User guide — all chapters
Export your site
Site Settings → Site → Your Data → Export Site… saves the whole site as a folder you own outright.
| In the folder | What it is |
|---|---|
content/posts/ | Every post as a Markdown file. |
content/pages/ | Every page as a Markdown file. |
media/ | Every photo, video and audio file, and your avatar and banner. |
site.json | Your settings, menu, categories and tags, and where the site publishes. |
README.md | What the folder is and how to use it. |
Each Markdown file starts with the post’s details: title, address, dates, whether it is a draft, category, tags, description, and for each photo its caption and alt text. What stays behind is housekeeping: the pre-crop originals kept for Revert, earlier versions of posts, and your publish history.
Passwords, secret keys and tokens are never included. The export records where a site publishes, such as a host name, a username, a bucket or an access key ID, and no credential.
Posts in Recently Deleted are left out. If some photos haven’t yet arrived on this device from iCloud, the export says how many it couldn’t include.
What you can do with an export
- Restore it in Selfish, on this device or another, and the site comes back exactly as it was. See Import a site.
- Open it in any editor. The files are ordinary Markdown, and each photo is linked by its real path, so it shows.
- Give it to Hugo, Jekyll or Eleventy. They can read it as it is. If you ever want to leave Selfish, this is the door, and it is never locked.
- Back it up with whatever backs up the rest of your files.
A Markdown copy, kept up to date
An export is a snapshot. Keep a Markdown Copy…, in the same section, is the same folder kept current.
Choose a folder, in iCloud Drive for instance, and Selfish keeps it up to date as you write: every post and page as a Markdown file, your photos, and your settings. Any editor, search tool or backup can read it.
- Only what changed is written.
- Nothing else in the folder is touched.
- It is one way. The copy follows the app. An edit made in the folder is replaced the next time that post changes in Selfish.
- The folder is chosen on each device. Copy Now refreshes it at once, and Stop ends it.
The other safety nets
Export is the deliberate one. Several quieter ones run on their own.
| Safety net | What it protects against |
|---|---|
| Earlier versions | A paragraph you wish you hadn’t deleted. |
| Recently Deleted, for posts and for sites | A delete you regret within 30 days. |
| iCloud sync | A lost or broken device. |
| Rebuilding from the web | Losing the device and iCloud both. |
| Your published site | Everything. It is plain files on a server you control, and it keeps serving whether or not the app exists. |
Getting one post out
To send a single post somewhere, use Share in the post’s menu: Markdown with its photos, a web page that holds everything, or a PDF. See A post’s own menu.