Activate site backups on SGEN

How to activate, schedule, and verify site backups in SGEN

Backups in SGEN are full-site snapshots. One file. Everything in it: your pages, posts, custom objects, media library, settings, and theme configuration. If something goes wrong — an accidental delete, a bad import, a rebuild that goes sideways — you open the admin, find the backup, and restore. The live site is not touched until you confirm the restore.

This guide covers the end-to-end activation: enable scheduled backups, set your cadence and retention, configure who gets notified, take your first manual backup, and confirm that download and restore preview both work. That last step — verifying the download and the preview before you need them — is the one most teams skip. Don't skip it.

By the end of this guide, backups will be running on a schedule, your first .sgen file will be on disk, and you will have confirmed that the restore workflow functions without touching your live site.

What is this for?

Site backups give you a safe rollback point for your entire SGEN site. The backup captures a complete snapshot of the site's current state and writes it to a single .sgen file. You can download that file, store it off-site, and use it to restore the site to the exact state it was in when the snapshot was taken.

SGEN stores backups in your plan's allocated storage. You control how many are kept. You control when they run. A daily backup with a 30-day retention window gives you thirty rolling days of history, always available, no manual steps after the initial setup.

The audit log records who took each backup and when. If your site has multiple admins, you can see exactly which admin triggered a manual backup and whether scheduled backups ran on time.

Good use cases

Backups protect against the situations every site operator recognizes too late. These are the scenarios every site eventually reaches for a backup.

• Accidental delete. A content manager deletes what

she thinks is a duplicate page. It was not a duplicate — it was the live product landing page for a major launch. A backup from the night before restores the page, its settings, and its SEO fields in minutes. Without a backup, the page must be rebuilt from memory.

• Pre-rebuild snapshot. Your team is rebuilding the

homepage using SG-Builder. Before the first section is published, take a manual backup. If the rebuild goes wrong mid-way through, restore to the pre-rebuild state and start from a clean slate — not from a half-published page that mixes old and new structure.

• Monthly compliance archive. Some wholesale distribution

partners require a monthly record of the site's published content for auditing. Configure a monthly backup to run on the first of each month, download it manually, and store it in your compliance archive folder. The .sgen file carries a timestamp that ties the snapshot to the date.

• Before a risky settings change. Before changing a

site's URL structure — new category slugs, new permalink format — take a manual backup. If the restructure causes problems, the restore brings back the original URL structure including the permalink settings.

• Before a content import. Before importing hundreds of

product descriptions from a CSV file using the custom objects import tool, back up. A bad import — wrong field mapping, encoding issues, duplicate records — is resolved by restoring rather than manually cleaning hundreds of records.

• End-of-campaign preservation. After a major product

launch campaign closes, take a manual backup to preserve the site's exact state during peak traffic. This is the version of the site that performed. Keep it as a reference even after future site changes.

What NOT to use this for

Understanding the scope of site backups prevents the three most common misuses.

• This is not per-page version history. SGEN's publishing

lifecycle — Stage and Live — gives every page a staged version and a live version. That is per-page version control, built into the publishing workflow. Site backups are full-site snapshots, not per-page history. If you accidentally overwrite a page draft, check the publishing lifecycle first — a full site restore is a larger operation than reverting a single page to its staged version.

• This is not a partial restore tool. A site backup

restores the entire site to the snapshotted state. There is no supported workflow for restoring a single page, a single post, or a single custom object from a backup file without restoring everything else. If you need to recover one piece of content from a backup, contact your SGEN support team.

• This is not a cross-account migration tool. The .sgen

backup file is tied to the originating site. Restoring a backup from one SGEN account into a different account or a different site is not supported through the Backups interface. Contact SGEN support if cross-account migration is your goal — that is a separate process with different tooling.

• Backups do not replace a staging environment. Testing

a new build or a settings change on your live site because you have a backup is not a substitute for using a staging site. Restoring from backup after a live failure means your site was unavailable during the failure and recovery window. Use staging for risky changes; use backups as the last-resort safety net.

How this connects to other features

Backups sit at the intersection of several other areas in your SGEN dashboard. Understanding the connections helps you use backups effectively and set accurate expectations.

• Audit log. Every backup event — scheduled or manual —

writes a record to the audit log. The record includes the timestamp, the admin who triggered it (or "Scheduled" for automatic runs), and whether the backup succeeded or failed. If a scheduled backup did not run on the expected date, the audit log is where you confirm what happened. Audit log is in the admin under Settings then Activity.

• Storage. Backup files count against your plan's

storage allocation. A large site with a long retention window can accumulate significant backup storage. Before setting a 90-day retention window, check your current storage allocation in the admin under Settings then Storage. If you are near your plan limit, reduce the retention window or upgrade your storage allocation before enabling scheduled backups.

• Restore flow. The Backups panel lists every backup

by date. Each row has a Restore button and a Download button. The Restore button opens a restore preview — a read-only render of the site at the snapshot date — before asking for confirmation. The live site is not changed until you explicitly confirm the restore. This guide covers the verification steps for the restore preview in the success section below.

• Multi-site. If your SGEN account has more than one

site, each site has its own backup schedule, its own backup history, and its own retention window. Backups are per-site, not per-account. If you manage three SGEN sites, you set up backups separately in each site's SG-Admin panel. There is no single account-level backup that covers all sites at once.

• Plan limits. Each SGEN plan includes a backup storage

allocation and a maximum number of stored backups. If you hit the plan limit, SGEN pauses scheduled backups and sends a notification to your backup email recipients. Resolve by deleting older backups manually or upgrading your plan.

Before you start

Three decisions to make before opening the Backups panel. Getting these right up front means you configure the schedule once and do not need to revisit it.

Decide your retention cadence. How far back do you need to be able to restore? A marketing site with frequent content updates benefits from a daily backup with a 30-day retention window — that is 30 distinct restore points available at any time. A low-traffic site that changes monthly can get by with a weekly or monthly backup and a shorter retention window. Match the cadence to how often your content changes and how much rollback coverage your team needs.

Decide who can take and download backups. Backups are accessible from the admin under Settings. Any admin-level user on your site can take a manual backup and download the .sgen file. If you have content editors who should not have access to site backups or the restore workflow, confirm that their role does not have admin access to Settings. Role configuration is in the admin under Settings then Team.

Confirm your storage allotment. Check the storage panel before enabling backups to understand how much space is available. A site with 180 MB of content and a 30-day daily retention window will accumulate approximately 5.4 GB of backup storage at full retention. If that exceeds your plan's allocation, either upgrade storage or shorten the retention window before enabling the schedule.

Where to go

Go to SG-Admin and open Settings in the left sidebar. Select Backups from the Settings submenu. The Backups panel has two sections: the schedule configuration at the top and the backup history list below.

If you do not see Backups in the Settings submenu, your user role may not include Settings access. Contact your site's primary administrator.

Steps — Enable scheduled backups and take your first manual backup

These steps take you from opening the Backups panel to confirming that your first backup downloaded correctly and that the restore preview works.

1. Enable scheduled backups and set your cadence

In the Backups panel, find the Enable scheduled backups toggle. Switch it to On. Two fields appear below the toggle: Cadence and Retention window.

Set Cadence to the frequency that matches your content update rhythm. A site that publishes new blog content and updates product listings several times a week benefits from Daily — granular rollback options. A site that changes once or twice a month may find Weekly sufficient.

Set Retention window to the number of days SGEN keeps each backup before automatically deleting it. 30 days is a reasonable starting point for most sites — long enough to cover a problem that took a few weeks to notice, short enough to keep backup storage manageable. SGEN will not store more backups than your plan allows regardless of the retention window you set.

2. Set notification recipients

Still in the Backups panel, find the Notifications section. Enter the email addresses of everyone who should receive backup completion and failure notifications. Using your primary administrator's email plus a shared operations inbox means backup failure alerts reach someone even when one person is travelling.

Separate multiple addresses with commas. At minimum, include the email address of whoever is responsible for monitoring site health. A failed backup that nobody noticed is effectively no backup at all — the notification recipients list is your safety net for the safety net.

Click Save notifications to store the addresses.

3. Take your first manual backup

Before the schedule has had a chance to run, take a manual backup to create your first restore point now. In the Backups panel, find the Manual backup section and click Back up now.

SGEN begins a full-site snapshot immediately. A progress indicator appears in the panel. For most sites the backup completes in 30 to 90 seconds depending on the volume of media and content. When it finishes, the backup appears at the top of the backup history list below the schedule settings with a status of Completed.

Do not navigate away from the Backups panel while the backup is in progress — wait for the Completed status to appear before moving on to the next step.

4. Download the backup and verify the file

In the backup history list, find the manual backup you took and click Download. SGEN generates a download link and your browser downloads the .sgen file to your downloads folder.

Open your downloads folder and confirm:

• The file name follows the pattern

sgen_<your-domain>-backup-<timestamp>.sgen.

• The file size is greater than zero. An empty or near-zero

file indicates the backup did not complete correctly — delete it and repeat steps 3 and 4.

• The file size is consistent with your site's content.

A site with 180 MB of media should produce a backup file in the 150-200 MB range depending on compression. A 2 KB file for a content-heavy site is a failure signal.

Store this file somewhere safe — a local folder you back up independently, a cloud drive, or a compliance archive. SGEN holds backups in your account storage, but having a local copy means you can restore even if your SGEN account itself is inaccessible.

5. Open the restore preview and confirm it renders

Still in the Backups panel, find the same manual backup in the history list and click Restore. A confirmation dialog opens. Click Preview restore — do not click Confirm restore yet. SGEN opens a restore preview: a read-only render of the site at the exact snapshot date.

Navigate through two or three pages in the restore preview — the homepage, a page with media, a blog post. Confirm:

• Pages render correctly — no blank screens, no missing images.
• Your content is present — the text and media you expect to

see at that snapshot date are there.

• The site structure is intact — navigation renders, internal

links resolve within the preview.

Close the restore preview without confirming the restore. You are not restoring — you are verifying that the backup file is intact and that the restore mechanism works before you ever need it in an emergency.

6. Verify the first scheduled backup runs

The next morning — or after the next scheduled window passes — return to the Backups panel and confirm a new entry appears in the history list with a status of Completed and a Scheduled type. This confirms that the schedule is running without manual intervention.

If 24 hours pass after the expected run time and no scheduled backup appears, check the audit log for errors and review the troubleshooting section at the bottom of this guide.

What success looks like

When site backups are correctly activated and verified, each of the following is true.

• The Enable scheduled backups toggle is On in the admin

under Settings then Backups.

• The cadence and retention window are set to values that

match your content update rhythm and your storage allocation.

• Notification recipients are saved — at least one address

that will be seen if a backup fails overnight.

• A manual backup appears in the history list with status

Completed and a non-zero file size.

• The .sgen file downloaded to your local machine has

a name in the pattern sgen_<domain>-backup-<timestamp>.sgen and a file size consistent with your site's content volume.

• The restore preview rendered at least two or three pages

without blank screens or missing media.

• The next day, a scheduled backup appears in the history

list with type Scheduled and status Completed.

• The audit log in the admin under Settings then Activity

shows both the manual backup event and the scheduled backup event, each with a timestamp and an initiator.

What to do if it does not work

• The scheduled backup did not run.

Open the audit log in the admin under Settings then Activity. Filter by "backup" events. If a failure record exists, it will show the error. Common causes: plan storage limit hit (resolve by deleting older backups or upgrading storage), or the schedule was saved before the toggle was enabled (open the Backups panel and confirm the toggle is still On).

• The backup file download fails or the file is empty.

The download link generated by SGEN expires after 15 minutes. If you waited longer than that before downloading, return to the history list, click Download again on the same entry, and download immediately. If the file arrives with a zero or near-zero size, the backup itself did not complete correctly — delete it, take a fresh manual backup, and download within 15 minutes.

• The restore preview shows a blank screen or missing pages.

This can indicate a corrupted backup file. Delete the backup, take a fresh manual backup, and try the restore preview again. If the preview is blank on multiple fresh backups, contact SGEN support — there may be a site configuration issue preventing the snapshot from reading correctly.

• **The backup was deleted before you needed it — the retention

window removed it.** Once a backup exceeds the retention window you set, SGEN deletes it automatically. If you need to keep a specific backup permanently — for a compliance archive, for a pre-rebuild record, or for a campaign snapshot — download the .sgen file and store it locally or in your preferred cloud storage before the retention window expires. SGEN does not offer pinned or permanent backup entries within the platform.

• The plan limit was hit and backups are paused.

SGEN sends a notification to your backup email recipients when the plan storage limit is reached and scheduled backups are paused. To resume: go to the admin under Settings then Backups, delete enough older backups to drop below the limit, and re-enable the schedule toggle. Alternatively, upgrade your storage plan to increase the available allocation. Scheduled backups do not resume automatically after you free up space — you must toggle the schedule off and back on.

• You cannot find the Backups panel in Settings.

Your user role may not have Settings access. Contact your site's primary administrator to confirm your role permissions. If you are the primary administrator and the Backups option is missing from the Settings submenu, the Backups feature may not be active on your current plan — contact SGEN support to confirm plan coverage.

• The .sgen file does not restore to the correct date.

The filename timestamp reflects the UTC time the backup was taken. If your site uses a timezone offset, the filename date may differ from your local calendar date. The restore preview shows the exact snapshot date and time in the Snapshot date field — use that to confirm you are restoring to the right point rather than relying solely on the filename.

Tips for getting the most from site backups

A few habits that make backups more useful in practice.

• Take a manual backup before any risky operation.

Before a homepage rebuild, a URL restructure, a bulk import, or a global settings change — take a backup first. The Backups panel takes thirty seconds to reach and a manual backup takes ninety. That two-minute investment means you have a clean restore point no matter what the operation does to the site.

• Download and store a copy of your monthly backup.

SGEN holds backups in your account storage, but your account storage and your site live in the same platform. If you ever need to restore to a new site or recover after a catastrophic account issue, a locally stored copy of the .sgen file is independent of whatever happened to the account. Download the first-of-month backup and store it in a team drive or offline archive.

• Match retention window to your content velocity.

A site that publishes daily benefits from a 30-day retention window — you want at least one restore point for every week of the past month. A site that changes quarterly does not need 30 days of daily snapshots. Match the cadence and retention to the actual rate of change, not to a vague feeling that more is better. More backups consume more storage; storage has a plan limit.

• Verify the restore preview at least once per quarter.

A backup that downloads correctly but produces a blank restore preview is effectively useless in an emergency. Schedule a quarterly five-minute check: download the latest backup, open the restore preview, confirm it renders. You are not restoring — you are confirming the backup is usable before you are under pressure.

• Add a non-personal address to your notification recipients.

If the only notification recipient is a personal inbox that gets 200 emails a day, a backup failure notification will get lost. Use a shared team inbox, a Slack email integration, or a dedicated operations alias that is monitored by more than one person.