Backup UI Settings

[Snichy]

I've designed dozens of UIs over the years and seem to change my UI every other month.

As a result, whenever I change my UI I usually lose whatever my UI looked like before the change. I am finally using a UI I really like but Im still thinking about tweaking it, or testing out some of the complete suites other people come up with, to see if I like them but I dont want to lose my existing UI with all its settings. Can someone tell me how to backup my UI so I can install a new UI and if I dont like it I can just restore the file and get back to how it is now? I've read that I just backup my WTF folder, so is it as simple as copying my WTF folder and keep it somewhere safe, then I can change my UI and simply restore the WTF folder when I want to get back my current UI?

In theory, every time I design a new UI I could back up my existing UIs and have a catalogue of backup files with old UIs I can go back to whenever I feel the need.

Appreciate the advice.

[Deleted]

Backup your WTF and interface folders, they have all the info in them.

[Crudor]

Backing up your whole WTF is always a good idea. But if you only want to fiddle around with one or two addons you can also backup selectively. Every addon can save stuff at two different places inside the WTF folder:

• WTF\Account\Account-name\SavedVariables\Addon-name.lua
• WTF\Account\Account-name\Realm-name\Character-name\SavedVariables\Addon-name.lua

As you can see from the structure there is (or rather there can be) a 'global' file for all you characters on one account, and a file for each character. If you run an addon on 3 different characters you can end up with 4 files.

[Snichy]

So if I just wanted to change the UI for one of my characters (and keep all the others as they are) I backup the folder located:

WTF\Account\Account-name\Realm-name\Character-name

then when I'm finished if I want to revert back to my old UI (pre-backup) I just restore the backed up folder to the same place overwriting the changes? Do I need to backup the interface folder too?

[Bryce]

Just save yourself the hassle and backup the entire Interface/WTF folders. They're quite small anyways even with tons of addons. You should see my backup drive, it's got literally hundreds of copies of old Interface/WTF folders on them and I just add a date after Interface and WTF and go about my business.

[Crudor]

So if I just wanted to change the UI for one of my characters (and keep all the others as they are) I backup the folder located:

WTF\Account\Account-name\Realm-name\Character-name

then when I'm finished if I want to revert back to my old UI (pre-backup) I just restore the backed up folder to the same place overwriting the changes? Do I need to backup the interface folder too?

Depending on the addon you would have to backup both files to make sure, the character specific and the 'global'. Nothing keeps an addon from saving character specific data to the global file. But for any decent addon it should apply that when a character specific file exists, you only need this file. If it doesnt you need the global.

You do not need to backup the interface folder, this only contains the source code of the addons.

[ComputerNerd]

So if I just wanted to change the UI for one of my characters (and keep all the others as they are) I backup the folder located:

WTF\Account\Account-name\Realm-name\Character-name

then when I'm finished if I want to revert back to my old UI (pre-backup) I just restore the backed up folder to the same place overwriting the changes? Do I need to backup the interface folder too?

The interface folder contains the addons themselves, and also graphic replacements like MiirGUI/CleanIcons etc.
Therefore there isn't really the need to back that up.

However some saved variables are not per-character, and so I would back up the lot, not just per-character settings.