Anatomy of an Exported Website

When a website owner runs Developer → Export they get back a .zip with one of two shapes. This page describes the structure of those bundles so you can build, host, and continue developing the site without r2ware in the picture.

For the user-facing walkthrough, see Exporting Your Website.

Two bundle shapes

Both shapes ship as <slug>-YYYY-MM-DD-<sha8>.zip — the date is when the export ran and <sha8> is the first eight chars of the source commit. shutil.make_archive archives the contents of the tree, so when you unzip you'll get files in the current directory; create an enclosing folder first if you want one.

Static bundle

A snapshot of the website's most recent live build output. Contents look like a built Jekyll site:

There is no _layouts/, _includes/, _config.yml, Gemfile, or node_modules — everything is already rendered. Serve it with any static file server.

Jekyll source bundle

The full source tree at the export's source SHA, plus generated build-and-deploy plumbing:

This is what you push to GitHub, GitLab, or any git host. Anyone with Ruby installed can clone it and run bundle exec jekyll serve.

The two checkboxes

Only two user choices feed into the bundle:

• Bundle kind — static (built output) vs. Jekyll (source).
• Include media files — when on, the export downloads every CDN-hosted file referenced in the site and bundles them locally under assets/uploads/, rewriting URLs to relative paths. When off, those URLs keep pointing at r2ware's CDN.

That's it. Everything else (Gemfile contents, workflow file, transforms) is automatic.

The generated files

Gemfile (Jekyll bundle only)

The export reads the plugins: key from _config.yml, intersects it with a known-safe allowlist (jekyll-feed, jekyll-sitemap, jekyll-redirect-from, jekyll-seo-tag, jekyll-paginate), and pins each one. Example output:

source "https://rubygems.org"

gem "jekyll", "~> 4.3"
gem "webrick", "~> 1.8"

group :jekyll_plugins do
  gem "jekyll-feed", "~> 0.17"
  gem "jekyll-sitemap", "~> 1.4"
  gem "jekyll-seo-tag", "~> 2.8"
end

If your site uses a plugin not on the allowlist, it's omitted from the Gemfile. The omission is silent in the bundle itself — diff your _config.yml plugins list against the generated Gemfile to spot what was dropped, then add any you need back manually.

.github/workflows/jekyll.yml (Jekyll bundle only)

A standard GitHub Pages-via-Actions workflow:

name: Build and deploy Jekyll site
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

concurrency:
  group: pages
  cancel-in-progress: false

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
        with:
          ruby-version: "3.2"
          bundler-cache: true
      - run: bundle exec jekyll build
        env:
          JEKYLL_ENV: production
      - uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: ./_site

  deploy:
    needs: build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: $
    steps:
      - id: deployment
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

You can edit it freely after export. Common reasons to:

• Switch to deploying somewhere other than GitHub Pages (Netlify, Vercel, S3) — replace the deploy job with the deploy step for your target.
• Add a build matrix for multiple Jekyll versions.
• Add a pre-build step (e.g. compile Tailwind, run image optimization).

Finding what changed

The export doesn't ship a standalone audit file. Instead, each neutralized region gets an HTML comment starting with <!-- r2ware-export: ...:

• Forms — the action attribute is rewritten in place to a Formspree placeholder, and the explanatory comment is appended at the bottom of the file.
• Shop includes and e-sign includes — the entire {% include … %} is replaced by the comment, inline at the original position.
• data-r2ware-shop attributes — silently stripped (no comment).
• _admin.yml — deleted; no marker is left.

Grep the bundle to find every form/shop/e-sign touchpoint:

grep -rn "r2ware-export:" .

Transforms applied during export

For each bundle kind, the export pipeline applies these mechanical transforms. Each one is non-destructive on the r2ware side — only the export tree is modified.

The full pattern list lives in app/sites/export_patterns.py on the platform side — if you need a transform extended for your site's case, that's the file to look at.

Building locally after export

For the Jekyll bundle:

# Once
bundle install

# Each time you want to preview
bundle exec jekyll serve

# To produce the same output GitHub Actions will produce
JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle exec jekyll build

Output lands in _site/.

Pushing to GitHub yourself

The export gives you a zip — it does not push to GitHub for you. You'll do that manually:

# Replace the filename with whatever your export produced:
# <slug>-YYYY-MM-DD-<sha8>.zip
mkdir mysite && cd mysite
unzip ../mysite-2026-05-20-a1b2c3d4.zip

git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit from r2ware export"
git branch -M main

# Create the repo on GitHub first, then:
git remote add origin git@github.com:YOUR-USER/YOUR-REPO.git
git push -u origin main

After that, on GitHub: Settings → Pages → Source: GitHub Actions. The workflow file we included handles the rest.

(A future release will add an optional "push to GitHub from r2ware" mode that does this for you and keeps the platform copy in sync. Until then, manual push is the path.)

Hosting checklists (quick reference)

The full walkthrough for each is in the Exporting Your Website guide. Quick summary:

Customizing what's exported

You can pre-commit your own Gemfile and .github/workflows/jekyll.yml to the r2ware site before exporting — the platform detects existing files at those paths and leaves them alone rather than overwriting. This is the right move if you've customized your build pipeline.

The transform list is fixed in the platform for now (no per-export opt-outs in the UI), but the patterns are all in app/sites/export_patterns.py if a transform misfires on your site's particular setup. File an issue and we'll adjust the pattern.

Related guides

• Exporting Your Website (user guide)
• Git Workflow for Website Editing
• Getting Started