Using Timber

Backups & data

Timber stores everything in plain files, so backing up is simple.

What to back up#

Folder	Contains
`data/`	All content and settings as JSON (plus your accounts' password hashes and form submissions)
`uploads/`	Your media library
`themes/`, `assets/themes/`	Only if you've edited or forked themes

One-click export#

Admin Tools → Data → Export all downloads a .zip of the JSON files, optionally with uploads/. Import restores it on the same site or another install. User accounts, secrets and login-throttle files are never included, so a backup is safe to move around.

A cron job on the host#

tar czf ~/backups/site-$(date +%F).tgz public_html/data public_html/uploads
# keep the last 14–30 days

Browse and edit the data#

Admin Tools → Data lists every JSON file with its size and record count. Open one to read it, edit it with live JSON validation, or download it. When you save, the previous version is kept in data/_backups/ and can be restored with one click.

Restore#

Restoring is putting the files back — there's no migration step. Copy data/ and uploads/ into a fresh Timber and open it.

Moving to a new host#

Upload Timber to the new host.
Copy data/ and uploads/ over (or import the export zip after installing).
Update SEO → Site URL if the domain changed.

Personal data#

messages.json contains names, emails and IPs from your forms. Delete old messages from Forms and honour deletion requests there.