Archive Documentation

Archive packages a Craft site’s content, assets, relations and content model into a ZIP that nothing needs Craft to read — so the site can move to a platform that isn’t Craft.

Start here

If you have five minutes: install it, open Archive → Export, and build a bundle with the defaults. Unzip the result and read README.txt. That will tell you more about the shape of a bundle than this page can.

Installation

Two commands, no configuration required.

Usage

The export screen, option by option, and what lands in Bundles.

Formats

JSON, NDJSON, XML, YAML and CSV — and how to choose.

Bundle format

The spec: manifest, records, field kinds, element refs.

Assets

Which files are copied, which are referenced, and why.

Users & privacy

What Archive refuses to export, and how to opt in.

Configuration

Every setting, with its default.

Console commands

Exporting, listing, pruning and deleting from the CLI.

Permissions

Who can create a bundle, and who can download one.

Extending

Add a collector, a writer, or a field serializer.

Troubleshooting

Warnings, memory, timeouts and empty bundles.

What Archive is for

One job: getting content out of Craft, in a shape something else can read. That means a documented, platform-neutral schema rather than a Craft dump — field values described in Archive’s own vocabulary, relations expressed as portable element references, and the content model travelling alongside the content.

What Archive is not for

There is no import path, on purpose. Archive can’t read its own bundles back into Craft, and never will — that’s a different problem with different requirements (dependency resolution, conflict review, rollback), and it’s the job of Transport. It also isn’t a backup tool: a bundle is content, not a database, and restoring a Craft site from one is not something it tries to do.

Requirements

  • Craft CMS 5.3 or later
  • PHP 8.2 or later
  • The zip, dom and json extensions — all standard in a Craft install

No runtime dependencies beyond Craft itself. Archive is MIT-licensed and free.