Start here
- Download the website .tar backup and keep it in secure church-controlled storage.
- Upload the unmodified archive, inspect the restore preview and confirm private restoration.
- Check each restored tool before publishing. Expired temporary uploads are cleaned up automatically.
What to know
Owners open Your data & recovery, then Website backups & restore. Download the .tar archive before major changes. It contains draft and last-published settings, announcements, events, sermon links and notes, custom page drafts and published snapshots, form definitions and all completed photo-library files including archived photos.
Photo originals and externally hosted recordings are not held by ChapelOS. Private inquiry answers and owner notes, credentials, billing, domains, revision/audit history and checklist reviews are excluded. Download private inquiries separately. This is a website-content archive, not a complete platform database backup.
Store it securely: it is not encrypted and may contain private drafts and contact details. Unfinished or missing photos block the backup. Limits are 256 KB and 1,000 records per content category, 1 MB for the manifest, 50 photos of 1 MB each and a 53 MB upload. Exceeding a limit fails without silently truncating content.
Upload the original unmodified ChapelOS .tar archive using the JavaScript upload control. Every entry, checksum, photo and content reference is validated. Files are staged privately and are not added to the photo library until confirmation. Review the source, destination, item counts and content. Restore uses the saved drafts in the archive; archived published snapshots remain in the downloaded file for reference.
Confirm Restore as private drafts. Settings replace the current private draft and the previous settings are retained in history. Matching page addresses receive private drafts, leaving live content and existing order unchanged. Other pages are added privately. Announcements, events, messages and forms are new private copies; existing records remain.
Forms must be reviewed and opened separately. Photos with identical descriptions, states and bytes in this church can be reused; otherwise new tenant-scoped photo IDs are created. Nothing is published automatically and no email is sent. If content changes after the preview, discard that restore and upload again.
Preview authorization expires after one hour. Automatic cleanup checks every 15 minutes and removes expired temporary uploads without changing saved content, library photos or downloaded backups. If storage is unavailable, it retains the cleanup record and retries later. You can still use Discard staged restore; interrupted uploads can be discarded after an hour.
Failed cleanup remains visible and requires retry or support. One pending restore per church and ten for the pilot installation keep staging bounded. Another owner must finish their own upload or contact support. Importing copies must fit existing page, form and photo allowances; use a clean recovery workspace or support if it would not.
Keep the archive until you have checked the restored content. New archives use version 3 for homepage covers; earlier versions 1 and 2 remain importable. Older installations need this software update before importing version 3. Legacy settings and content JSON files cannot be imported here.