Manually Restore a Backup

The manual restore process allows you to use Jetpack’s backups to restore your WordPress site to any host on any server anywhere. 

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 WordPress.com dashboard and navigate to Stats → Activity to view the Activity page for your site.
3. Locate the Rewind point from which you’d like to download your backup, click the arrow to the right of the Rewind button and select Download. Click Create Download. Depending on the size of your site, it may take some time for Jetpack to prepare your download. When its ready, we’ll send you an email with a link. The link will also appear at the top of the Activity page.
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.
5. Your /plugins, /themes, and /uploads folders can be transferred via FTP or a File Manager tool to the /wp-content/ folders on your WordPress site.
6. 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. You can import your .sql files into your MySQL database in a few different ways. It’s easiest 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

7. 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

You may see 2 files for each table in the sql folder: something like wp_posts.sql and wp_posts-updates.sql. If you are importing one-by-one, you should do the primary table first (wp_posts.sql) then the table labeled -updates.  If you’ve concatenated them all together as explained in step 7, there’s no need to worry about this.

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.

Your host usually can also help with this step.

Have questions? Feel free to contact support for more personalized assistance.