Go to Backups and use Back up this site:
- Database: the site's tables (items, collections, files, exhibits, pages, settings, accounts and every plugin's tables).
- Files: everything in Omeka's files folder, or, for files in cloud storage, every file Omeka's records point at.
- Plugins and themes: the plugin and theme folders, so the archive carries the code too. Off by default; turn it on for a copy that can be set up again on a server without access to those plugins.
- Note: shown with the archive in the list, such as "Before the 2027 redesign".
Click Back up now. The backup runs in the background: the list shows what it is doing (copying the database, adding or downloading files, writing the archive) and you can leave the page. When it is done the archive is listed with its size and contents, ready to download, link or restore.
What goes in
The database dump holds every table with this site's table prefix, except Omeka's sessions and background processes and Backup's own tables. Other sites sharing the database (with another prefix) are not touched.
On a server that keeps files on disk, everything under the files folder goes in, except the backup directory and hidden files. On a site whose files are in cloud storage, Backup cannot list the storage, so it downloads:
- each file's original, and its fullsize, thumbnail and square thumbnail images when Omeka made them;
- images uploaded in theme settings (and Design Studio drafts);
- theme uploads that pages, exhibits, settings and metadata link to.
Files that cannot be downloaded (a derivative an old site never made, an upload a theme setting names that is gone) are listed in the archive's manifest rather than stopping the backup; the restore page reports how many.
Images, audio, video, PDFs and other already-compressed files are stored as they are; text and the database are compressed.
How long it takes
A site with files on disk backs up at about the speed of the disk: a few seconds for a few hundred megabytes. With cloud storage, every file is downloaded, six at a time, so a large site takes longer. Either way the backup runs as a background job with no time limit.
Only one at a time
Backups and restores take turns: starting one while another runs fails with a message to wait.
Where archives go
Where the site keeps its files: in backups in the files folder, or, when the files are in cloud storage, in that storage under backups/. Each archive is in a folder with a random name, so its address cannot be guessed. The archive is made on the server first and stored when it is complete; the last step of a backup in cloud storage is "Storing the archive in the site's file storage". A backup folder set under Settings keeps archives on the server instead.
Downloading
Download sends the archive to your browser, from the server or, through the site, from the cloud storage. To send it to another server instead, use a download link.
Deleting
Delete removes the archive file, wherever it is kept, and its entry. A backup that is still running cannot be deleted; one that stopped (no progress for 15 minutes, for example because the server restarted) can.