Your Website Backup Should Tell You What Changed

Most website backups answer one question: do we have a copy? That is a fine question, and on the day the site disappears it is the only one that matters. But it is not the question you have the other 364 days of the year. The question you have then is quieter: has anything changed on my site, and did I mean it?

A backup is in a rare position to answer that. It already holds every page from last month. It is about to hold every page from this month. All it has to do is compare the two before it files the new copy away.

What "what changed" looks like

Every backup we make carries a list of its pages, each with a fingerprint of the words on it. When the next backup is made, the two lists are compared and the difference travels with the new copy. Three words cover everything:

• Added. A page that is in this month's backup and was not in last month's.
• Removed. A page that was there last month and is gone now.
• Edited. The words on the page changed.

The monthly email says it in one line, "2 pages added, 1 removed, 4 edited", and lists the pages underneath. The dashboard shows the same count next to each backup, and the archive page, where you download the zip, lists up to 25 pages in each group. A month where nothing changed says so too, which is its own kind of reassurance.

The fingerprint covers words, not pixels. A photo that moved, a new font, or a layout change that leaves the text alone does not count as an edit. That is on purpose. Website builders shuffle image addresses and rewrite markup constantly, and a change list that fires on every one of them is a change list nobody reads.

Three times it earns its place

An edit you did not make. A former contractor still has a login. A plugin or an integration rewrites a page. Someone in the business "just fixed a typo" on the pricing page and changed a number. Each shows up as *edited* on a page you have not touched. That is the earliest signal you will get that someone else has access to the site, and it arrives in an email you were already going to open.

A page that vanished. Pages get deleted by accident more often than by intent, usually while tidying a navigation menu. *Removed* on a page you still wanted means last month's copy has it, word for word, in the text folder of the zip. Paste it back.

A redesign you want to check. After a big change, the list of edited pages is a checklist: every page that should have changed, and, more usefully, every page that should not have and did.

What it is not

It is not a page-watch tool. Services that watch a page for changes check it every few minutes and alert on any pixel. That is right for tracking a competitor's price or a government notice, and wrong for your own site, where you would drown in alerts about your own edits. A monthly comparison, with words only, is calibrated for an owner who edits their site sometimes and wants to know when someone else did.

It is not uptime monitoring either, though it sits next to something like it. Once a day we load your homepage, and if it fails twice, a minute apart, you get one email with your latest backup and one more when the site is back. That is a different question, "is it there?", and it gets its own plain answer.

What to do when the list surprises you

1. Open the page in the backup. The zip has the HTML and a full-page screenshot of every page, plus a plain-text copy under text/. Compare it with the live page.
2. Decide whether it was you. Most of the time it was, a month ago, and you forgot. Fine. The list did its job.
3. If it was not you, change the locks. Reset the builder password, review who has access, and disconnect integrations you do not recognise. Then put the words back from the text copy.
4. Make a fresh backup once things are settled. The dashboard has a "Back up now" button, once a day per site, so the corrected version is on record with a date on it.

The monthly email, read properly

The email is short on purpose. The receipt at the top says how many pages were saved, how many screenshots were taken, how many files came with them, and how big the zip is. The "since last month" line is the one worth a glance. Most months it will say "no changes since last month" or list the pages you edited yourself, and you will delete the email in three seconds. The month it lists a page you did not touch is the month it pays for the year.

Q: Does it notice changes to images or layout?

No. The comparison is of the words on each page: headings, paragraphs, lists, link text, and image descriptions. A photo that was swapped for another without changing its description does not count, and neither does a layout change. That keeps the list about content, which is what an owner can act on.

Q: How often is the comparison made?

With every backup: on the 1st of the month, and whenever you press "Back up now" on the dashboard. The daily check that catches a site going down is separate and does not compare pages.

Q: Can I see what changed in an older month?

Yes. Every backup keeps its own change list. Open any month's archive page from the dashboard and the list is there, alongside the download.

Q: Does it work for sites that are not on Squarespace?

Yes. The comparison is made on what a visitor sees, so it works the same on Wix, Showit, GoDaddy, Webflow, WordPress, and anything else with public pages.

If you want this for your own site, the monthly plan starts with a backup today and compares from the next one on.