The Backup Buddy Plugin How to Use it to Restore Your Blog

Last updated on August 14th, 2018 at 09:41 am

Have you ever been in a situation where you were wondering, how do I migrate my website to another hosting account? Maybe your site got hacked and you had to pay to have it restored? If so then you will definitely want to read or watch this Backup Buddy tutorial.

Let me tell you a quick story…

You wake up one morning and you turn on your computer to start working on your website. You’ve been slaving away at the computer for the past five months, your neck and back have started to hurt.

But hey that doesn’t bother you that much, after all, you’ve now started seeing an incline in your traffic stats. So it doesn’t bother you that your neck and back have started to hurt, after all your hard work is starting to pay off.

You’re excited, heck you even made your first affiliate sale last week. You’re pumped to start working on your next blog post.

But your heart sinks the minute you go to your WordPress dashboard to log in. You notice that your site is redirecting to another site…and it’s not your website.

Crap what do you do now? Well you have three options when it comes to restoring your website.

Option #1

Contact your hosting company and find out if you have any type of insurance for your website. I’ve personally used the WP Engine malware removal service on a client’s website. Whenever you host a blog with them, you can rest assured they will remove any malware your site gets affected with. This is who I host my site with.

They really are a great hosting company, the downside is that they are kind of pricey for someone starting a brand new website.

Siteground (this is who I use) offers a HackAlert service. I do not use it, so I can’t tell you whether or not it is worth paying for it. Instead, I take care of my own security measures. If you haven’t read about some of the security measures I take when I install my sites, read this.

Option #2

I’ve never personally used this service, but I have read good reviews on them. They promise to clean and protect your websites. Be prepared to pay for this service as it doesn’t come cheap.

Option #3

Get your own backup plan in place and use this tutorial to help you get your site back online. It’s easy to set up automated backups so you can focus on growing your blog.

Don’t want to read and prefer video instead, well watch this iThemes BackupBuddy tutorial video and watch me restore my site with the plugin.

Use this WordPress plugin to take care of your own site. Yes I know that it is a paid plugin and if you are new, you may not want to pay for a plugin that you may or may not use.

Maybe later, I will create a post on all the different free backup plugins you can use…can’t make any promises though.

This plugin does so much more than just restoring your website. Read more about what it can do for your business, this tutorial just covers the restoration of a website.

Think of it like this. You invest in a 27 inch iMac computer and the salesperson sells you the Apple Care insurance. While you don’t know if you will ever use it, but it brings you peace of mind in case anything ever happens to your computer.

So ask yourself do you want the peace of mind knowing that if anything happens to your website, you will have a backup that you can quickly restore in 5 minutes or less?

If so then let’s get started on this tutorial. If not, then I hope you never have to worry about getting hacked or needing a backup.

Backup Buddy Tutorial

Before you can restore your website, you first have to create a backup first. Once you have your backup, it’s time to log into your cPanel account.

Make sure you’re inside of the public_html file and then choose the site that you will be restoring. For this purpose and every demo, I will be using my subdomain walkthrough.

You folder should be empty, now we want to upload the Backup Buddy zipped file along with the importbuddy.php file.

As soon as you upload those files, they will start uploading. It shouldn’t take long, unless of course your have a bigger site. In the tutorial video above, I mention that this plugin is great for smaller sites, once your site becomes very large, you may want to consider a different option.

I’ve recently noticed some issues with backing up WordPress when the site is extremely large.

We’re not going to sit there and wait for it to finish uploading.

We are going to move to the next step, which is creating a database…so let’s go.

Head on back to your cPanel dashboard and find the MYSQUL databases and click on it.

Okay now let’s create the database.

You can create anything you want, this is how I create mine in case you have never created a database and need to know how.

Once your database is created it’s time to restore the actual website. If you’ve been following along, then you should now have the WordPress Backup and importbuddy.php file uploaded to your server.

You should also have your database created, now we have to connect the database with the restoration file.

So let’s go

So open a new browser and type in http://yourdomain.com/importbuddy.php

Make sure that you are restoring the file inside of the correct domain folder. If you have a subdomain, you want to make sure you’re restoring the site inside of the subdomain or subdirectory file.

Since I have mine setup on a subdomain, mine will look like this.

If you have typed in the correct information, you will see this.

Enter your password that you created when you setup the actual plugin. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you need to read the actual setup process.

Once you enter your password, click on Authenticate.

Select Backup to Restore

This screen just shows you the file name of the backup that is going to be restored. If everything is okay on this website, then just click on restore backup.

Ignore the advanced options.

Database Settings

You will notice the pink box at the top, chances are you don’t see that on your computer. Watch this video, as I explain why I have that inside of my backup.

On this page we are connecting the database to the backup plugin. In order for the site to be restored, we have to connect the database.

DB Server: click on the little arrow over and or type in localhost in the space.

Database Name: enter the database name that you created when you setup your database.

User: enter your database user you created.

Password: enter your password.

Prefix: enter your database prefix.

That’s pretty easy wasn’t it? Now you should see this.

Old URL: This is the URL of the old site or where the site the backup was created on.

New URL: this is the URL of the site that the backup is going to be restored on.

Click next step

Verify site & finish

Okay as you can see it says that the import was successful. So the first thing you want to do is click on the URL and visit the restored site to ensure everything was successful.

I like to log into the site to ensure that everything from the old site was restored successfully.

When you have checked the site thoroughly, it’s time to finish the cleanup.

This process will remove the zipped files and importbuddy.php file from your server.

If you ever do get hacked, your WordPress backup files will be on your server. This means that they will have your backed up website.

So please don’t close out the restoration window until you see this.

So there you have it, that is how you restore a website using the backupbuddy plugin.There are tons of different WordPress plugins you can use to keep your blog safe. Regardless of which one you choose, the most important thing to take away is you need to take the time to start your backup scheduling for your money site.

I hope this tutorial was helpful. If you would rather watch a step by step video, scroll backup to the top and watch the tutorial…you can watch me restore my site live.

If you need a checklist of what to do once you start your WordPress blog, I’ve got you covered. You can mark off all the important tasks once you get them completed.

By the way, I just created my first video on my YouTube channel. On this channel, I will be recording WordPress tutorials that you will love and will be extremely helpful.

If you haven’t visited it yet, then head on over there right now.

Pro Tip: Whenever you are working with your WordPress themes and plugin folders you always want to make sure that you have a current backup on file. You never know when something can go wrong.

FAQ

How Do I Know if My Backup Worked?

Whenever you create a backup with the Plugin, they will send you an email notification letting you know if there were any errors of not.

Where Do I Store My Backup Profiles?

Right out of the gate the backup of your WordPress blog is stored on your hosting account, unless you set up a remote destination inside the dashboard of your blog. I personally use Amazon S3 to store all my backups.

You can store your backups on:

Dropbox Google Drive
Amazon S3
Stash Storage

I personally wouldn’t recommend using the Backupbuddy Stash for your backups.

They give you some 1 GB of free space, but after that you’ll be required to pay a monthly fee. (I have no clue how much you’ll have to pay)

What Is The Difference Between A Complete Backup and Database Only?

A complete backup will backup your entire WordPress site, including your themes and plugin folders. The WordPress database backup will only backup your database.

Once you run a complete backup and have it on file, you can set the WordPress backup plugin to only backup your database. If you make any changes to your theme or plugins, you’ll want to run a complete backup.

How Is The Backup Buddy Support?

When you purchase the plugin from iThemes, you get one year support from them. Personally, I’ve only contacted them a few times. They always got back with me so I don’t have any complaints about their support.

What Other Plugins Can I Use?

As a WordPress user, there are many options when it comes to backup your WordPress site. Some of the most popular are:

Updraft Plus
VaultPress
BlogVault

At the time of this writing, I moved to BlogVault and I couldn’t be happier. If you don’t want to spend any money on your backups, I recommend getting started with the Updraft free version.

I’ve heard a lot of people say they use and love it. At one point I was using it for this blog and I really liked it.

Final Take Away

I would greatly appreciate and as always, leave your comments below of what you would like to learn. Don’t hesitate to contact me.