Problems don’t always come with warnings. That’s why you must be prepared for them beforehand. Today, around 50% of websites use WordPress as their Content Management System (CMS). Although these websites are considered safe, you never know when some loophole occurs that gives access to hackers to get control of your WordPress website.
While managing your WordPress website, you need to be aware of how to restore the backup manually. So that in the case that your website gets hacked, you are knowledgable about how to restore your WordPress backup without any extra effort. If all things go according to the plan, you will not even have to hire a developer for restoring your WordPress website.
In this article, we will discuss how to restore WordPress from a backup manually. This tutorial will help you restore WordPress full backup data even if you accidentally remove some of it. It will also be helpful when you are migrating your website from one hosting solution to the next.
Most people prefer to use UpdraftPlus for backing up their website data. There are three more backup plugins that you can use for your website security, as you can see above.
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Restore WordPress Website Backup Manually
Here is how to restore a WordPress website backup. We will be using two processes to manually backup the WordPress website from any location.
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Using Plugins to Restore WordPress Website
We will be using UpdraftPlus WordPress backups and restore plugin for this tutorial. Although there are many other WordPress site backup plugins available. We have decided to use Updraft because it is relatively easy to use. Moreover, it can automatically backup user data to third-party storage drives, including Dropbox, Google Drive, and many more.
So, let’s get started.
You will first have to install the UpdraftPlus WordPress plugin and create a backup on the third party location. For the tutorial, we will assume that you already have a backup available that you would want to restore.
If you are not sure how to backup data using the Updraft Plus WordPress backup plugin, then read this tutorial.
Once you have the data available at a third-party location, download it on your system. In our case, we have the data available on Google Drive.
First of all go to WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Installed Plugins > UpdraftPlus WordPress Plugin.
Now click on the ‘Restore’ button to upload a backup to your website.
Once you upload the backup, it will show up in the ‘Existing Backup’ folder of your WordPress website. We will assume that currently, there is no backup available. Now, when you add a backup, it will show up in the existing backup folder.
As you can see, we have a backup available. This is the same backup that we backed up to a third party using the UpdraftPlus plugin. Now it is time to restore the backup by clicking on the ‘Restore’ button.
Sounds simple, right? That’s how you can quickly restore a WordPress backup manually without any problem.
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Restore WordPress Website Without Plugin
Now, we will use the WordPress official method available to restore a backup to the WordPress website.
Again go to WordPress dashboard > Tools > Exports.
You need to export all the WordPress data to a third-party storage unit like Google Drive to keep your data safe.
We will assume that you now have to restore all the data on your WordPress website. This can be because of many reasons, and we will discuss them below.
To restore WordPress backup data again go to WordPress dashboard > Tools > Imports > WordPress importer.
There are many options available; we will be using WordPress because we exported the data from our previous WordPress installation.
Click on ‘Choose File’ to upload the zipped file to WordPress. When you have the file selected, the ‘Upload file and import’ option will get highlighted.
Now press the ‘Upload file and import’ option to restore WordPress backup on your website. The website will take a few seconds to import files, media, and database. Once done, it will show that the import was successful.
If there is an error in importing data back to the WordPress website, it will show that error message and that the import was unsuccessful.
Why Is It Important to Backup WordPress Data?
- You never know when someone will hack your website
- Your hosting solution provider can remove your website from the shared server without previous warning
- Your website can get strangled in an issue that can delete most of its crucial data
- A disgruntled employee can take revenge by removing some data from your website
- You can accidentally delete some data from your website if you have admin access
There can be plenty of other reasons, however, if you want to avoid all these WordPress issues, the best solution available to you is to backup your WordPress website data regularly. It will ensure that you can take your website backup once there is an unfortunate event.
We hope that these two methods of restoring WordPress website data will help you in keeping your website in the best condition. Otherwise, you can also opt for professional WordPress maintenance providers for your website that will help you focus more on your business and leave the hassle of backing up, restoring and all amenities involved in regularly maintaining your site for the maintenance providers.
Remember that backing up your WordPress website is essential to its long-term success. So, always backup your data whenever you upload something to the site, better to be safe than sorry 🙂
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