How to Backup Your Squarespace Website

“I just lost my entire essay!”

I remember those words so vividly from back in my university days. I lived in a residence that for some reason had quite a few power outages. And it seemed like there was always some student who was in the middle of writing an essay, hadn’t saved it, and then lost it all.

Maybe it’s those words ringing in my ears that has always made me backup everything that I’m writing or creating.

But how do you backup your Squarespace website? It’s not like with WordPress, where you have a plugin and just click a button to backup your site (unfortunately, those same plugins can also cause your website to break).

Luckily, there are a few easy ways you can backup your Squarespace website.

Duplicate your Website

Duplicating your website is the quickest and easiest way to backup your Squarespace website. It simply creates another copy of your website in your account dashboard.

1. Login to Squarespace and go to your account dashboard (My Dashboard)

2. Under All Projects find the website you want to duplicate and click on the three dots •••

3. Choose DUPLICATE WEBSITE from the list and then DUPLICATE from the popup

4. In a few minutes a copy will appear in your project list

Images, text and code all get duplicated. However, any code that you have that works on a specific block won’t work on the duplicated site. Your new website will have different block ids.

This is the perfect way to save your website in case you make a mistake (like deleting a blog post or moving a block and screwing up your page), but it doesn’t save your site if Squarespace unexpectedly closes (which has never happened, but I’m a contingency plan kind of a girl). The next backup methods will help you in those cases.

Download your XML File

Yes, you own your content with Squarespace and you can download all your content and leave with it at any time!

Related Post: 3 Squarespace Myths – Debunked!

Downloading an XML file will allow you to move your content to another platform like WordPress, but you can’t use it to export your content to another Squarespace website. You should download your XML file every 1-3 months, depending on how often you update your content.

1. From the Home panel of your website click Settings

2. Click Import and Export Content

3. Click Export then Click on the WordPress Icon

4. Click the Download button

You can only download an XML file from an active website. If you want to download from an expired website you’ll need to reactivate it.

Not all information from your website can be transferred to a WordPress site. Your download only includes information that can be exported.

Your XML file includes:

• Layout pages

• One blog collection (blog page and posts)

• Text blocks

• Image blocks

• Gallery pages

Your XML file will not include:

• Squarespace specific page types (events pages, portfolio pages, etc.)

• Folders

• Audio & Video blocks

• Product blocks

• Style settings

• Custom CSS

Keep a Copy of your Content

It’s always a good idea to have an extra copy of all of your content in case anything goes wrong. Google Drive, Dropbox or your computer (which you backup too of course – hint, hint, nudge, nudge), use whichever place you prefer to write and/or save.

And if possible, organize your files in that storage area to make it quick and easy to find the info that you need. If anything goes wrong, you’ll appreciate being able to find and fix your site as soon as possible.

I like to make folders for each of my pages (Home, About, Contact) and then place all the text and images inside each one. For my blog, I make one main folder and then subfolders for each of the blog posts with their content. All of this goes into one main folder called “Website Content” with the date.

You may also want to add a visual site map to give yourself an idea of where all that content goes. You can use a free tool like bubbl.us to help you create one.

Copy your Code

Have you added a Squarespace plugin to your website or any other CSS or JavaScript code? Was your website created by a Squarespace designer who added a few unique features?

Then you probably have CSS and/or Code Injections on your website that needs a backup.

To Backup your CSS Code:

1. From the Home panel click Design

2. Click on Custom CSS

3. Copy all the content in the window

4. Paste in a plain text editor such as Notepad in Windows or TextEdit on Mac

5. Save

To Backup Other Custom Code

1. From the Home panel click Settings

2. Scroll down to Website and click Developer Tools

3. Click on Code Injection

4. Copy all the content in one of the windows

5. Paste in a plain text editor such as Notepad in Windows or TextEdit on Mac

6. Repeat the copy and paste with the other window

7. Save

Take Screenshots of your Web Pages

So you now have all of your website content backed up. But what happens if the design on one of your pages somehow gets messed up and you need to rebuild it? If that happens it’s a good idea to have a screenshot or screen capture to help you remember where everything is supposed to go.

I use the Go Full Page Chrome extension to take a full page screen capture of each page of my website (unlike a regular screenshot which just shows you what is in the window).

Backing up your Data

Squarespace does its own regular backups of your website and also has recovery plans in place, but given how essential a website is to every small business I still think it’s important to have your own backups on hand.

I really hope you never ever have to use any of your backup data, but I do hope having these backups will give you a little peace of mind.