Do you need to restore WordPress from a backup file?
Backups help you restore your website in case something goes wrong. However, restoring WordPress from a backup file is not easy for beginners

In this article, we will show you how to easily restore WordPress from a backup step by step

 Understanding Backups and Restoring WordPress
There are different ways to create backups for your WordPress site. The best way to create a backup is by using a WordPress backup plugin

Alternatively, you can also create a manual backup of your WordPress database and download your WordPress files using an FTP client

Restoring WordPress from backups depends entirely on how you created the backup. For example, backups created using BackupBuddy or UpdraftPlus can be restored by using the same plugin. Similarly, manual backups need to be manually restored

A lot of WordPress users don’t backup their entire websites. Instead, they only backup their WordPress theme, uploads directory, and their WordPress database. This reduces their backup size but increases the steps needed to restore the site

No matter how you create your backup, the basic steps are the same

Let’s take a look at how to restore your WordPress site from backup. Since we’re covering different restore methods, please skip to the section that applies to you

- Restoring WordPress using UpdraftPlus Backup
- Restoring WordPress from BackupBuddy Backup File
- Restoring WordPress Database from Backup using phpMyAdmin
- Restoring WordPress Database Backup using cPanel
- Manually Restoring WordPress Files using FTP
- Troubleshooting WordPress Backup Restore Issues
- Things to Do After Restoring your WordPress Site
- Understanding Backups and Restoring WordPress
- Restoring WordPress using UpdraftPlus Backup
- Restoring WordPress from BackupBuddy Backup File
- Restoring WordPress Database from Backup using phpMyAdmin
- Restoring WordPress Database Backup using cPanel
- Manually Restoring WordPress Files using FTP
- Troubleshooting WordPress Backup Restore Issues
- Things to Do After Restoring your WordPress Site
**Note This guide is about restoring a WordPress site from a backup. If you are trying to move your website to a new domain, then you should check out our guide on moving WordPress to a new domain without losing SEO

If you are trying to move from localhost to a live web hosting account, then follow this guide on how to move WordPress from a local server to a live site


 Restoring WordPress using UpdraftPlus Backup
UpdraftPlus is another popular WordPress backup plugin. It allows you to easily backup and restore your WordPress site

First, you need to make sure that you have a complete backup of your WordPress site created by UpdraftPlus. Next, you need to download the backup files to your computer

If your backups are stored by UpdraftPlus on a remote storage location like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc, then you can download your backup files from those locations to your computer

Next, you need to connect to an FTP client and delete all WordPress files. After that, you need to install WordPress again and log in to your website

You will need to install and activate the UpdraftPlus plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin

Upon activation, visit the
**Settings » UpdraftPlus Backups** page from your WordPress dashboard and click the Restore button

Next, you need to click on the ‘Upload backup files’ link

After that, simply upload the backup files you downloaded earlier

Once your backup files are uploaded, UpdraftPlus will scan those files and will show them on the backups page

You will need to click on the ‘Restore’ button to proceed

This will bring up a popup where you need to click on the restore button again to continue

Make sure that all available backup files such as plugins, databases, themes, and others are selected

UpdraftPlus will now start extracting and restoring data from those files

Upon completion, you will be redirected to the success page

That’s all, you have successfully restored your WordPress site from a UpdraftPlus backup

 Restoring WordPress from BackupBuddy Backup File
BackupBuddy is a popular premium WordPress backup plugin. If you used BackupBuddy to create backups, then this section is for you

BackupBuddy offers a very convenient way to restore WordPress from a backup. You need to login to your WordPress website and go to
**BackupBuddy » Restore/Migrate** page

You will need to download a copy of
importbuddy.php file. In the process, you will be asked to provide a password for ImportBuddy. This password will be used when you restore your website

Next, you need to download a copy of your backup if you haven’t already done so. You can download it from
**BackupBuddy » Backups** or the destination that you used to store your backups

Once you have the backup zip file and importbuddy.php stored on your computer, connect to your website using FTP


If you have a complete backup of your website, then delete all files and folders from your server

However, if you have a partial backup, then you need to first download the files that you haven’t backed up. Once you are sure that you have everything backed up, proceed to delete all files and folders from your website’s root directory

Next, you need to upload your BackupBuddy backup and importbuddy.php files to your website’s root folder

Once both files are uploaded to the server, visit importbuddy.php in your web browser. It is in your website’s root directory, so its URL will be something like:
httpwww.example.com/importbuddy.php
ImportBuddy will now ask for the password that you created when you downloaded ImportBuddy

On the next screen, ImportBuddy will display the backup file you uploaded. In case you did not upload your backup file using FTP, then you can click on the upload tab to upload the backup file now

If you have your backups stored on iTheme’s Stash storage service, then you can connect to it by clicking on stash tab now. Once you have selected your database, click on Next Step to continue

ImportBuddy will unzip your backup file and show you a success message when it has extracted the files. Click on the next step button to continue

On the next screen, ImportBuddy will ask you to provide the site URL and database information

If you are restoring a hacked WordPress website or trying to remove malware, then you do not want to use your old database

You can either drop tables from your old database using phpMyAdmin, or create a new database using cPanel. Once you are done creating a new database or emptying the old one, provide your database details

On the other hand, if you are sure your site wasn’t hacked, then you can use the same old database details

Click on the next button to continue, and ImportBuddy will now test your database settings and import your data. Once it is done, click the next step to continue

Now ImportBuddy will update your site URLs, paths, etc. After that, you will be asked to test your site. If everything is working fine, then you have successfully restored your website

On the ImportBuddy page, click the ‘Clean up and remove temporary files’ button. This will delete temporary data in database and files created during restoration

 Restoring WordPress Database from Backup using phpMyAdmin

When restoring a manually created backup, you may come across two possible choices. You can either create a new database and import your backup into it, or you can empty your existing database and import the backup

If you are cleaning a hacked WordPress website, then it is very important to change your MySQL username and password before creating a new database or importing it into an existing database

To create a new database, login to the cPanel dashboard of your WordPress hosting account and click on the MySQL Databases icon

Next, you will be asked to provide a name for your database

Once that’s done, click the ‘Create Database’ button

After creating the new database, you need a MySQL user associated with that new database

Simply scroll down to the MySQL users section and add a new user

Next, you need to add this user to the MySQL database

Scroll down to the ‘Add user to database’ section and select the user along with the database from the dropdown menus and then click on the add button

Now your new database is ready. You can use it to restore your WordPress database backup

Head over to the cPanel dashboard again and then click on the phpMyAdmin icon

Next, you need to click on your new database name

After that, click on the ‘Import’ button

Simply click on the ‘choose file’ button to select your WordPress database backup file and then click on the go button at the bottom of the page to continue

PhpMyAdmin will now upload your backup and import it into your database. You will see a success message upon completion

That’s all. You have successfully imported your WordPress database. Now the next step is to install WordPress using your new database. If you have already installed WordPress, then add your new database settings to your wp-config.php file, and you will be good to go

 Restoring WordPress Database Backup using cPanel
If you manually created a WordPress database backup using the cPanel on your shared hosting, then you can also restore that database using cPanel

Log into your cPanel account and under the files section click on Backup

On the backups page, scroll down to ‘Restore a MySQL database backup’

Next, click on the choose file button and select the backup file from your hard disk. Once done, click on the upload button

 Manually Restoring WordPress Files using FTP
If you are restoring WordPress to clean up a hacked site, then you first need to delete all existing WordPress files and directories

Only do this if your backup is up to date, and you have everything customized, changed, or uploaded on your website

If you have all your uploads and customizations, then you can safely delete everything on your website using Cpanel (way faster) or using FTP

To delete all files from your website, login to the cPanel of your hosting / VPS hosting. Then, under the files section, click the file manager icon

Go ahead and choose Webroot as your directory and proceed. The file manager interface will now open in a new browser tab. You will need to select all WordPress files and delete them. This way is much faster

You can also delete files using FTP, but it’s slower. Simply connect to your website using an FTP client and select all files in your WordPress root directory to delete them

Next, you need to download a fresh copy of WordPress from WordPress.org and extract it to your hard disk

Launch your FTP client and then upload all WordPress files to your server

Once you have uploaded WordPress files, you can upload a wp-config.php file from your backup (only if you are sure that it is clean and not compromised)

Alternatively, you can rename wp-config-sample.php file in your freshly uploaded WordPress files to wp-config.php file. After that, you will need to edit wp-config.php file and enter your database information

Don’t forget to save the file and upload it back to your website

Next, you need to upload other files from your backup. We will recommend that you only upload your images in the
wp-content/uploads directory

Once you have uploaded these, visit your website to check that everything is working fine

Next, you need to login to your WordPress admin area and start installing plugins you had on your site

Now you can move on to install your theme. If you had customized your WordPress theme or were using a child theme, then you can restore it from backup. However, make sure that those files are clean

Lastly, go to
**Settings » Permalinks** and adjust permalinks settings to match your site and then update permalinks

 Troubleshooting WordPress Backup Restore Issues
There are some common problems that you may come across when restoring your WordPress website

We have separate guides for each of them

- Error establishing a database connection
-Screen of Death
- Internal Server Error
- Login Page Redirect or Refresh issue
- Single Posts returning 404 Error
 Things to Do After Restoring your WordPress Site
Once you have successfully restored your website, we strongly recommend that you improve your website security

If you haven’t done so already, please make sure that you have a regular WordPress backup with one of these WordPress backup plugins


To secure your website, we will recommend that you immediately change your WordPress password. If you are running a multi-user website, then ask all users to update their passwords immediately

You can also install a website firewall. At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri to monitor and strengthen the security of our website. It monitors for security threats, and they also offer malware removal service with its subscription plans. See how Sucuri helped us block 450,000 attacks in 3 months

We hope this article helped you learn how to restore WordPress from backup. You may also want to see our ultimate step-by-step WordPress security guide for beginners and how to get a free email domain

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