Today I’m following on from last week’s screencast which showed you the easiest way to backup your WordPress site. We’re going to look at how to restore your site from such a backup should something nasty happen.
Can’t see the video? Click here.
Highlights from the video:
[0:38] A word of warning
[1:43] Downloading your backed up files from Dropbox
[2:39] The two parts to a thorough WordPress backup
[2:51] Restoring the database, using phpMyAdmin
[5:55] Where to find your .SQL file
[7:52] Restoring your WordPress files, via FTP
[10:04] Checking the site to ensure its back up and running properly
…
Coming next week: I’ll be showing you how to update your WordPress plugins with minimal hair loss. Sign up for email updates in the sidebar or follow us on Twitter to make sure you catch the newness.
Hi Niall:
Not sure if you still check these comments but just in case, here it goes. I’ve been watching your videos and they are extremely useful, clear and informative. Thanks!
I’ve installed this WP backup to Dropbox one on my new site and noticed it backs up two *-backup.sql files: one for core and one for plugins. When restoring, do you need to repeat the process in your video twice, i.e once for each backup file?
Also, I have a website and an add-on domain with my host, which to me are two separate websites. Is it possible that this backup process backed up both databases together? I cant find the backup folder for the add on domain.
I’m starting as a web developer, as I think I once mentioned to you, inspired by your blog so thanks a lot for your help! Hope you don’t mind a little competition
Cheers,
Alex
Hi Alex,
1) Yes, restore both SQL files. I think that’s a recent feature that Dropbox added, splitting the two files like that. But you’ll need to restore them both to get everything back to normal. Just do the SQL restore bit twice though, one for each file.
2) Very unlikely that the Dropbox plugin will back up any other database apart from the one linked to the same WordPress install that the plugin is running on. You need the plugin running on each installation of WordPress to ensure everything’s getting backed up.
3) Competition is all good by me
Cheers!