Preparation tips for restoring your WordPress site

Restoring parts of your WordPress site always comes with its share of risks. We at UpdraftPlus work tirelessly to minimize these, but it’s important to remember that using our tool is essentially a do-it-yourself endeavor. You’re in the driver’s seat, which means you’re also in charge of how it’s used. If you’re not comfortable taking on that responsibility, our Premium Support could be the best option.

If your site and its backups are small—think tens of MBs, not hundreds—and you have direct access to it (i.e., it’s not hidden behind a proxy like CloudFlare or GoDaddy’s “DNS Preview”), then you’re probably good to go. Most hosting services will handle these smaller sites just fine. But if you’re moving to a new URL, keep reading; there’s a bit more to consider.

For those who know their way around a server, manually restoring your site via the shell or FTP is often the quickest, safest route. It bypasses the usual browser timeouts and speeds up the process significantly. We provide full instructions for those who prefer this method, though using UpdraftPlus offers unmatched convenience.

With UpdraftPlus, restorations of plugins, themes, uploads, and even entire sites are atomic—meaning it’s all or nothing. This drastically cuts down the chances of anything going half-way. If you’re using the “more files” add-on for WordPress core files, remember that while the process isn’t fully atomic, it’s still designed to be very low risk.

For the best results, directly access your site if possible. If it’s managed through a proxy service, consider disabling it temporarily during the restoration to avoid any restrictive timeouts that might complicate the process.

When it comes to restoring databases, especially on less robust hosting setups, the size of your site plays a big role in the level of risk involved. If the restoration stops midway, you might end up with a mix of old and new data. Our advice? Tackle large parts of your site in segments. Restore plugins first, themes next, and so on, saving the database for last to minimize disruptions.

If you’re setting up from ground zero without the “More Files” add-on, remember to tweak your wp-config.php to suit your new setup. This step is crucial to ensuring everything runs smoothly post-restoration.

Taking these steps will help ensure that your restoration process is as smooth and safe as possible, keeping surprises to a minimum and your site running smoothly.