If it’s a premium theme, upload the theme as a zip file.
Install and activate the missing theme by searching for it in the directory. In Appearance > Themes, you can see the active theme is broken. You’ll need to take a few more steps to get your site back to the way it was. If you only have a database backup, your files will be missing. Remember that to reinstall WordPress without losing content, you need to replace both the database and the files. When you do, you should be safely within the WordPress admin. Run the installation, and you should be told that WordPress was already installed, because you imported the database backup. Change the value on screen from wp_ to the one in the backup if yours is different. Open and check your database backup file for the table prefix. Go to your site’s URL and you should see the WordPress setup page, with the dialog to choose a language.Īfter you’ve chosen and language and continued, complete the information about your database, using the database name, username and password you saved earlier. When your database is imported and your files are installed, you can then reinstall WordPress. So, if your site was at /wp/, your WordPress files should go in a /wp/ subdirectory. If WordPress was installed in a subdirectory originally, make sure that you upload the files to the same subdirectory. If you don’t have a public_html directory, look for one named htdocs or www. Upload the contents of the wordpress folder to your public_html directory. The simplest way to upload and reinstall WordPress core files is to use an FTP client. Within the folder created is another folder, wordpress, which contains the files and folders you need. At the time of writing that’s version 5.3.2. Download the latest version of WordPress. Your next step to create a fresh WordPress install from an old database backup is to reinstall WordPress core files. If you have difficulty importing your database because the file is too big, one solution is to try BigDump, a PHP script which breaks up your SQL file into smaller chunks for import. sql extension, or it may be compressed, with a. Open the database you created and go to the Import link.īrowse your computer for your database file and open it. If your host has a different solution, the process should be similar to the one below. Typically hosts use phpMyAdmin to manipulate the WordPress database. Check “All privileges” and then hit the “Make Changes” button. Next, you’ll be prompted to check your user’s database privileges. Then add the user you created to the database: Keep a note of the database name, username, and the password you create. It’s simplest if you make the username the same as your database name. Once you have added the new database, you need to add a MySQL user. If you use cPanel hosting, open up MySQL Databases.Īdd a suffix to the new database and click Create Database: Create a database and userįirst, you need to create a new database and user with the appropriate permissions. Now let’s go through the steps to create a fresh WordPress install from an old database. Will this suffice?įirst, take a look at the test site I built which I aim to restore. But you do have a recent database backup. You tried to schedule a file backup, but your cron job failed, so the backup didn’t succeed. You find that your host hasn’t taken backups. Let’s assume that the worst has happened. What is saved in a WordPress database backup? The reason you need both of these backups is that neither has the full information to build a WordPress site. jpg, and so on), organized into folders, that make up WordPress’s core software, your themes, and your plugins. Your file backup stores your entire WordPress filesystem: the thousands of files (. Your database backup stores the contents of your WordPress database, as a single giant. To back up a WordPress site fully, you need two types of backup: a file backup (or “filesystem backup” same thing) and a database backup. To back up a WordPress site fully, you need two types of backup: a file backup and a database backup. The answer is “yes, but keep reading”-restoring a WordPress site from a database backup is doable, but you’ll need to be thoughtful in how you go about it. But can you create a fresh WordPress install from an old database backup?
If disaster strikes your WordPress site, your first thought should be to restore it from a backup.