How to Choose the Right Type of Backup Restore

Web Hosting Canada offers a powerful backup system on all its web hosting and reseller hosting plans. When it’s time to restore parts or all of your account, choosing the right type of restore can help speed up the recovery process while minimizing problems.

The following types of backup restorations are available to you:

  1. Restore Emails: restores all the content from a specific email address
  2. Restore Individual Files or Folders: restores specific files and folders
  3. Restore Databases: restores a specific MySQL/MariaDB database
  4. Restore Full Account Backups: restores all files, emails and databases
When a problem occurs with your website, database or emails it can be tempting to perform a full backup restore of the account. However, a full account restore will reset everything within your account to its state at that backup point and you will lose any changes that happened after the chosen backup date. It’s also the slowest restore option, and the one that will cause your website to appear offline for a short period of time.

Here are some situations you may encounter and the recommended backup restoration strategy to use:

First, attempt to troubleshoot the problem by inspecting the errors shown or the error logs on your account. If you are unable to fix the problem:

Easiest: Perform a Full Account Restore. Careful, all your other files and emails will also be reverted to the chosen backup date & time.

Best: Restore the folder where WordPress is installed with the File & Folder Restoration tool and then restore your WordPress database with a Database restoration. If you have multiple databases, you can find out which database your WordPress installation uses by inspecting the wp-config.php file in your WordPress folder. The database name can be found on the line containing define( 'DB_NAME', 'MyDatabaseName' );
Depending on how you deleted the email, a restoration may not be necessary:
  • If you deleted the email on your computer using an app like Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail and have your email configured in POP mode, then you may still find a copy of your email on your account using Webmail.
  • If you use IMAP or Webmail, emails generally get sent to the Trash folder before being deleted. Try examining your Trash folder in Webmail first.
You can restore the full contents of an email address using the Email Restoration tool. Note that any emails received since the backup date may be lost, so consider manually saving recent emails before initiating the restore.
Don’t take any chances and perform a Full Account Restore to a date when your account was clean. Even if you think the infection is limited to a specific folder, hackers may sometimes hide backdoors in other places in your account, so a full account restore is your best option.
As an alternative to a full account restore consider performing a site cleanup by ordering our SiteSafe service
If restoring your website following a hacking problem, make sure you following our What to do if your website is hacked recommendations.
Most Content Management Systems like WordPress provide a way to rollback changes, so you may not need to use the WHC restoration tool to do so. Try to see if you can revert back to a previous version of your page using your app’s administrative dashboard first.
Easiest: Perform a Full Account Restore. Careful, all your other files and emails will also be reverted to the chosen backup date & time.

Best: Restore your WordPress (or other App’s) database with a Database restoration. If you use WordPress and have multiple databases in your account, you can find out which database your WordPress installation uses by inspecting the wp-config.php file in your WordPress folder. The database name can be found on the line containing define( 'DB_NAME', 'MyDatabaseName' );
First, attempt to troubleshoot the problem by inspecting the errors shown or the error logs on your account. If you are unable to fix the problem:

Easiest: Perform a Full Account Restore. Careful, all your other files and emails will also be reverted to the chosen backup date & time.

Best: Restore the file that is causing the error with the File & Folder Restoration tool and see if that fixes the problem. If not, consider the Full Account Restore.

If you have any additional questions about backup restorations, please contact our friendly support team for 24/7 assistance.

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