Creating Backups

From the admin UI#

1. Go to Admin > Backup and click Create Backup.
2. Choose what to include:
   • Database — a full SQL dump of every table (produced in pure PHP, no mysqldump needed).
   • Files — a copy of Omeka's files/ directory (uploaded media, thumbnails, etc.).
   • API export — a JSON-LD snapshot of items, item sets, media, vocabularies, resource templates, sites, and more. Useful for human-readable archives or migrating to another platform.
3. Click Create. The backup runs as a background job. A link to the job is shown in the success message — you can monitor its progress there.
4. When complete the new backup appears in the backup list with its filename, size, and SHA-256 checksum.

From the command line#

# Full backup (DB + files + API export)
php modules/Backup/bin/backup.php create

# Skip the API export
php modules/Backup/bin/backup.php create --no-api

# Database only
php modules/Backup/bin/backup.php create --no-files --no-api

# List all recorded backups
php modules/Backup/bin/backup.php list

# Delete backups beyond the configured retention limit
php modules/Backup/bin/backup.php cleanup

The script must be run as the same user that owns the Omeka files and backup directory (typically www-data or apache).

Downloading a backup#

Click Download next to any complete backup in the list. The ZIP is streamed directly to your browser without loading it into PHP memory.

What's inside a backup ZIP

omeka-backup-YYYYMMDD-HHmmss-<token>.zip
├── db.sql            # Full database dump
├── files/            # Omeka uploaded files
│   ├── original/
│   ├── thumbnails/
│   └── …
├── export/           # JSON-LD API snapshots
│   ├── items.json
│   ├── item_sets.json
│   ├── media.json
│   └── …
└── metadata.json     # Module version, timestamp, included components