Back Up and Restore Project Files in EverWeb
EverWebResponsive WebsiteSoftwareTips and TricksTutorials

Backing Up and Restoring Your EverWeb Project Files

When building your website in EverWeb, you’ll undoubtedly put a lot of time and effort in getting your site to be just the way you want it. If something goes wrong, however, you may find that some, or all, of your hard work could be lost. Whilst it’s highly unlikely that some disaster will strike your website’s Project file, it’s always better to be safe than sorry, and there are some quick ways to safeguard your work. Here’s our guide on how to keep your work safe for now and the future…

Use EverWeb’s Auto Save Feature
Before backing up your website’s Project file, let’s first make sure that EverWeb’s Auto Save feature is set on. This setting can be found by using the EverWeb-> Preferences menu option. Once in the Preferences, click on the BackUp tab and you’ll see that ‘Enable Auto Save’ is the first option. When this option is ticked, EverWeb will save the file you are currently working on at regular intervals. This is extremely useful if, for example, you’ve been working on your website for an hour and suddenly there’s a power outage. When your computer reboots, you will probably have only lost the last couple of keystrokes or actions you made in the Project file rather than the whole hour’s work.

How to Backup Your EverWeb Project File(s)
Whilst in the BackUp tab of EverWeb’s Preferences, it’s a good time to create a backup schedule for your Project file(s) if you haven’t done so already. You can define how often and how many backup copies of your project(s) that you want to keep in just a few steps.

  1. Start by checking the ‘Enable Automatic Backups’ box. The Backup settings beneath this setting will become available to use.
  2. Next choose where you want the ‘Backup Location’ to be. Click on the ‘Select’ button and navigate to the location where you want to keep your backups.
  3. When selecting the Backup Location, you may want to choose a location that is either your local hard disk, a network drive or a cloud location. If you do not back up your local hard disk (we strongly recommended that you always back up important files on your hard disk!!!) but have a Cloud Drive available, we would recommend that you back up to the Cloud Drive. The reason for this recommendation is that the Cloud Drive will always be backed up.
  4. After choosing your Backup Location, next choose the ‘Number of backup copies to keep’. The default value for this is 5 copies. If you have a Project file that is subject to frequent changes, you may want to increase the number of backup copies that you keep. If you need to rollback any changes in your project, you will have a greater selection of backup files to choose from! You can choose to either keep 1, 5, 10, 20 or 50 backup copies. It’s recommended to use 5 backup copies or more.
  5. The last option to set is the frequency of your backups. Again this may vary depending on how frequently you update your project file. You can schedule your backup on either a daily, weekly or monthly schedule.
  6. Your backup schedule has now been set up so you can now close the Preferences window. As EverWeb backs up your Project file while it is open, if you quit EverWeb, you may sometimes see a message that the Project is being backed up and do you want to still quit. You can either quit immediately or wait until the back up is complete before quitting EverWeb.

Restoring Your Backup
Now that you have your back up schedule in place, what happens if you need to restore one of the backups? To do this, you will need to go to the Projects Window. This is the first screen that you see when you launch EverWeb. If you are already in your Project file, you can call up the Projects Windows by simply using the File-> Projects Window… menu option.

  1. First select the Project file you want from the Project file list on the right hand side. For many users, there’s probably only one file listed in this window.
  2. Position the mouse over the up/down arrows to the right of the Project file name that you want to restore, then click on the arrows.
  3. Choose the ‘Restore from backup…’ option from the menu.
  4. All of the backups that have been created for the Project file that you have chosen will be displayed. The most recent backup will be at the top of the list. Choose the backup file that you want to restore, then click on ‘Select’ to continue.
  5. On the next screen you will see a warning that restoring the backup file will overwrite the existing project file. If you are happy to overwrite the existing project file with the backup. select ‘Restore Backup Project’. If not, select ‘Cancel’.
  6. The backup has now been restored. Double click on the Project file name in the Projects Window to open the restored backup file.

Restoring Backups of Deleted Project Files
As you can see, to restore a backup project file, you need to have the existing project file listed in the Projects Window. What happens if you have deleted the existing Project file, then realize that you want to restore the backup? Unfortunately, when you delete the existing Project file, all of its backups will also be deleted at the same time. The only way to recover the Project file is to go to your computer’s own backup.

Removing Unwanted Backup Files
There may be instances where you may find that you actually don’t need all of the backup files for your Project file. For example, you initially chose to keep 50 backups but actually now only want to keep 5. If you want to delete the backup files that you no longer need, you can do this from the EverWeb-> Preferences menu.

  1. Use the EverWeb-> Preferences menu option to open the Preferences window.
  2. Click on the BackUp tab.
  3. Next click on the ‘Manage Cache Files…” button.
  4. There are three tabs at the top of the dialog box: Preview Cache, Publish Cache and Backup Files. Click on ‘Backup Files’.
  5. You can now delete the backup files that you do not want. Use the Settings Cog in the bottom left hand corner of the dialog box if you want to toggle Check All/Check None. Note that you can only use this window when your backup files are stored locally on your computer. If your backups are stored on a network or Cloud drive, you will need to go to the Backup Location and manually delete the files.

Creating Instant Project File Backups
If you want to create an instant backup of a Project file, you can do this at any time.

  1. Go to the Projects Window. If you are in a Project file, use the File-> Projects Window… menu option to open this window.
  2. Select the Project file you want from the Project file list on the right hand side of the window.
  3. Position the mouse over the up/down arrows to the right of the Project file name that you want to create an instant back up of, then click on the arrows.
  4. Choose the ‘Make Backup…’ option from the menu.
  5. EverWeb will back up the file immediately and will inform you when the back up has been completed.
  6. This instant backup will work regardless of whether you have used EverWeb Preferences to create a back up schedule or not.

Creating a backup schedule or even just an instant backup of your Project file(s) is incredibly easy to do in EverWeb. Being able to also manage the backup files as well as easily restoring files if ever you need to in a simple, straightforward way, makes life much simpler and safer for you! And don’t forget, always make a backup of your local computer on a regular basis!

You may also like

Comments

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in EverWeb