Supporting the Unsupported: Backing up your Squarespace site

When kicking the tires on CMS platforms, one of the first things you realize about Squarespace: Squarespace doesn't have backups (that we can benefit from). I won't go into the Nerd Forest to explain why the complexity of the rendered Squarespace viewport makes it really really tricky to backup, but I totally agree— backing up site content is imperative. 

Before you NEED it, consider backing up your content now.

It's like being at the drive-through window and being asked: "do you need napkins?" If you say NO, you'll almost certainly need them later. Always 👏 get 👏 extra 👏 napkins.

So no— Squarespace doesn't do it, but I can recommend a third-party tool like Evernote (or Pocket / Instapaper) to grab your content. Each platform is great for collecting things on your trips around the web to read later, and they all have browser plugins to make it super-simple. 

Evernote is my favorite; it's my peripheral brain. So I'll show you how easy it is to backup a web page/post to Evernote while browsing.


Three simple steps:

1. Install the Evernote Web Clipper browser plugin

2. Browse to each page of your site, and engage the Web Clipper

3. Save each page as a "SIMPLIFIED ARTICLE"

  • This view will strip out the structure of each page, and leave you with the text and image content.

  • You cannot convert this back to a Squarespace page, but at least you can grab the text content and store it safely.

  • As a site owner, when knowing the old site is going away, you can grab full-page screenshots and simplified page/post content to always have a record of your old stuff.