How to backup your Squarespace website
We know designing a website is quite the labour of love, and if losing all your hard work is nightmare fuel to you, then this post might just be a lifesaver 🛟
While there is no magic ‘backup your site’ button in Squarespace, there are a few ways that you can keep your site design safe and ready to revert to in case anything goes wrong.
Gone are the days of stressing about every editing move, or about any sudden network failures. This week, we’re teaching you exactly how to backup your Squarespace site to keep your designs safe and sound once and for all!👇
Why do I need to backup my site?
There are a billion reasons why backing up your Squarespace website is a good idea.
Anything from website errors, to server failures, accidental deletions, or even just a website update gone wrong. Getting into the habit of constantly hitting Save and regularly creating backups is what any seasoned designer will advise (cue: traumatic flashback of hours of work lost with no way to ever get it back that has happened to every creative out there at least once).
By backing up your site, you’ll always have a copy of your hard work to revert to, so even if something goes wrong or a new design doesn’t quite work out as planned, you can easily go back to an earlier version and fix it up or try again!
Since there is no backup button in Squarespace, one of the easiest ways to create backups is by creating copies!
Whether this is a duplicate of your entire site, a duplicate of an individual page, or just a duplicate section to safeguard your designs while you’re making some updates, creating copies only takes a few seconds and is well worth all the time you’ve put into your site so far.
1- Backup your entire Squarespace website
The first, and major, backup method, is to create a copy of your entire site.
This is what we recommend to all of our customers starting with one of our Squarespace Templates, and is also ideal if you are planning a total website revamp. Having a backup copy is sure to take away any editing stresses and give free reign to your creativity 👩🎨 If you mess anything up majorly, don’t 100% love the final result, or accidentally delete something, you can just go back to the second (or third...) copy of you site!
How do I duplicate my entire site?
In your Squarespace dashboard, find your website, and click the three dots to the right hand side.
In the pop-up menu, select Duplicate Website and that’s it! In a couple of minutes (depending on the complexity of your site), you will have an exact copy of your existing site in your Squarespace dashboard, ready to use in case anything goes wrong.
Note! Your website copy will only have a two week trial period (unless you are a Squarespace Circle Member, in which case all your sites will have a 6 months trial attached). To extend your trial, you can either duplicate your site again when the trial is close to expiring to restart the trial period, or you can contact Squarespace support to let them know you are still working on your site. They will generally be quite happy to extend the trial for you!
2- Backup individual website pages
Another great way to backup your site is to create copies of the individual pages within your master site.
Page copies live trial-free within your existing site, are easy to store and organise (see our tips below!), and are a bit of a quicker backup method than duplicating your entire site every time you’re making some changes. For example, if you’re updating just one of your website pages, backing up this particular page is a lot more efficient than making a copy of your entire site!
How do I duplicate individual pages on my site?
Go to your site and click Pages in the left-hand side menu.
Hover over the page that you would like to duplicate and click the cog icon to the right side of it to open the page settings.
In the pop-up menu, scroll down and click Duplicate Page. Your new page copy will appear at the top of your Not Linked Pages section!
How do I keep my backup pages organised?
If you have quite a few pages on your site, duplicating every single one of them can get a little messy… We’re big fans of keeping the backend of your site tidy and organised so one of our best tips here is to add a folder to store all your backup pages in!
In your Pages panel, click the + to the right hand side of Not Linked.
In the pop-up, scroll down to More > Folder.
This will create an empty folder in the Not Linked Pages section of your site. You’ll be able to rename your folder to keep things extra organised, and drag in all your duplicate pages to store safely out of the way.
To minimise the folder, click the downward arrow to the right hand side of it, and voila! No more 10+ copy pages floating loosely around 👏
How do I disable my backup pages?
Technically these pages, even though in your "not-linked" section, are still live! You don’t necessarily want anyone to accidentally stumble on one of your backup pages, so it’s always a good idea to disable any pages that are not in use.
Click on the cog icon to the right hand side of your backup page name.
In the pop-up menu scroll down and toggle off Enable Page.
The page will go grey to indicate it is disabled and hidden from view!
How do I backup my blog?
If you try to backup a collection page, like a blog, you’ll notice that duplication is not an option, but you can back up blog posts by making copies of the individual posts within your blog.
To do this, click into your blog and hover over the post that you would like to backup, then click the three dots to the right hand side and select Duplicate.
3- Backup individual page sections
How do I backup sections in Squarespace 7.1?
Sections are the building blocks of any Squarespace site, and if you’re using the new Squarespace 7.1 Fluid Engine Editor, Squarespace has added some exciting new features that now let you duplicate, save, and change the order of your page sections in literally one click.
You’ll find this handy new toolbar in the right hand corner when you hover over your page section.
📄 To make a copy of any section, click the duplicate icon
This is great if you are making some big changes on a section but want to back-up the original design before you make those changes, in case you want to revert back. This method is really only good while you're working on the un-saved page though, as this duplicated section will go live as soon as you hit Save on the page.
Right now there is no way to 'draft' sections on a page, but check out the 'save' method below for a solution!
❤️ To save a section design, click the heart icon
We’re particularly excited about this one because not only does this fab new feature backup your section designs for you to re-add to your site at anytime, it’s also an amazing time saver if you plan to reuse the same section design on multiple pages across your site!
Gone are the time-consuming days of having to recreate design sections manually, when you add a new section, just select Saved Section in the left hand sidebar of the pop-up menu and choose from any sections you have saved before!
⬆️ ⬇️ To reorder your sections, click the up or down arrows
Once you have duplicated a section, redesigned it a little, and want to see how it works with the rest of your page, use the up and down arrows in your section toolbar to reorder your sections and see how your new section design fits in! If you're not super happy with the result, you can delete the new version because you have smart and duplicated and/or saved the original!
How do I backup sections in Squarespace 7.0?
If you are on Squarespace 7.0 and you’ve built your site using an index page as opposed to on one entire page, you’ll be similarly able to duplicate these 'page sections' to reuse and order.
Just click the cog icon, and scroll down to Duplicate Page in the pop up menu!
If index pages are not something you have implemented on your site, then go back to Step 2 and backup the entire page instead.
4- Backup custom CSS and code injections
Code is one of the easiest things to mess up or accidentally delete (whoops 😅), so take it from us and make sure to save a copy (regularly)!
Copy your lines of custom CSS or code injections and paste them into a separate doc for safekeeping.
Any doc will do, from Word, to Google Docs, or Pages, just make sure to create separate documents for your CSS, code injections, and any individual page injections and name them appropriately (with the date!) so that everything is easy to find if you make a major mistake and need to revert to a previous version!
Best practice is to back it up whenever you make any major changes. Trust us on this one - you will be so thankful that you backed it up!
We hope this tutorial was helpful and that you’ll now be a backing up pro, well on your way to never loosing a piece of content ever again!
If you want more handy Squarespace tips, then check out the posts below 👇
Hacks to make mobile editing in Squarespace Fluid Engine faster
Your complete guide to Image Focal Points in Squarespace
How to add Google, Airbnb, and Facebook reviews to your Squarespace site
How to add Parallax in Squarespace 7.1 (and other fun background animations!)
How to resize and crop images in Squarespace 7.1 Fluid Engine
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