Updating and backups

Updates are delivered as an update ZIP. It contains the application code and built assets, and leaves your configuration, database and uploaded files alone.

Before you update

Back up two things:

• The database. In CloudPanel, open the site, go to Databases and export it through phpMyAdmin, or use your host's backup tool.
• The application folder, in particular the .env file and the storage folder. .env holds the application key that encrypts stored API keys. If you lose it, saved provider keys and two-factor secrets cannot be decrypted and have to be entered again.

Apply an update

1. Upload the update ZIP to the application folder with the File Manager.
2. Extract it over the existing files and allow it to overwrite. The update package does not contain .env, storage/installed.lock or anything under storage/app, so your settings and uploads are kept.
3. Sign in as an administrator and open Admin, then System.
4. If the page shows database updates waiting, press Run database updates.

The same button clears the compiled page templates, so the new version is served straight away.

What is stored where

Item	Location
Configuration and application key	.env
Installer lock	storage/installed.lock
Uploaded and generated files	storage/app/private/attachments
Logs	storage/logs
Everything else (users, chats, settings, content)	The database

Moving to another server

Copy the whole application folder including .env and storage, export and import the database, and update the database details in .env if they changed. Keep the APP_KEY line exactly as it is. Then update the site address under Admin, Settings if the domain changed.

Reinstalling from scratch

The installer refuses to run when storage/installed.lock exists or when the database already contains Max Harness tables. To start again, use an empty database and delete both .env and storage/installed.lock. This discards all saved keys, because a new application key is generated.