How to Restore a WordPress Site From an UpdraftPlus Backup

If you backed up your WordPress site with the UpdraftPlus plugin, you can restore your files, database, plugins, and themes back to that saved point in a few steps. This is the fix for a bad plugin update, a failed theme change, or cleaning up after your site was compromised.

Restoring overwrites your current site with the backup's content. Any posts, orders, or comments made after the backup date will be lost unless you export them first. If you're not sure how recent your last backup is, check the date and time shown next to each backup entry before you proceed.

Before you restore

• Make sure you have a working backup. In UpdraftPlus, go to Settings > UpdraftPlus Backups and confirm a backup set with today's or a recent date is listed under Existing Backups.
• If your site was hacked, don't restore yet, clean up the cause first or the hack may return. See the related article linked at the end of this page.
• If you can't log in to wp-admin at all, skip to the "If you can't access wp-admin" section below.

Restoring from inside wp-admin

1. Log in to wp-admin and go to Settings > UpdraftPlus Backups.
2. Click the Existing Backups tab to see your saved backup sets, listed by date.
3. Find the backup you want to use and click Restore next to it.
4. Choose which components to restore: Plugins, Themes, Uploads, Database, and Others (this covers most of wp-config.php and other root files). Tick the ones you need, or select all of them for a full restore, then click Next.
5. UpdraftPlus checks the backup files and shows a summary. Click Restore to confirm.
6. Wait for the process to finish. Do not close the browser tab or navigate away while it's running.
7. Once you see the success message, click Return to UpdraftPlus Configuration and check your site to confirm everything looks right.

If you can't access wp-admin

If the restore was triggered by a white screen, a critical error, or a lockout, you'll need to get back into wp-admin first, or restore the backup files manually.

1. Log in to your hosting control panel (cPanel or DirectAdmin) and open File Manager.
2. Find your site's UpdraftPlus backup folder, normally at wp-content/updraft/ inside your site's root directory. This holds the same backup files UpdraftPlus created, even if wp-admin itself is unreachable.
3. If wp-admin is only showing a white screen or a critical error (not a full crash), try disabling the plugin that caused it by renaming its folder inside wp-content/plugins/ through File Manager, this is often enough to get back into wp-admin without a full restore.
4. If wp-admin is completely inaccessible, you'll need a fresh WordPress install pointed at the same database, then use UpdraftPlus's "Restore from an existing backup set that you have moved into UpdraftPlus's working folder" option, found on the Existing Backups tab, after uploading your saved backup files into that same wp-content/updraft/ folder via File Manager or FTP.

After the restore

• Clear your browser cache and reload the site to confirm the content matches the backup you chose.
• Check that your login still works with the credentials from the time of that backup.
• If you restored after a hack, change all your WordPress admin, database, and hosting passwords once the site is confirmed clean.

If you haven't set up UpdraftPlus backups yet, see How to Back Up Your WordPress Site Using a Plugin (UpdraftPlus) to get scheduled backups running before you need one.