Website Backup using tar
From zen2
Navigate to the folder you want to backup and type
tar -cf mybackupfilename.tar .
This will create a tarball of your site
Then type
gzip -9 mybackupfilename.tar
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
gunzip -9 mybackupfilename.tar.gz tar -xf mybackupfilename.tar