Back up and restore

Write a backup ZIP, keep it somewhere safe, and restore it on the same or another server.

Your whole site is files, so a backup is one ZIP file. Open Backups in the panel (owners, administrators and anyone with settings.manage).

What a backup contains

In the ZIP	What it is
`content/`	pages, posts, categories, tags, the media library
`settings/`	settings, menus, redirects, roles, consent settings
`themes/`, `plugins/`	themes and plugins
`data/secrets/`	the mail settings, password encrypted with the application key
`data/oauth/`	assistants connected with OAuth (clients and refresh tokens)
`data/accounts/`	accounts and tokens for AI assistants
`data/consent/`	anonymous consent records
`data/versions/`, `data/history/`	versions and the history of changes
`data/stats/`	statistics, only when you tick Include the statistics
`wake-backup.json`	Wake version, date and what is inside

Not included: temp/ (caches), the trash, resized images (Wake makes them again on the first request) and .env. .env holds the application key, which also unlocks the mail password; keep a copy of it in a password manager. Without the old key, people only have to sign in again.

Write a backup

Click Write backup, then Download. Backups stay in data/backups until you delete them, so keep an eye on the disk space of your host. On the command line: php wake/artisan wake:backup (CLI).

Wake has no automatic backups yet. Many hosts back up your web space anyway; for a schedule of your own, a cron job can run wake:backup.

Restore a backup

Upload the ZIP under Upload a backup, or put it into data/backups by FTP (easier for large files).
Click Restore next to it.

Wake checks the ZIP first: it must be a Wake backup, and it may only contain the folders listed above. Then it saves the current state as a backup of its own (…-before-restore.zip), moves the replaced folders to the trash and unpacks the backup. A backup without statistics keeps the current ones.

The accounts come from the backup, too. If yours was not in it, you are signed out.

Moving to another server

Install Wake on the new server, create any account, then restore the backup there. Copy the old .env over the new one if you want to keep the application key.