Backups

Your entire site is two things: a database file and a folder of photographs.

The one-click backup

Your account → Back up your site in the standalone admin. It produces a

dated archive with your database, your photographs, and a README explaining how

to restore it.

The database is copied with SQLite's own tooling rather than a plain file copy.

A plain copy of a live database can catch it mid-write and produce a backup

that restores corrupt — the kind of failure only discovered when you need it.

Doing it yourself

tar czf backup-$(date +%F).tar.gz storage/

storage/meridian.sqlite and storage/uploads/ are the whole site. Nothing

else in the installation matters.

Where to keep them

Not on the server they came from. A backup stored beside the thing it is

backing up is not a backup. Dropbox, an external drive, S3 — anywhere else.

Restoring

1. Install Meridian on the new server
2. Delete the database the installer created
3. Copy meridian.sqlite into storage/
4. Copy the contents of uploads/ into storage/uploads/
5. chmod -R 775 storage

Your login details are inside the database, so they come back with it.

Test a restore before you need one

Restore to a spare folder and check the site loads. An untested backup is a

hope, and the moment you need it is the wrong moment to find out.

Hosted plans

Backed up nightly for you, off the server, with thirty days of history. You can

still take your own backup any time — and you should before a big change.