How To Restore WordPress Data

Learn how to restore your WordPress database data, settings, and configurations in this step-by-step tutorial.

How To Restore Your WordPress DataThis tutorial is part of our WordPress Management tutorial series. In this tutorial, you will learn how to restore your WordPress database data, settings, and configurations.

Important

We recommend creating a system to keep your WordPress plugins, installation updates, themes, and data backups organized for easy access and retrieval and setting up an offsite data backup storage system in case you ever need to restore your WordPress data or reinstall your site.

To learn more about creating an organized system for performing WordPress maintenance, see the tutorial below:

To learn how to set up an offsite data backup storage system, see the tutorial below:

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How To Restore WordPress Data

Restoring your WordPress database data, settings, and configurations is useful if:

  • Your database becomes corrupted and you need to re-import your data to fix any issues or errors encountered during upgrades, or installations of new plugins, WordPress versions, etc.,
  • You need to completely reinstall your site.

How To Restore Your WordPress Site Data: Step-By-Step Tutorial

Log into your web hosting control panel, then locate and click on phpMyAdmin

This takes you into the main ‘phpMyAdmin’ section …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

Click on the MySQL database associated with your WordPress site …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

Your database details are loaded into the screen …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

If you are reimporting data into an existing database, skip the section below and go to “Reimporting Data Into An Existing Database” to continue with the tutorial …

Reimporting Data Into A New Database

If you are reimporting data into a new database (see Reinstalling Your WordPress Site), your database will only show the core WordPress installation tables …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

Click on Import

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

Skip the section below and go to the section called Importing Your Database Backup to continue with this tutorial …

Reimporting Data Into An Existing Database

If you plan to re-import data into an existing database to correct an issue or error with a recent installation or upgrade, it is generally a good idea to first delete all of the existing database content and do a clean re-import.

To delete all of your existing database data, click on Check All below the tables, then select ‘Drop’ from the ‘with selected:’ drop-down menu …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

A screen will appear asking you to confirm whether you really want to drop all tables in your database. Click Yes to proceed …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

After a few moments your query will be completed and a notification message will appear on your screen informing you that “Your SQL query has been executed successfully” …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

warning

Note: If your SQL queries DO NOT execute successfully, there may be an issue with your server settings. Please contact your hosting provider for support.

If your “Drop Table” query has been executed successfully, you will see a message informing you that you have no tables in your database. Click the Import tab in the menu to proceed …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

Importing Your Database Backup

A screen appears asking you to locate the database file that contains the data you would like to import from a previous backup. Click on Browse

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

Locate and select the SQL file on your hard drive, then click Open to proceed …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

Useful Tip

Tip: Make sure your “Files of type:” setting is set to “All Files” when searching for files with extensions such as .php, .html, .sql, etc …

Once you have selected the file to be imported, leave all settings as they are and click Go

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

The file containing your data will begin uploading. Depending on the size of your database, this could take a few minutes …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

A message like the one shown in the example below will appear informing you that your file has been imported successfully …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

If you get an error like the one shown in the example below, try deleting all of your database tables and reinstalling your SQL data into an empty database (see the previous section for instructions on how to delete existing database content) …

Restoring Your WordPress Site Data

Your data should be fully restored. Open your web browser and visit your site, then log into your WordPress site admin to make sure that everything looks fine and is working as it should.

WordPress Installation

Next Step:

Now that you know how to restore your database settings and site configurations, the next step is to learn how to reinstall your WordPress site in case something causes your site to become irretrievably corrupted.

To learn how to reinstall your WordPress site, see the tutorial below:

How To Restore WordPress Data

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Originally published as How To Restore WordPress Data.