Are you looking for effective ways to restore your WordPress site from a backup file?
Everyone in the WordPress community knows the value of regular website backups. However, only a few beginners know how important back files are until their sites are broken.
Once you find your WordPress site broken, your immediate resort is to search for a copy of your site that can be used to recover your work. As long as you have the backup file, you still have a chance to recover your site.
On the other hand, the process for restoring your site from backups is a bit complex for beginners. Don’t worry. Still, this post will help restore your WordPress site from a backup with ease.
Table of Contents
How Does WordPress Backup Work?
From the WordPress backup, you will find all the essential data of your website. These data are categorized into the database and file.
Plugins like UpdraftPlus and BlogVault allow you to take a backup. Alternatively, you can go for your website hosting provider or copy the data manually by yourself. When taking a backup, you also need to consider the time.
For instance, if you took a backup about two weeks ago and wish to restore it, then you need to get your website to what it was two weeks ago. Be aware it is recommended to perform regular, automatic updates to prevent data loss.
Restoring WordPress Site from Web Hosting Provider
One of the best things about web hosting products is that you can take advantage of backup as part of the web hosting package. Mind that if you purchased a managed WordPress hosting plan, you could restore the backup by accessing your account dashboard.
As for the general process, follow the steps below:
- Access the hosting account
- Click on the WordPress site
- Look for the “Backups” option in the menu list
- Look for the “Restore” option inside the backup tab
- Select the backup copy you wish to restore and proceed
Restoring WordPress Site Using A Backup Plugin
Let’s take the BlogVault as an example.
In case you are new to this backup plugin, the first thing to do is to create an account. After that, you need to install BlogVault on your WordPress site. Next is to add your site to the dashboard. Wait for a few minutes to let the plugin automatically sync your WordPress site and take the backup.
After having a backup, proceed to the restoring process below:
- Access the BlogVault dashboard
- Select your WordPress site
- Look for the “Restore” option under backups and click on it
- Enter the FTP credentials
- Select your WordPress site’s name and proceed
- From the drop down menu, select the backup version you wish to restore
- You will see advanced options such as a selective store, change of DNS server location, and HTTP authentication
- If none of the advanced options apply to you, skip the process and proceed to restore
Restoring WordPress Site Using Manual Methods
While the manual restoration of your site is more complex, you can choose from several methods. These include:
- Using FTP
First, you need to delete all your existing WordPress directories and file—login to the cPanel of your web hosting provider. Under the files section, click the “File Manager” icon. Select the Web root as your directory. Once the File Manager interface opened in a new browser tab, select all the files and ensure to delete them.
Using an FTP client, connect to your site. Select all the files in your WordPress root directory and delete them. After that, download a fresh WordPress copy from the WordPress.org. Next is to extract it to a hard disk.
Furthermore, launch the FTP client and upload all the WordPress files to the server. Download the wp-config.php file from the backup. Save the file, and then make sure to upload it back to your site. After that, upload other files from the backup. Visit your site to know if everything is working fine.
- Using phpMyAdmin
If you prefer using phpMyAdmin, you have two options for the restoration process. You can either empty the existing database or create a new database. Before performing any of the two options, make sure to change your MySQL username and password.
In case you choose to create a new database, you need to login to the cPanel of your web hosting account. After that, click the “MySQL Databases” icon. Provide a name for the database before clicking the “Create Database” button.
Create a MYSQL user account. After that, add it to the MySQL database. The moment the new database is ready, you can then use it for restoring your site.
Return to the cPanel dashboard, then click the “phpMyAdmin” icon. Next is to click the new database name. Click the button, “Import” and select the button, “Choose File.” Select the files you wish to restore. Then, click the “On” button to continue. After that, phpMyAdmin will start uploading the backup and at that point, import it in the database.
- Using cPanel
To restore your site using cPanel, the first thing to do is to log in to the cPanel account. Click the “Backup” icon.
Go to the backups page and select the option, “Restore a MySQL database backup.” Click the “Choose File” button and then choose the backup file you want to restore from the hard disk. After that, click the “Upload” button.
Conclusion
With the above methods, you can successfully restore your WordPress website. Once restored, it’s a nice idea to improve your site security. One of the best ways to do that is by having a regular backup with the help of WordPress backup plugins. You can also try changing your WordPress password or installing a website firewall.
Finding your WordPress site broken can be a devastating scene. Fortunately, you can restore it with the help of backups. We hope that this post helped you a lot.
