Five Minute Fixes: Back Up and Restore Your Site

Accidents happen. And if you ever have any issues, you need to be back up and running as quickly as possible. This is why you should know how to quickly make website backups and then restore at the drop of a hat.

To start, log into your account and go to the Manage Hosting Packages page.

Screenshot of the Account Control Panel's Manage Your Services section with the icon for Manage Hosting Services indicated by a box.

Log into your package by clicking “CP Login”.

Screenshot of a website listing in the Manage Hosting page, with the control panel login link indicated by a box around it.

Once you’re logged in, you can see “Backup/Restore”  under the ‘Web Files’ section of your control panel.

Screenshot of the Web Files section of the website control panel, with the Backup/Restore icon indicated by a box around it.

 On the “Backup/Restore” page, you have two options – back up your site or restore from a previous backup. 

How to back up your website

First, you need to decide what you want to back up. If you’re using a database, I always recommend taking backups of both the files and the database to ensure your site works as expected when it’s restored.

Screenshot of the Create Backup section of the Backup/Restore page, showing the type of website backup you can take.

Your backup will start and be placed in a queue. Once it’s finished, it’ll appear for download just under the “Create Backup” button. You can then download the backup to your computer. 

Screenshot of the Previous Backups section of the Backup/Restore page, showing the completed website backup.

Make sure to keep your website backups in a safe place, such as on your computer, in a third-party cloud storage solution (like Dropbox or Google Drive), or on a storage device, like a portable hard drive.

It’s important that any backups you make are not stored on your hosting package. We do not allow backups to be stored on any of our hosting packages, and they will be deleted.

How to restore your website

When an issue comes up with your site, you can restore your backup on the same page.

Screenshot of the Restore section of the Backups/Restore page, showing the Restore Type, whether or not to to restore databases, and where to upload the website backup.

Here you can:

Delete all the files and restore from the ZIP file
This deletes all the files on your current live website and replaces them with the files from your backup file.  It’s the best option if your whole site has gone down and you’re not sure why.

Recreate missing files only
This goes through your backup file and only puts in the files that are missing from your current live site. This is really handy if you accidentally delete something important on your site.

Uncompress all files into a temporary directory 
This takes all the files in your backup file and puts them into a temporary directory.  You can then check the site before making it live again, and, if you’re happy, move the files manually into position.

To do any of these options, click the “Browse” button and select the backup you want to restore. Hit the “Restore” button, and the ”Status” section will keep you informed on the progress. 

Screenshot of the Previous Restores section of the Backups/Restores page, showing that the website restoration is complete.

Once restored, your site should be good to go! Of course, if you have any issues feel free to raise a support ticket and let us know how we can help. 

We also offer Automatic Backups, an add-on product that takes automatic snapshot website backup every day. You can find it under the “Add-ons” section of your account control panel, and it’s available for one, three, or unlimited websites. And if you use 10%WITHSCOTT at checkout, you can get 10% off your backups!