Backups aren’t boring, they are a crucial component of a web builder’s toolkit. Thankfully there are numerous ways to back up your RapidWeaver built website(s). In the following guide we’ll show you several ways to do this so your time, effort, and hard work aren’t thwarted by unexpected data loss.
How to back up your RapidWeaver project file
When building a website in RapidWeaver, your work is done in a project file. The project file contains all the bits of your website such as your theme, pages, and styling selections; as well as your content such as text, images, videos, etc.
Needless to say it’s important to make sure your project file is backed up often and in multiple locations so you always have a copy of the most current version in case your Mac experiences an issue resulting in data loss (or you just inadvertently delete your project file due to fat-finger syndrome).
Below are some ways you can back up your RapidWeaver project file for safekeeping.
Enable automatic backups in RapidWeaver’s Publishing Settings
This is one of the easiest and most convenient ways to ensure you have a backup of your project file. When RapidWeaver publishes your website to your web hosting account, an optional backup of your project file can be uploaded at the same time. The project file is compressed as a ZIP file, and is placed in a secret folder on your website. This file can then be used to restore your website directly inside RapidWeaver with the click of a button should you ever need.
To enable automatic backups, when in RapidWeaver navigate to your publishing settings, locate the “Backup Frequency” drop-down menu, and change the default option (Never) to Every Time I Publish, Once a Day, or Once a Week.
We recommend changing it to Every Time I Publish for maximum protection.
Backups only occur when your site is published, they do not happen in the background.
Enable Time Machine backups in macOS
If you have an external hard drive (or external SSD), we highly recommend enabling macOS’s built-in Time Machine backups.
By default RapidWeaver stores your project file locally on your Mac. When working on a new project, upon your first save RapidWeaver will prompt you to save the file in your Documents folder. If you prefer you can change this to any other default folder such as your Desktop or Downloads folder; or you can save locally to a custom created folder.
With Time Machine enabled, your project file that is stored in an above mentioned folder will be periodically and automatically backed up to your external drive, ensuring you always have a recent copy to restore from.
Manually back up your project file to a USB Thumb Drive
If you do not have Time Machine backups enabled due to not having an external hard drive or external SSD available, chances are you might have a spare USB Thumb Drive lying around somewhere that you can use to manually back up your project file to.
In order to back up your project file to a USB Thumb Drive, locate the project file on your Mac and drag it from its location to your USB Thumb Drive.
Manually back up your project file to an iCloud folder or another file storage service’s folder (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)
While it’s possible to set the default save location of your project file to an iCloud folder, or another file storage service’s folder on your Mac, we don’t recommend it. The reason being, most cloud storage services do not read the project file properly. Instead of reading it as a “bundled package file”, they read it literally as an expanded list of folders and files. This can lead to potential issues cropping up when the file is repeatedly being opened, updated, saved, and closed from the cloud storage folder, or when multiple people are trying to work on the file concurrently from the cloud storage folder.
While users might not experience any immediate issues working with project files in this fashion, we have had quite a few users who have experienced project file corruption randomly and without warning when the file is stored on one of these cloud storage services.
One workaround we have noticed that mitigates the chance of project file corruption is by first saving the project file locally, then zipping it up via Apple’s built-in Compress function, then moving the compressed ZIP file to the cloud storage folder.
To do this, locate your project file on your Mac, right-click on it, select “Compress ” from the contextual menu, then drag the newly compressed ZIP file to your cloud storage folder. Now a backup of your zipped up project file should safely be stored on your cloud storage service of choice.
How to back up your website after it’s been published to your web hosting account
Above we listed some different ways to back up your RapidWeaver project file. Backing up your project file is an important step as it ensures you have an up-to-date copy which you can use to restore from in case your main project file gets lost, corrupted, or you experience a data loss event.
In the second part of this guide we’ll review how to make a backup of your website once it’s already been published to your web hosting account. We’ll be covering that in a separate post so stay tuned for Backups - The definitive guide to backing up your RapidWeaver built website (part 2).
As always happy weaving!