Manually restore a VaultPress backup

In some situations, a one-click restore isn’t possible. The following guide will walk you through the process of manually downloading your backup and restoring your WordPress site.

Preparing your site’s files for a restore

1. Before you can restore your data, you will need to ensure that WordPress is installed and functioning on your server.
2. Sign in to the VaultPress dashboard and view the Backups section for your site.
3. Backups are ordered by date, with your most recent backups at the top. You can choose which data you want to download, but in most cases, you’ll want to download everything; database, plugins, themes, and uploads. To download your backup, click on the Download button. Depending on the size of your site, it may take some time for VaultPress to prepare your download. When it’s ready, we’ll send you an email with a link.
4. Once you’ve downloaded the compressed backup file (with a file extension .tar.gz) you’ll need to unzip it. In OS X, you can simply double-click on the file. In Windows, you can use an archiving tool such as 7-Zip to extract the backup file.The resulting folder will contain your data, divided into the following sub-folders:/wp-content and /sql. The /wp-content folder contains these sub-folders: /plugins, /themes, /uploads.

Transferring your site contents

1. Your /plugins, /themes, and /uploads folders can be transferred via FTP to the /wp-content/ folders on your WordPress site.

Importing SQL files

1. The /sql folder contains several .sql files, each representing a database table. For example, the wp_posts table will be represented by the /sql/wp_posts.sql file.
2. If you are restoring a single database table, for example “wp_options.sql” , note that depending on your table prefix the table could have a different name, but will always end in the correct table name such as “options.sql” or “posts.sql”.
3. If you’re restoring to an empty database, its often easier to join the .sql files into a single file. In OS X: Launch Terminal.app and run the following command:
   cat *.sql > backup_db.sql
   In Windows: Use the command prompt and run the following command:
   copy /b *.sql newfile.sql
4. You can import your .sql files into your MySQL database a few different ways. The easiest way is to use something like phpMyAdmin, or a desktop tool like Sequel Pro. If you have direct access to MySQL via the command line, you can run the following command:
mysql --user="username" --password="password" --hostname="mysql.yoursite.com" database_name < file_name.sql

5. If you’re manually importing .sql files into your MySQL database using phpMyAdmin, you can find step by step instructions here: https://docs.phpmyadmin.net/en/latest/import_export.html
6. If you’re manually importing .sql files into your MySQL database using Sequel Pro, you can find step by step instructions here: https://sequelpro.com/docs/get-started/faq


Final checks

1. The root folder will contain the following files if they are present on your server:
/.htaccess
/wp-config.php
/robots.txt
/favicon.ico
/wp-content/languages/
/wp-includes/languages/
/apple-touch-icon.png
/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png
/startup.png
/LiveSearchSiteAuth.xml
/BingSiteAuth.xml
/crossdomain.xml
These files can be uploaded directly to your docroot via FTP.

If you’ve changed any of your MySQL information (username, password, host, etc), you’ll need to update your database information in /wp-config.php.

A note about URLs and Domains…

When restoring your site to a new domain, you’ll need to update the siteurl and home values in your wp_options table. You can either edit the SQL (.sql) export file, or import the SQL and edit your database using phpMyAdmin or a desktop tool like Sequel Pro shown below.