Taking full-site backups of your Ghost website

At Synaps Media, we automatically take daily backups of all the websites we host, to prevent data loss in case of a problem. But in some cases you may also need to get a full export of your website. You can already export some of your data from your Ghost admin, like posts/pages, members or themes. In addition to those, you can also take a full-site backup from your Synaps Media Panel.

How to take a backup

1. Go to panel.synapsmedia.com
2. Select your site
3. Scroll down and click "Backups"
4. Click "Start a new backup"
5. Depending to your content of your website, it may take up to 10 minutes to finish the backup. Once it's ready you'll see the result on current screen and also you'll get an e-mail notification that will include direct link to download your backup.

What does full-site backup include?

This backup file includes;

1. A full MySQL dump file of your Ghost website.
2. A full copy of your content folder, that includes all of your image, media and file uploads, all of your uploaded themes, settings (routes, redirects), and automated snapshots taken by Ghost.

How can you use this backup?

This backup can be useful in some cases:

1. You need your raw data to make custom queries.
2. You want to clone your website on your local for development purposes.
3. You want to reach a file you uploaded earlier but can't find anymore on your Ghost Admin.
4. You want to feel safer by owning raw data of your website.
5. You want to self-host your website, for some reason.

Ghost Admin Export vs Synaps Media backup

You can already export most of your data from Ghost Admin, like:

• Export posts and settings (Settings -> Import/Export)
• Export your member list (Members -> Export all members)
• Download your themes (Settings -> Themes -> Installed -> Download)
• Export member analytics (Settings -> Analytics -> Export)
• Routing and Redirection Files (Settings -> Labs -> Redirects/Routes Download)

These are very useful for most of the cases. But some currently some other things (like member comments, uploaded files) can not be downloaded from Ghost Admin. The backup you can get from Synaps Media panel will include whole database and content folder, means you'll have all your data (including member comments, uploaded files).

Keep in mind that, database export is an SQL file, made by "mysqldump" command. You need to be familiar working with SQL to take the advantage of it.

More Questions...

Do you have more questions? Please don't hesitate to reach out by writing to support@synapsmedia.com or directly with our support chat.