Your Backdrop site day to day

Running a Backdrop site on BOA feels like running a Drupal 7 site with the sharp edges filed off. This page covers the everyday jobs: the two command-line tools, where Backdrop keeps its configuration, and the things you never have to set up because they're already done.

As everywhere in this guide, the shell examples assume you're logged in as o1.ftp (your number may differ — the .ftp part is what counts); see Connecting to your account.

bee — Backdrop's own CLI

bee is Backdrop's native command-line tool, and it's already installed and on your path — no setup needed. It follows the same command-line PHP choice as drush and composer: your cli.info file and the instant phpNN.info markers, described in PHP version, steer bee too. One guard on top: Backdrop needs a modern PHP, so if your account's choice is older than 7.4, bee alone runs on the newest modern version installed while the other tools honour your choice exactly. From your site's directory on the platform, or with the --root and --url options, the everyday jobs look like this:

TXT

bee status
bee cache-clear all
bee pm-list
bee db-export

A few notes:

bee cache-clear all clears everything, including the Valkey object cache your site uses automatically.
bee db-export gives you an on-demand database dump you can download.
A handful of destructive verbs (database import and drop, fresh site install, eval-style commands) are reserved for the control panel and administrative identities — if bee politely refuses a verb, that's why. Restores always go through the panel's Restore task, which is backed by a proper backup trail.

drush works too

Your Backdrop sites also answer to the system drush (Drush 8), with a per-site alias exactly like your Drupal sites — run drush aliases to see them. The familiar commands behave as they do on Drupal 7:

TXT

drush @example.com status
drush @example.com cc all
drush @example.com sql-dump

Use whichever tool you're comfortable with; they are two doors into the same site.

Where Backdrop keeps its configuration

Unlike Drupal 7, Backdrop stores site configuration (content types, views, settings) as JSON files, not only in the database. On BOA those files live inside your site's private directory, under private/config within the site's own folder.

Three things follow from that, and only the last one needs you:

The config directory is part of the site and rides along with every backup and clone automatically.
The web server is deliberately blocked from serving those files to visitors.
Leave the directory and its permissions alone. Backdrop writes to it during normal operation — that's by design, not a misconfiguration — and tightening it "for security" breaks the site's admin screens.

Already handled for you

Cron. The panel triggers Backdrop's secure, key-protected web cron on schedule. Don't add a crontab entry of your own and don't worry about the cron key — it's managed for you and kept in sync by the panel's Verify task.
Caching. Every Backdrop platform ships the Valkey/Redis object cache module; your site uses it automatically when the cache server is up and falls back to the database cache seamlessly when it isn't. There is nothing to enable.
Backups. The panel's Backup and Restore tasks cover the database, your files and the config directory together, as one consistent snapshot.

When something looks off

The first two moves are the same as for any site here: run the site's Verify task from the panel, and check When something's wrong. Backdrop sites share the whole BOA toolchain, so the general troubleshooting pages apply unchanged.