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Backup and restore
GST Manager protects your data around updates without any setup from you. Every time you update in place, it first takes a database snapshot of its own tables, so an upgrade can always be undone. This page explains what gets backed up, where the snapshots live, how to keep them private, and how rolling back works.
Automatic snapshot before every update
Before an in-place update runs, GST Manager takes a database snapshot of only this plugin's own tables — never AcelleMail's tables. That snapshot is what lets a failed upgrade roll back to the version you were running.
You can see your snapshots on GST Manager → Plugin Settings → Integrity & Updates, listed as Database snapshots with Version, Taken, and Size columns and a Download button for each one.
GST Manager → Plugin Settings → Integrity & Updates
The plugin keeps the N most recent snapshots and removes older ones automatically, so the list doesn't grow without bound.
Where snapshots are stored
Snapshots are written to storage/app/gstmanager-backups/. On a standard AcelleMail install storage/ sits outside the web root, so the files are not directly reachable over the web.
A snapshot contains your license key
Because a snapshot includes plugin data such as your license key, GST Manager writes an Apache deny rule into that folder to block web access. If you run nginx (which ignores .htaccess), you must add an equivalent server-level rule yourself to deny access to that directory.
These snapshots cover the plugin's own data only. For full safety, keep taking your normal AcelleMail database backups as well — they protect everything else.
Rolling back
Rollback is automatic on a failed update. If an in-place update can't complete, GST Manager restores the snapshot it took first and leaves you on the version you were running — you don't need to do anything.
If you ever need to restore a snapshot yourself, use the Download button next to the snapshot on the Integrity & Updates tab to retrieve it. See Updating for how the in-place update sequence works end to end.