Tools 

The Tools & Plugins section provides features that are not absolutely necessary for running your site, but can be used to fix technical issues, insert custom code, and backup and restore your site. This section is also where any plugins that you install will appear; details on plugins can be found in the next part of this documentation; Plugins. The available tools in this section are:

Backups

The Backups section is where you can manage backing up and restoring your website to protect from any data loss due to hacking, power loss etc...

Backing Up Your Site

To create a backup of your website, click on the Tools option in the main menu to view the available tools in Publii, then click on the Backups option at the top to go to the backups screen. Here you will see a list of available backups, which will of course be empty if you've yet to create your first. To make a new backup of your current website, click the Create the first backup button in the centre of the screen (the option to Create backup will be at the top-right of the screen after the first backup is created, should you want to create multiple backups); a pop-up will open allowing you to enter a name for your backup; this defaults to a unique name with the format backup-date-time, but you can enter any name that you wish, then click OK. After a few moments your new backup will be created and added to the list.

Restoring Your Site

To restore an existing backup of your site, click on the Tools option in the main menu, then click on the Backups option to open the backups screen. In the list of available backups, find the one you wish to use, and click the Restore button to the right of the listing; a popup will appear asking for confirmation that you wish to restore from this backup. Double-check that the file you are restoring is correct, as once the process is started all files will be overwritten and the restore cannot be rolled back. Once ready, click OK if you wish to continue; the backup will be loaded and a confirmation message will appear once the website is restored.

Restoring Backups on a New Publii Installation

If you've switched to a new computer and want to restore your site backup to a new Publii installation, you'll have to take a couple of additional steps:

1. Install and open Publii, and create a site; the name isn't important, but you will need access to a site before you can access the Backup and Restore tool. 
2. make sure that you have specified a Backup Location in the Global Settings of Publii. 
3. In the backup directory, create a new folder and give it the same name as the site, but use lower-case only. If your site has spaces, replace them with hyphens e.g. if your site name is My Site, then the folder's name should be my-site.
4. Copy your backup file into the new folder.
5. Now, in Publii, click on Tools in the left-sidebar and open the Backups tool; you will see your backup appear in the list. 
6. Click on the Restore button next to your backup; a dialogue box asking for confirmation will appear. Click the Restore backup button to begin the restore process.
7. Your site is now ready to use!

Deleting Backups

To delete a backup, click on the checkbox to the left of the backup you wish to delete; doing so will cause a red Delete button to appear at the top of the list of backups. Once you've selected all the backups you want to delete, click the Delete button to remove. A confirmation will be displayed; click OK to proceed with the deletion. Remember that once a backup is deleted its gone forever, so only do this if you're sure you won't need the backup in the future.

Custom CSS

This section allows you to insert custom CSS code that can be used to modify or override the existing CSS rules included in the your chosen theme. 

Selecting this tool will open the CSS editor, where you can enter your custom rules. Once you have made your changes, you can either click the Save & Preview button to see how your changes will look on the live site before syncing, or click the Save settings button to confirm changes only with no preview.

Custom HTML

Like the CSS tool, this tool allows you to insert custom HTML into your Publii website. As with the custom CSS editor, after opening the tool you will see a text editor where you can enter your custom code. However, there are also tab buttons to the left of the editor; Head, Body, and Footer. Clicking each of these allows you to insert your HTML code into a specific area of the page, depending on your requirements. Once your changes have been made, you have the option of clicking on the Save & Preview option to save changes and see how they will look on the live site after sync, or just clicking the Save settings button to save changes without a preview.

File Manager

The File Manager tool allows for advanced users to inspect all the files generated for their website, including text files such as .htaccess, or media files that are used in the site posts. Opening the tool will display a list of files generated and uploaded to your site (you must have uploaded the site files at least once for them to appear in the list). From here, you can click on any of the files and it will be opened using your system's default editor e.g. if you use Sublime Text to edit your .html files, clicking on an .html file in the File Manager will automatically open it in Sublime Text for editing. This way, you can easily modify your site's .htaccess or robots.txt as you see fit.

You may also delete existing files by clicking on the checkbox next to the file you want to delete, then clicking the red Delete button that appears at the top of the list of files. For advanced users, you may also manually add a new file by clicking the Add new file button at the top-right of the screen; you will be prompted to name the file (don't forget to include the extension!), and you can then open it for editing by clicking on it. Alternatively, you may also manually add existing files to your site directory by clicking the Upload files button; this will open an explorer window where you can search for and select the file that you want to add to the site directory.

Log Viewer

The Log Viewer tool stores information about your website syncs, which can be helpful when troubleshooting connection or sync issues. The logs will include any sync errors, a connection log for FTP-type protocols, and a list of changed files that were deleted or replaced during the sync. Each sync operation generates a new log file automatically.

When opening the Log Viewer tool, you can click the Select a file to load; selecting one of the generated log files will open the content into the content area underneath the drop-down box for easy viewing.

The Log Viewer tool is also equipped with a Reload Logs button, which allows for easy refreshing and updating of the displayed logs. This feature is particularly useful when working on troubleshooting in real-time and needing access to the most current information. By clicking on the Reload Logs button, users can quickly reload the log files without the need to navigate away from the Log Viewer tool, ensuring they have the latest log entries at their disposal for more efficient issue resolution

Regenerate Thumbnails

Sometimes, after making a large change to a site such as changing the active theme, you might find that there are some issues with the responsive images as the new theme has different thumbnail requirements. In this case you will need to regenerate the thumbnails. This is an automated process accessible by clicking on the Settings option in the left-sidebar and scrolling down the settings page; the Regenerate thumbnails option is found in the Website Maintenance section.

Note that this process may take some time if you have a large number of images on your site, so please be patient. It is recommended that this option is utilized every time a new theme is activated.

WP Importer 

The WP Importer tool provides a simple way to transfer your article and category content from your WordPress website to Publii. A full step-by-step guide to importing WordPress content may be found in the Using the WordPress Importer section of this guide, available via the sidebar. The following options are available in this tool:

The following options are available in this tool:

• Select WXR File - This option defines which WordPress backup file to use.

The next set of options are only available once a WXR file has been chosen:

• Import selected types of posts - Here you can select which type of content will be imported; enable all that apply. Publii can import posts, pages and custom post types from WordPress. Each type will be imported as an individual post in the Publii interface.
• Used Taxonomy for Posts - Defines how posts imported from WordPress will be assigned tags; select whether to associate posts with their WordPress tags, or their WordPress categories (only tags OR categories may be imported, not both).
• Post Authors - Defines which author imported WordPress posts should be assigned to in Publii; can be set to the main Publii author, or author names can be imported also, and their posts assigned to them.
• Content formatting - When this option is enabled HTML paragraph and line break tags will be added automatically to the imported content if they are missing; useful if your WordPress content was formatted using plugins or shortcodes that are not available in Publii.