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How to back up a BigCommerce store

Last updated: September 01, 2024
Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

By Sam Nguyen

CEO Avada Commerce

As we all know, the unexpected happens from time to time. Something goes wrong during a typical CSV import, and all of a sudden, all of your goods’ photos are gone. Perhaps a new employee deletes the incorrect pages or removes special coding from the theme files by accident. You’ll want to preserve your investment, especially if you’ve employed a designer or collaborator.

Keeping a backup of your store’s data serves as insurance. It assures that your business will not be severely harmed in the event of an accident or a technological malfunction. Any time your store is down or functionally hindered, you lose potential revenue and damage your brand since customers are unable to access the site or place purchases. You may even discover that some content is permanently gone and unrecoverable, costing you hours of work to rebuild.

In this post, we will show you How to back up a BigCommerce store to minimize bad issues with your store.

Why we should back up Bigcommerce stores

Something goes wrong during a typical CSV import, and all of a sudden, all of your goods’ photos are gone. Perhaps a new employee deletes the incorrect pages or removes special coding from the theme files by accident. You’ll want to preserve your investment, especially if you’ve employed a designer or collaborator.

Keeping a backup of your store’s data serves as insurance. It assures that your business will not be severely harmed in the event of an accident or a technological malfunction. Any time your store is down or functionally hindered, you lose potential revenue and damage your brand since customers are unable to access the site or place purchases. You may even discover that some content is permanently gone and unrecoverable, costing you hours of work to rebuild.

There are various risks you’ll want to avoid, including:

  • Protecting your investment by backing up a web developer’s work.
  • Phishing attacks, hackers, or ill-intentioned workers are all potential threats to your business.
  • Changes made by accident, such as a faulty CSV import or corrupted theme files

How to back up a BigCommerce store

301 Redirects

  1. In Server Settings >301 Redirects. Check the boxes next to the redirects you would like to export. If you want to export all of your 301 redirects, do not check any.

  2. Choose Export These Redirects.

  3. On the next page, select the Default template > Continue.

On the next page, select the Default template > Continue.
  1. Click Export my redirects to a CSV file in the pop-up window. When finishing generating your file, choose Download my Redirects file.

  2. The CSV export file will download to whichever folder you have specified on your browser.

Products and product images

  1. Go to Products > Export. Select the Bulk Edit template > Continue.

  2. Choose Export my products to a CSV file.

Choose Export my products to a CSV file.
  1. A status bar will move across the screen. When it finishes, click Download my Products file to save the file to your computer.
click Download my Products file to save the file to your computer.
  1. Connect to your store using WebDAV. Download the product_images folder by dragging and dropping it to your desktop.
Download the product_images folder by dragging and dropping it to your desktop.

Customers

Except for passwords, all client data can be exported as a CSV file. Exporting passwords would be against our PCI Compliance requirements.

  1. Go to Customers > Export. Select the Bulk Edit template > Continue.

  2. Click Export my customers to a CSV file in the pop-up window.

Click Export my customers to a CSV file in the pop-up window.
  1. A status bar will move across the screen. When it finishes, click the Download customers file to save the file to your computer.
click the Download customers file to save the file to your computer.

Orders

BigCommerce orders cannot be loaded through CSV, however they can be exported for backups and reporting. Orders can be imported and exported using our API; for more details, check the Dev Center.

  1. Go to Orders > Export. Select the Default template > Continue.

  2. Click Export my orders to a CSV file in the pop-up window.

Click Export my orders to a CSV file in the pop-up window.
  1. A status bar will move across the screen. When it finishes, click Download my Orders file to save the file to your computer.
click Download my Orders file to save the file to your computer.

Theme customizations (Stencil)

  1. Go to Storefront > My Themes. Click on Advanced, and select the theme version you want to download.
  • Download Current Theme — the theme applied to the storefront, containing any edits made in Page Builder
  • Download Original Theme — the default theme, without any edits made in Page Builder
  • Download Saved Theme — saved theme versions created previously in Page Builder
Go to Storefront > My Themes > Download Theme.
  1. Save the zip file to your computer.

Theme customizations (Blueprint)

  1. Go to Storefront > My Themes > Download Theme.
Go to Storefront > My Themes > Download Theme.
  1. Select whether you want to download Customized files only or All files. You will want to choose Customized files only if you have made changes to your theme.
Select whether you want to download Customized files only or All files
  1. Save the zip file to your computer.

Conclusion

Making backups of your business should always be your first concern, whether you’re adding new products and photographs, changing your theme, or modifying your customer and order information. In the event of catastrophic data loss, backing up your product, theme, customer, and order information will save you numerous hours of effort and provide you confidence and peace of mind. Backing up and restoring your product, order, redirection, and customer data are all covered in these procedures. Customizations to the theme can also be saved and restored. You can also use the API to back up your store - visit our Dev Center for more information.

Above is a tutorial about How to back up a BigCommerce store and we hope you find it effective!


Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.

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