Linux: Copy files and folders recursively

Say you want to copy a directory (a folder) and all of its contents to a different directory. AND it contains subdirectories

OLD LOCATION : /2013_records/
NEW LOCATION: ../someNewPathHere/archive/2013_records/

If you try to use the cp command, you may see that the subdirectories are not being copies.

cp 2013_records/* ../someNewPathHere/archive/2013_records/

You will probably get an "error" like this, and nothing happens:

cp: omitting directory '2013_records'

You should add a few flags to your cp command:

-a = archive (meaning keep all of the timestamp and ownership info)
-v = verbose (meaning, show me what you're doing.)
-r = recursively (meaning everything below the top level)

So, the correct copy command should have been.

cp -avr 2013_records/* ../someNewPathHere/archive/2013_records/