Backups

Everything Tidemark knows lives in two places.

What	Where
Your statistics, users, sites and goals	The database. For SQLite it is the file database/database.sqlite
Your configuration	The .env file in the project folder

Code and dependencies are not worth backing up: they come from the release zip.

MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL

Use your host’s database backup (cPanel’s Backup or phpMyAdmin → Export), or mysqldump / pg_dump if you have a shell. Take one before every major update.

SQLite

Copy database/database.sqlite while the site is quiet. If you have a shell, sqlite3 database/database.sqlite ".backup backup.sqlite" is safe even under traffic.

Keep .env safe

APP_KEY signs sessions and, unless you set TIDEMARK_SALT, seeds visitor ids. A lost .env doesn’t lose data, but everyone is signed out and today’s visitor ids change.

Restoring

1. Upload the release zip of the version you are restoring and unzip it.
2. Put your .env back.
3. Restore the database.

Updates also write their own code backups to storage/app/updates/backups/. Those cover code only, not data.