Backups and restores

A backup is one file that holds your whole blog: posts, comments, categories and tags, settings, your team, your header and footer, and every image. Every plan gets complete backups.

Passwords and secret keys (your email password, API keys, the Turnstile secret) are never put in a backup, so a backup file is safe to keep on your computer.

Everything is on Settings → Backup.

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1. Make a full backup now.
2. Daily, Weekly or Monthly backups.
3. Download, restore or delete a backup.
4. Restore a backup file from another site.

Back up now

Press Back up now. The backup is saved on your hosting and appears in the list below, newest first. Each row shows the date and time, Everything, the file size, and where it came from:

• Manual: you pressed Back up now.
• Automatic: made by the schedule.
• Before update: made by DonkeyCMS just before it installed an update.
• Before restore: made just before a restore, so the restore can be undone.

Each row has Download (save the file to your computer), Restore and Delete.

Automatic backups

Next to Automatic, choose Daily, Weekly or Monthly and press Save changes. Last backup shows how long ago the newest one was made.

Your blog has no clock of its own: a scheduled backup is made the first time someone visits the blog or opens the admin dashboard after it is due. A blog with visitors every day never notices this.

DonkeyCMS keeps the 10 newest automatic backups and removes older ones by itself. Backups you made with Back up now are never removed automatically.

Cloud backups (Business plan)

Send every backup, manual and automatic, to cloud storage as well. Click a destination to open it:

• Google Drive: press Connect Google Drive, choose your Google account and allow access. Backups go to a "DonkeyCMS Backups" folder in your own Drive. Nothing to set up at Google. Your Business license key must be saved first.
• Cloudflare R2: free for up to 10 GB, with no download fees. Create a bucket and an API token in Cloudflare and paste the Account ID, Bucket Name, Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.
• Backblaze B2: free for up to 10 GB, no credit card needed. Create a bucket and an Application Key (not your master key) and paste the Region, Bucket Name, Key ID and Application Key.

For R2 and B2, press Test Connection to check the details. Switch a destination on to start sending backups there; the switch saves straight away. Each destination lists the backups stored there, with download and delete.

If sending to a destination fails, the backup is still saved on your hosting and a message names the destination that failed.

Restore a backup

Press Restore on a backup in the list. DonkeyCMS shows what the backup holds (posts, comments, accounts, images) and asks What should come back?

• Everything: your whole blog goes back to how it was in the backup. Your blog as it is now is backed up first, so this can be undone. Afterwards you are signed out; sign in with an account that exists in the backup.
• Posts only: adds the posts this blog does not have yet, with their categories, tags and comments. Nothing that is already here is changed or deleted.

Because backups never hold passwords and secret keys, after restoring Everything a notice lists the ones to type in again, such as the email password.

Backups made by versions older than 0.57 hold posts only, so for those only Posts only is offered.

Move to a new host

1. On the old site, press Back up now and Download the backup.
2. Install DonkeyCMS on the new host.
3. On the new site, go to Settings → Backup, find Moving to a new host? Restore from a backup file., press Choose File, pick the backup and press Restore.
4. Choose Everything.
5. If the domain changed, add the new one to your license. See License and domains.

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