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Backing up your site

Create manual backups and restore a previous version of your website.

Your website is a significant digital investment, the result of your effort and resources. In the digital world, unforeseen events can disrupt your online presence. Technical glitches, cyber threats, and human errors are all risks that could wipe out your hard work, which is why having backups is essential.

This guide gives you the technical know-how and explains the critical reasons for making backups.

What is a site backup?

Backing up your website means protecting, saving, and archiving your content in several ways at regular intervals. This ensures your content is safe at all times.

A catastrophic event where your site suddenly vanishes, never to be recovered, is extremely unlikely. It is much more likely that you might accidentally delete something essential, like an important snippet of custom code. If that happens, you want to be prepared.

Types of site backup

There are two types of backups in the Website Builder: manual and automatic. By default, the Website Builder automatically backs up your site, with no extra effort on your part, during the following events:

  • When you save the website for the fifth time.
  • When you publish your website.
  • Whenever you restore a previous version of your site.

Creating a manual backup

After making important changes to your website, you can back it up manually. Follow these steps:

  1. Click the Main menu icon (hamburger icon) in the top-left corner of the Website Builder.

  2. Choose Settings in the Sidebar.

    The Settings option in the Sidebar menu

  3. In Website settings, click the arrow in the top-right corner of the window and go to the Backups tab, where you will find a list of the automatic backups the Website Builder made for you and a button to create a new backup.

    The Backups tab listing automatic backups with a button to create a new backup

  4. Click the Create site backup button to generate the backup manually.

    The Create site backup button in the Backups tab

  5. Name your backup, for example with a date or a note to remind yourself what changed, then click Submit.

    Naming a backup before saving it

A new version of your website is saved, and it appears in the Website backups list with a date and time stamp and the number of pages backed up.

The Website backups list showing each backup with its date, time, and page count

Restoring your site from a backup

If you want to restore your website to a previously saved version, click the backup in the list and confirm your choice in the warning popup that appears.

A warning popup asking you to confirm restoring a previous backup

Once you click Submit, your website’s previous version is automatically restored. A new automatic backup is also created, so you can still access the current version of the site.

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