Backups are integral to any system, ensuring its stability and fault tolerance. ClickHelp has several features in this regard.
Automatic Backups
Our infrastructure performs daily database backups for every ClickHelp portal. Up to six backups are stored across different locations to guarantee maximum data safety. You can find more information on our hosting facilities and reliability in ClickHelp Security Policy.
The backup uses a "rolling window" strategy—when a new backup appears, all backups are shifted back and all six slots are updated. The advantage of this approach is a consistent rollback depth of approximately one month (up to four weeks back) on any day of the year.
Daily backups
Daily backups take up two slots and cover two days - the current day and the previous day.
Weekly backups
Weekly backups occupy up to four slots. These backups are made weekly - usually on Sunday, depending on the portal activity. Up to four of such backups are stored on the server - one backup for each of the 4 previous weeks.
Additional and transitional backups
The cloud always retains the maximum available restore points (up to six) without leaving unused capacity.
If a recent daily backup overlaps with a weekly one (for example, on a Sunday), the backup has two roles—the weekly backup and the daily backup. To avoid saving Sunday's data twice, the system uses Friday's backup to fill the redundant backup's spot instead of removing Friday's data when writing the Sunday backup.
If a new portal doesn't have four weeks of history yet, the system fills the open slots with backups from nearby adjacent days.
Manual Backups
You can perform data backups manually by downloading your project backups as described in the following topic: Back Up a Project.
This is the recommended way of backing up your documentation in ClickHelp since it preserves all the content, including the dynamic elements. So after you import back such a backup, you will get the project as close to the original as possible.
The specifics of the project backup feature are described in the Project Backup topic.
Manual Backups via the Export
You can also back up your data by exporting your content to various formats (CHM, HTML5 Web Help, Micorosft Word, RTF, etc.). To do that, follow this process:
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Create a Private publication of your project. This will create a full copy of your content, including TOC, styles, images, scripts, and other dependencies.
Note that if you have including or excluding conditional blocks in your project, such blocks will be included or excluded from the publication as per Output Tags. -
Export the publication to the format you need. We recommend using the CHM format - this format uses HTML+CSS inside, so it will be easier to import the content later if you need this.
If you are exporting your project to a printed format, e.g., PDF or MS Word, the dynamic navigation elements in the output, such as mini-TOC or See Also, will be converted to corresponding static elements — headings, links, lists of topics, etc. - Download the resulting file from ClickHelp Storage using the link on the last step of the wizard.
- Delete the publication if you do not need it.
- Keep this exported file in your own backup location as needed.
Regular Backups via ClickHelp API
One more option is to perform automatic backups via the ClickHelp API. You can automatically create backups of your projects in the File Storage, or you can export your existing publications to downloadable formats.
The main benefit of the second approach is that ClickHelp can upload the resulting output file to an FTP server of your choice automatically when the export is finished, so you don't have to care about getting the backup file manually from the File Storage.
To learn how to run data backups and publication exports via the API, see the API: Projects & Publications help section.
Regular Backups via Zapier
Since ClickHelp is available in Zapier, you can set up periodical automatic backups to your favorite online file storage — if it is added to Zapier.
A good example is the daily backups of a specific project to your Google Drive: Upload new ClickHelp project backups to Google Drive daily.
However, the possibilities are not limited to Google Drive only: Dropbox, OneDrive, and many other file management and storage apps are available in Zapier, enhancing your documentation safety and reliability.
You can even upload each new backup to several different places at the same time!
Read the Task Automation with Zapier to learn more.