Restore WordPress Without phpMyAdmin or FTP

The usual restore advice starts with "download the .sql file and open phpMyAdmin". Here is the version where you stay in your WordPress dashboard, get your site back in a few clicks, and can undo the whole thing if the backup you picked turns out to be the wrong one.

What you'll have when you finish

A site rolled back to a known-good backup, a check that the result is actually right, and a way out of it for the next 24 hours if it is not. You'll also know how to prove a backup is restorable before the day you are relying on it.

Prerequisites: BackupEase 2.3.0 or later, active, with at least one completed backup.
You'll need access to: a WordPress admin account. Nothing else. No database tool, no FTP client.
Time: about 10 minutes of your attention. The restore itself runs on its own and takes as long as your site is large.

The walkthrough

Take a backup of the broken site first
Test the backup you are about to trust
Choose what to put back
Run the restore without touching phpMyAdmin
Check the result, then keep it or undo it

1. Take a backup of the broken site first

This feels wrong, and it is the step people skip. A restore replaces everything created since the backup was taken. If you restore last Tuesday and then discover that today's orders mattered, a backup of the broken site is the only thing that gets them back.

Run one now: BackupEase › Manual Backup, run a Full backup, and wait for it to finish.

If the site is too broken to back up A white screen or a fatal error usually still leaves wp-admin reachable, so try it. If it does not, go straight to the restore: BackupEase keeps the database it replaces and the files it overwrites for 24 hours either way, so you still have a way back. You just have a deadline on it.

2. Test the backup you are about to trust

Before you restore anything, find out whether the backup you picked is actually readable. This takes a minute and changes nothing on your site.

Open the list: BackupEase › Restore and find your backup under Available Backups. The list holds your 30 most recent completed backups.

Press Test: BackupEase reads the whole database backup and imports it into a separate set of temporary tables sitting next to your live ones, inspects the result, then throws the temporary copy away. Your site is untouched throughout.

Look for the result: a successful check reports This backup can be restored. If it reports a problem instead, pick an older backup and test that one before going any further.

Do this monthly, not just in an emergency A backup nobody has ever read is a guess. Testing one recent backup a month tells you whether the whole month's backups are real, and it costs you almost nothing.

3. Choose what to put back

Press Restore on the backup you want and a Confirm Restore card appears, with two boxes ticked. Which you leave ticked depends on what actually broke.

A plugin or theme update broke the site: untick Restore the database and put back the files only. You get working code and keep every order, comment and post from since the backup.

Content was deleted or mangled, the code is fine: untick Restore the files and put back the database only.

You do not know, or the site was hacked: leave both ticked. A full restore is the one that puts the site back exactly as it was.

Files-only restores keep your server settings wp-config.php, .htaccess and .user.ini are never overwritten, because they describe this server rather than your site. Your BackupEase settings, schedules and storage connections survive a restore too, so the plugin does not come back configured the way it was months ago.

4. Run the restore without touching phpMyAdmin

Start it: press Start the restore. The progress card names each phase as it goes: getting ready, downloading the backup if it is in cloud storage, reading the database backup, checking it, restoring your files, and finishing up.

You can close the tab. The restore carries itself forward without your browser, and reopening BackupEase › Restore shows it still running. There is also a Stop and put my site back button if you change your mind partway.

Nothing live changes until near the end The database is imported into temporary tables beside your live ones, so the longest phase, the one a cheap host is most likely to kill, cannot damage anything. The switch happens in a single statement that the database applies all at once. Your old tables are renamed aside rather than deleted, and every file that gets replaced is moved into a rollback folder first. If a restore dies halfway, BackupEase puts both halves back on its own.

Backup in cloud storage? You don't need to download it Pick it in the list and BackupEase fetches it for you in pieces, resuming if a piece fails, which is what lets a very large backup come down on shared hosting. Google Drive works in the free plugin; FTP, SFTP, OneDrive, Dropbox and S3-compatible storage work with BackupEase Pro.

5. Check the result, then keep it or undo it

When it finishes you get Restore Finished and two buttons. Do not press either one yet.

Look at the site first: open the front page, a couple of posts, and the admin area in a private window. If it is a store, open a product and the checkout. You are checking that you restored the backup you meant to, not an older one.

If it is right: press Keep this restore. The old database copy and the rollback folder are cleared away and the restore becomes permanent.

If it is wrong: press Undo the restore. The database is swapped back and the files are put back, ending on Your site is back to how it was before the restore. Then try a different backup.

Undo expires after 24 hours Press nothing and the undo data is cleaned up automatically a day later, at which point the restore is permanent. If you are unsure about a restore, decide within the day. Undo is in the free plugin, not Pro.

Where to go from here

The thing that makes this quick in an emergency is having done it once when nothing was wrong. Run a Test on a recent backup now, and if you have a staging site, do a full restore there so the real one is familiar rather than novel. The Restore documentation covers what happens at each stage, if you want the detail behind the steps.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need Pro to restore a backup?

No. Restore, Test and Undo are all in the free plugin, including restoring a backup held in Google Drive. Pro adds restoring from FTP, SFTP, OneDrive, Dropbox and S3-compatible storage.

Can I restore a backup onto a different domain?

With the free plugin, no. It refuses a backup taken at a different address, names both addresses, and changes nothing. BackupEase Pro 2.1 or newer allows it and rewrites every address stored in the backup as it restores, including the ones buried inside serialized options and metadata, and including the http and www. spellings of the old address that the site never used as its own. The rewrite happens before the swap, so a failure there still leaves your live site alone. If you are moving a whole site to a new server rather than restoring one, Migration is the better tool.

Will I be logged out during the restore?

No. Your login session is carried across when the restored database goes live, so you stay signed in and can watch the run finish.

What if my host kills the restore partway through?

The restore runs in small resumable slices and picks itself back up, so on most hosts it simply takes longer. If it genuinely cannot continue, it reverses what it had done and reports that your site was put back the way it was.

Can I run a backup and a restore at the same time?

No, and BackupEase refuses rather than letting you. They read and write the same files and tables. Wait for whichever is running to finish.

How long does a restore take?

It depends on the size of your site and on the aggressiveness setting in BackupEase › Settings, which paces a restore the same way it paces a backup. A lower setting makes each slice smaller, so the run takes longer but is much more likely to finish on a constrained host.

How to Restore a WordPress Site Without phpMyAdmin or FTP