A complete backup, export and import system for Flarum 2.x
Backup & Migration is a full-featured backup and migration extension I've been
building for Flarum, inspired by All-in-One WP Migration but written from
scratch with a Flarum-native format. It bundles your forum into a single
portable .flarum file — database, uploads, storage, and any installed
extensions (workbench or vendor) — and restores it on the same install or a
different one with one click.
It started from my own need to migrate forums between hosts without the manual mysqldump-and-zip dance, and grew into a complete suite covering encryption, cross-server transfer, per-extension picking, and automatic URL rewriting.
- Single portable
.flarumfile — custom streaming format (not.wpress, not zip), forward-only so multi-GB backups never need to fit in memory - Pick what to bundle — database,
public/assets,storage, and individual extensions, with a tag on each row showing whether it lives inworkbench/or invendor/(composer-managed) composer.json+composer.locktravel along — vendor extensions stay reproducible on the destination- Resumable, chunked progress on both export and import (~4 MB per HTTP
request), with live progress bars and an upload
%indicator - Optional asymmetric encryption — libsodium hybrid scheme: sealed-box
wraps a per-archive XChaCha20-Poly1305 stream key. Public key in the database,
private key only in
config.php - Cross-server transfer — encrypt to a foreign public key, paste the matching private key at import time
- Automatic URL rewriting — the source URL is recorded in the archive
header and rewritten across
settings,posts.contentandposts.parsed_contentwhen restoring on a different host - Selectable restore — per-section and per-extension checkboxes populated from the archive's manifest
- Foreign-key-safe restore — disables FK checks per tick so DDL referencing not-yet-created tables succeeds without ordering dance
- Smart pruning while scanning (
node_modules,.git,.idea, nestedvendor/…) so workbench scans stay seconds-fast - Dedicated "you've been logged out" screen when a DB restore replaces the admin's session
- PHP 8.1+ — resumable export / import jobs, libsodium crypto, MySQL dumper
- TypeScript + Mithril — admin panel UI
- LESS — styling (theme-aware via Flarum's CSS variables)
- libsodium — sealed-box + secretstream chunked encryption
composer require ramon/backup
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clearThen enable Backup & Migration under the Extensions page in the admin panel.
- GitHub: github.com/ram0ng1/backup
- Packagist: packagist.org/packages/ramon/backup
- Issues: github.com/ram0ng1/backup/issues
- Donate: Stripe
Built with ❤️ by Ramon Guilherme
A personal project focused on making it easier to back up, move and restore Flarum communities — without leaving the admin panel.