View source for Website Backup using tar

Navigate to the folder you want to backup and type
<pre>
tar -cf mybackupfilename.tar .
</pre>
This will create a tarball of your site

Then type
<pre>
gzip -9 mybackupfilename.tar
</pre>
This will compress the tarball and rename it with a .gz extension.

Then ftp (or better yet, scp) the file to your backup hardware.

Reverse the process by moving the file to the directory from whence it came
<pre>
gunzip -9 mybackupfilename.tar.gz
tar -xf mybackupfilename.tar 
</pre>