How to restore a WordPress backup?

How you restore a WordPress backup depends on how you made your backup.

Backing up your site is not available natively in WordPress, so you need to use a third-party tool (UpdraftPlus for example) and back up your site manually via FTP.

Depending on the type of backup you chose, follow the corresponding procedure below.

⚠️ Warning: to be able to restore your site, you need to have an earlier version of it. If you haven’t backed it up, write to your host, who probably has one or several.

Restoring your site with UpdraftPlus only takes a few seconds. To do so:

• Go to your WordPress back office under “Settings” > “UpdraftPlus Backups”
• Go to the “Existing backups” section
• Find the backup you want by looking at the date on the left, and click the “Restore” button on the right
• Tick all the boxes under “components to restore” and click “Next”
• Click “Select all” then “Restore”

All you have to do is wait for the restoration to finish until you receive a notification.

To go further, you can consult the official WordPress guide to backups (in English).

From cPanel, restoring is also quite quick:

• Log in to your server through cPanel.
• In the search bar, type: « JetBackup » and click on it.
• Click the « Restore & Download » icon.
• Click on the version you want to restore.
• Scroll all the way down and click « Restore ».

Wait for it to finish, it can take several minutes depending on your site.

The manual restoration is not the most obvious or the fastest technically, but it lets you keep a certain amount of control.

• Log in to your server over SFTP
• Retrieve your site’s backup on your computer and upload it to your site’s folder
• In phpMyAdmin, select the database concerned and click « Import » by choosing your database.

If you have difficulties with your database or other FTP operations, contact me.

The exact way to restore your site to an earlier version via another plugin will depend on the one you choose.

In general, you will find this option in a tab called « Restoration » or « Restore ».