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Restores happen on bad days — after the broken update, the hack, or the deleted-something-important moment. The good news: an UpdraftPlus restore is a guided, componentized process, not an all-or-nothing gamble. Shot on UpdraftPlus under WordPress 7.0, August 2026.
- Settings → UpdraftPlus Backups, find the backup, click Restore.
- Restore only the broken components — database for content, plugins for a bad update.
- The database rewinds everything to the backup's timestamp — mind recent orders/posts.
- Site fully down? Fresh WordPress + UpdraftPlus + upload the backup, then restore.
On the Backup/Restore tab, "Existing backups" lists each backup with its date and component buttons:
Click Restore on the backup you want (stored remotely? UpdraftPlus fetches it first).
The restore wizard asks which parts to bring back:
Match the selection to the damage:
- A plugin update broke the site → Plugins only.
- Content deleted or mangled → Database only.
- Theme customization disaster → Themes only.
- Hack or total loss → everything.
Click through; UpdraftPlus unpacks and replaces the chosen components, showing a log as it goes. Don't close the tab or navigate away. On success you'll get a confirmation and a prompt to delete the old-directories leftovers — do that after you've confirmed the site works.
Load the homepage, log in, open a recent post, and (on a store) place a test order. If you restored the database, check what's missing between backup time and now — that gap is yours to re-enter.
The calm version of this tutorial takes ten minutes on a sandbox copy of your site. Do it once — restoring for the first time during a real outage is how mistakes compound. We rehearse exactly this with clients in one-on-one sessions.
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