I am a new web developer. I have been using Joomla with a 3rd party template, developing it on a local MAMP server. The template is sort of unstable and breaks easily. I would like to Backup my work on a daily basis.
I'm assuming all the files and the database need to be backed-up? Is there a best practice for this?
Thanks very much!
Using Akeeba Backup (https://www.akeebabackup.com/products/akeeba-backup.html) is indeed a good idea. You can schedule a command line task to run every day and create a backup of this site. To restore such a backup you can use Akeeba Kickstart (https://www.akeebabackup.com/products/akeeba-kickstart.html). Very easy, very comfortable.
But this only works if you don't break your Joomla! installation! Your question implies something like this. To do a manual backup you can simply zip the folder which contains your Joomla installation and create a database dump. You can do both every day using command line script.
Creating the dump: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/mysqldump-sql-format.html
Using GIT might work as well. Instead of zipping your folder you simply commit it to your git repository. Don't forget to add the database dump to your repo as well.
https://techjoomla.com/developers-blogs/joomla-development/deploying-joomla-projects-using-git.html http://joomlaablog.blogspot.de/2010/11/how-to-track-your-joomla-project-with.html