How To Restore WordPress Website Backup After A Broken Plugin Update

A WordPress plugin update is going to bring your website down! WordPress, like any other software, has the ability to break. And in most cases, the reason is a failed plugin update. So how do you make sure all your data isn’t lost? Well, what are backups for?

Regular WordPress plugin updates can feel like a bit of an administrative chore, but it cannot be ignored. In our last post, we wrote about how Updating WordPress Plugins Can Keep Your Website Secure! In this one, we are going to tell you a little bit about how you can restore WordPress website backup and not worry the next time an update causes your site to crash!

But before we tell you what you can do post a crash, here are a few things you can do before a plugin update:

1. BACKUP YOUR WORDPRESS DATABASE AND SITE FILES

Before making any major changes to your website, backing it up is mandatory. If anything goes wrong, a website backup allows you to restore WordPress website to its working state in a matter of minutes.

• Make sure to create both, a FULL SITE BACKUP as well as a DATABASE ONLY backup.
• Download both of these backups to your local computer.
• Remember to keep backups to a reasonable size!
• Try to exclude large files and uploads folder.
• Nothing in a WordPress update is going to affect your uploads.

There are a number of well-respected WordPress plugins that you could use like BackupBuddy, Backup Breeze, BlogVault, and VaultPress.

Here’s our review of the WordPress Website backup plugin — BlogVault.

2. TURN CACHING OFF

Most WordPress installs today come with a plugin called WP Super Cache, which speeds up load times through caching processes. However, this plugin causes old content to persist even when you create new stuff.

Deactivate your caching plugin before a WordPress plugin update. This ensures that you aren’t caching maintenance pages during the updates and are not interfering with the update process.

3. CHECK TO SEE IF YOU MEET THE NECESSARY REQUIREMENTS

Mostly, the minimum requirements for using WordPress stay the same, even as the updates roll out. As time progresses these requirements might change. Before updating anything, it’s a good idea to confirm that your web hosts meet the minimum requirements.

4. TEST THE UPDATES ON A STAGING ENVIRONMENT

Many hosting services offer staging environments, which you can use for testing purposes. You can use your staging environment to host an exact replica of your website — plugins, themes, content, and all. Because the staging environment is identical to your website, it’s the perfect place to test out how a WordPress plugin update might impact your live website.

If everything updates smoothly, the same should be true when updating your real website. If something breaks, it’s only on your staging environment and at least you will be aware that this can happen in real.

Testing the updates on a staging environment also ensures that the user experience isn’t interrupted by an update gone wrong. Our staging environment helps us test new features and changes in a controlled setup.

5. REVIEW THEME, PLUGIN, AND CORE UPDATE CHANGELOGS FOR CONFLICTS

Before you install any update read its changelog for potential conflicts. Being up to date with what’s new in the latest version of any given theme, plugin, or core update is useful in and of itself. This also helps you look for any changes that might interfere with your unique setup and customizations.

WHAT DO YOU DO IF A PLUGIN UPDATE HAS CAUSED YOU SITE TO CRASH?

Take a deep breathe first! Although it may seem like you’re getting an anxiety attack, it’s really not a big deal! Your WordPress Website Backup will come to your rescue.

If an update to a plugin or theme goes horribly wrong, you can simply replace those theme or plugin files with the backup you made. If you are using a WordPress website backup plugin, you can unzip your full backup and then FTP the old version of the theme or plugin to the wp-content > themes or plugins folder and overwrite the new version of the theme or plugin with the backup.

AskWPGirl says, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have lost data and those who will lose data.” Which is actually very true. How often do you hear of an update going wrong?

The White Screen of Death sends WordPress users around the world into a panic every day. It displays an empty page on your live website and in your admin area, thus stopping you from resolving the issue directly through the admin area.

Unfortunately, the database is hard to fix if you don’t have a website backup of the last working version of your site. But if you do, you can just restore WordPress website from one of those backups.

Now you know why a WordPress website backup is so important!

Read about How to Fix The WordPress White Screen of Death on WPSiteCare!

WHAT IF YOU DON’T HAVE A BACKUP?

If you didn’t use any website backup plugin, you can try reaching out to the support team at your web host or your WordPress maintenance provider! You can ask them if there are any database backups stored on their end. Some web hosts offer this as part of their plans.

WordPress maintenance providers backup your website data regularly so that you don’t have to do it yourself.

If either one of them have a backup, ask them to restore the database from that backup, or get the SQL file from them and restore it via phpMyAdmin by hand.

Some hosting providers have backups, but they might be old and will cost you extra to restore it. With our WordPress Monthly Retainer plans, you get daily offsite backups that can help you restore WordPress website in no time.

Take a look at our WordPress Support Plans today!