Just a newbie and wanting to cron a shell or php script which compresses specified files and directories and sends them in email. A short and simple script which I could customise would be great. Anyone has anything like this?

I am also looking forward to take a snapshot of mysql database and include in this email.

Any help would be great.

I have made an script long time ago with php to take backup of some specified directory. configuration is in a config file. you need to modify it manually.

it is basic script but anyway hope it will help.
btw. I believe there are many free backup scripts out there. you can google for some