Beginner‘s Guide: How to Restore WordPress from Backup

As a WordPress expert with over 15 years of experience, I can tell you that having a proper WordPress backup and recovery process in place is absolutely essential.

Did you know that WordPress powers over 40% of all websites on the internet? With so many sites relying on WordPress, data loss and unexpected issues are bound to happen.

Proper WordPress backups can save your site and prevent major headaches. This comprehensive guide will teach you how to safely back up your WordPress site and restore it in case disaster strikes.

Whether it‘s accidental deletion, a hacked site, host issues, or something else – this guide has you covered!

Why WordPress Backups Are Vital

According to statistics from Google Trends, searches for "restore WordPress site" have steadily increased over the past 5 years. This shows that more users are encountering issues that require restoring their sites from backup.

Some common scenarios where a WordPress backup becomes essential:

• Accidental Deletions – You, or another site admin, unintentionally deleted key WordPress pages, posts, plugins, themes, or files.

• Malware/Hacking – Your site gets compromised by hackers who infect it with malware and malicious code.

• Hosting Issues – Your web host experiences server failures, data loss, or other issues causing you to lose data.

• Update Disasters – A buggy WordPress update breaks your site‘s functionality and layout.

• Human Errors – An accidental click or configuration change brings your site down.

As you can see, the need to restore from backup can arise unexpectedly at any time. Recent studies found that 1 in 4 small businesses lose critical data each year and over 60% of companies that lose data go bankrupt.

This perfectly illustrates why comprehensive WordPress backups are non-negotiable. But it‘s equally important to know how to properly restore your site from those backups when needed.

This guide will teach you:

• The best practices for creating WordPress backups
• Step-by-step how to restore your WordPress site from different backup types
• Troubleshooting tips for common WordPress restore problems
• How to secure your site after restoring WordPress

Let‘s start with a good foundation – learning how to properly back up your WordPress site.

WordPress Backup Best Practices

Far too many WordPress site owners only think about backups after data loss strikes. Don‘t make this mistake! You should implement automated WordPress backups from day one.

Here are some backup tips I recommend based on my 15+ years of experience:

• Use a dedicated backup plugin – Don‘t just rely on your web host‘s sporadic backups. Use a trusted plugin like UpdraftPlus that gives you control.

• Automate backups – Setting up automated daily or weekly backups ensures you always have a recent restore point.

• Store backups remotely – Keep backup archives in a separate location like cloud storage to protect against host failures.

• Test restores – Validate that your backups actually work by doing a test restore to a staging environment.

• Backup entire site – Don‘t just back up WordPress core – also do the database, plugins, themes, uploads folder etc.

• Limit plugin/theme updates – Avoid automatically updating plugins and themes which can cause compatibility issues.

• Monitor site health – Use a security plugin to detect issues and receive backup alerts.

Taking the time to implement a bulletproof WordPress backup solution will give you tremendous peace of mind. Next, let‘s see how to actually use those backups to restore your site when needed.

Restoring WordPress Using Duplicator Plugin

Duplicator is my personal favorite WordPress backup plugin with over 1 million active installs. It creates complete site archives that are easy to restore.

Here is a step-by-step guide to restoring your WordPress site using Duplicator:

1. First, download a copy of your Duplicator backup archive (.zip file) from your backups location.

2. Using an FTP program like FileZilla, connect to your hosting account and delete all existing WordPress files and folders.

   

3. Reinstall a fresh WordPress installation on your hosting.

4. Log in to your WordPress dashboard and install + activate the Duplicator plugin (if not already active).

5. Go to Duplicator > Imports and click Add New to upload your backup .zip file.

   

6. Duplicator will extract the archive files. Once done extracting, click Continue.

7. On the next screen, set a Recovery Point date under advanced options and click Set. This allows quick restores later.

8. Scroll down and click the Launch Installer button to deploy your backup archive.

9. Select Restore Single Site and click Next to confirm install settings.

10. Click OK in the pop-up to confirm installation. Duplicator will now restore your site files and database.

11. When finished, click Admin Login to go to your WordPress admin. Verify that your site looks and works as expected.

That‘s it! By following these steps you can easily restore your full WordPress site from a Duplicator backup in no time at all. The plugin handles all the heavy lifting for you.

Next, let‘s go over how to restore your site using BackupBuddy.

Restoring WordPress from BackupBuddy

BackupBuddy is a premium WordPress backup plugin from iThemes. While paid, it makes backup management and restoration easy.

Below are simplified steps to restore your WordPress site from a BackupBuddy archive using the Stash storage service:

1. First, log in to your iThemes Stash storage dashboard and download a copy of your BackupBuddy .zip archive.

2. Login to your WordPress site, and go to BackupBuddy → Restore/Migrate to download the importbuddy.php file.

3. Create a password when prompted which will be needed to restore.

4. Connect to your web host via FTP and delete all WordPress files/folders except wp-content/uploads.

5. Upload your BackupBuddy .zip archive and importbuddy.php file to your web server root.

6. Navigate to the URL of importbuddy.php, e.g. yourdomain.com/importbuddy.php.

7. When prompted, enter the ImportBuddy password that you created earlier.

8. Select your BackupBuddy archive and click Next Step.

9. Enter your database details on the next screen. Use a new DB if restoring from a hack.

10. Click Next and wait for the full site restoration to complete.

11. Log back into your WordPress admin to check everything is working properly.

12. Return to ImportBuddy and click Clean up to remove temporary restore files.

BackupBuddy streamlines the entire WordPress restoration process. Its ImportBuddy tool migrates your database and files with ease.

Next, let‘s go over how to manually restore just your WordPress database.

Restoring the WordPress Database Manually

Rather than full site restorations, you may just need to recover your WordPress database from a backup. This can be done by manually importing the SQL file backup.

Here are the steps to restore your database manually:

1. First, login to your web host‘s cPanel and open the phpMyAdmin tool.

2. Click on your existing database name or create a new empty database.

   

3. Select the Import tab.

4. Click Choose File and select your SQL backup file.

5. Scroll down and click the Go button to import the SQL file into your database.

6. Once imported successfully, your WordPress database is fully restored!

7. Login to your WordPress admin, go to Settings > General and make sure the Site URL is set properly.

8. Go to Settings > Permalinks and re-save your permalink structure.

And that‘s it! By importing your WordPress database backup into phpMyAdmin, you can quickly recover your site‘s posts, pages, settings, etc.

Next let‘s look at how to manually restore your WordPress files.

Manually Restoring WordPress Files

In addition to the database, you may need to restore your actual WordPress files. This can be done manually via FTP.

Follow these steps:

1. Using your preferred FTP client, connect to your web host and delete all WordPress files and folders.

   

2. Download a fresh copy of WordPress core files from WordPress.org.

3. Unzip the WordPress files to your computer.

4. Using FTP, upload the new WordPress files to your web server‘s root directory.

5. Optionally upload your existing wp-config.php file to WordPress root (if uncorrupted).

   

6. Update wp-config.php with new database details if needed.

7. Complete WordPress installation as normal by visiting your site URL.

8. Via FTP, upload any other modified files like themes, plugins, uploads folder etc.

9. Test that your WordPress site is fully restored and working again.

By following these FTP steps, you can manually restore your custom WordPress files from backups. It takes more effort but gives you control over the whole process.

Troubleshooting Common WordPress Restore Problems

Sometimes things don‘t go according to plan when restoring a WordPress site. Here are some common errors and fixes:

• White Screen After Restoring – Rename plugins folder to deactivate all plugins. Switch to a default theme. Verify database settings in wp-config.php.

• Site Not Loading – Double check all WordPress files exist on the server. Confirm FTP transfer didn‘t fail. Verify that the database contains WordPress site data.

• Posts/Pages Missing – Your WordPress database was not fully restored. Re-import the full SQL file via phpMyAdmin.

• Media Library Gone – The wp-content/uploads folder was not properly restored. Re-upload your backups of this folder via FTP.

• Wrong Site URL – Login to WordPress admin, go to Settings > General and update the WordPress Address and Site Address to correct values.

Don‘t panic if your restore fails! Methodically review each step above to identify and fix the problem.

Securing Your WordPress Site After Restoration

Once you have successfully restored your WordPress site, it‘s crucial you take steps to lock down site security, especially after a hack.

Here are some tasks I recommend after restoring WordPress:

• Install a security plugin like Wordfence to monitor for malware and future threats.

• Change all WordPress passwords to revoke access from any previous compromises.

• Scan your site with Sucuri SiteCheck or a similar malware scanner to check for lingering infections.

• Review all plugins and themes, remove any that are unused, outdated or vulnerable.

• Update WordPress core along with all plugins and themes to the latest versions.

• Use strong passwords and enable two-factor authentication for all user accounts.

• Limit the number of admin accounts and be selective about granting admin access.

Restoring from a previous backup brings your site back to a prior state. By proactively securing your site, you can prevent future compromises.

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

Being able to properly restore your WordPress site from backup is a crucial skill for any site owner. After reading this guide, you should now be able to:

• Appreciate why comprehensive WordPress backups are absolutely vital.

• Implement solid backup practices like automated offsite backups.

• Restore your full site from plugin archives like Duplicator or BackupBuddy.

• Recover your database manually via phpMyAdmin SQL imports.

• Use FTP to manually restore your WordPress core, plugins, themes and other files.

• Troubleshoot common WordPress restore problems.

• Secure your site after restoring WordPress from backup archives.

While restoring WordPress requires care, nearly any disaster can be recovered from if you have solid backups in place. I hope you use this information to implement bulletproof WordPress backups.

Please let me know if you have any other questions! I‘m happy to help WordPress users get their sites back online after data loss.