:
1. A BIG con is that you can make a backup of the sites that have under 25 MB. Looks like this is a bug in SharePoint designer and I hope it will be fixed soon. If you are backing up a site with over 25 MB you will encounter a problem "Cannot find ..... exportsettings.xml". There is a workaround to this (I'll post that in one of my later posts).
2. It doesn't keep any custom data-views created with SharePoint Designer. After you restore and if you have any data-view-web-parts that you've created with SPD and are not working - you have to fix them. Read how to fix them here.

Technorati tags: SharePoint,SharePoint administration,SharePoint backup,SharePoint restore