Manual Restoration of WordPress/ File Locations?

  • We have a WordPress site that was damaged by a failed WHM/Cpanel restore operation after some crashes related to plugin updates gone bonkers. (Long story) We’re trying to correct that. Initial attempts seem to have left us with something that seems to have serious plugin/version mismatches and is not functional. It’s a real mishmash.

    I am wondering about a more manual process that we might need to undertake. We do have the good backup (complete site, not just the WordPress db) unpacked and available if needed. That leads me to questions about WordPress structure / File locations:

    1. Are all the WordPress files, plugins, themes, settings, etc (aside from the database that has to be setup through the control panel/MySql) stored under public_html? That is if we have wp-admin, wp-content, wp-includes, and the various individual files directly in public_html, do we have everything? Are there other bits of the WordPress configuration stored elsewhere?
    2. If we set up the site with the database properly loaded through the Web server’s cpanel, could we manually copy the files identified above in #1 into the directories and expect the WordPress installation to work? That is, would WordPress pick up all the configuration details, plugins, pages, etc?
    3. Is there are better direction to head (better than #2 above) if you have the files as we do and need to restore a site (assuming we can’t get the server-system restore to get us back to the right place?
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Yes, Yes, and … Not likely.

    WordPress has only one configuration file, wp-config.php, which is often at the root of the WordPress installation (though it can be moved one directory higher).

    So, provided the database connection info in the wp-config.php matches that of the restored database, WordPress should connect to the restored database and load the site.

    If you encounter any errors, just report the exact error messages you see here so we can take a look and help you troubleshoot and fix it.

    On the 3rd question, I say “Not likely” because it sounds like your backup was created manually or with cPanel’s backup tools. In that case, the approach you outlined is the best route for you.

    On the other hand, if the backup had been created with a WordPress backup plugin, then you’d first install a fresh WordPress site, install the same backup plugin you used to generate the backup, and then run the plugin to upload the backup files and restore the site.

    Good luck, and standing by for update.

    Thread Starter Benny

    (@wordbob)

    Thanks… and yes, it was a full cpanel backup before changes and then a restore operation via cpanel. So, theoretically it’s the cpanel “account”, not just WordPress.

    Thanks, I will likely be back with more questions before this is over.

    Thread Starter Benny

    (@wordbob)

    Followup: I got it working.

    The Cpanel Restore failures caused some sort of permission issues on some files. Fixing those corrected the outright serving issues (Internal Server Error) but WordPress was left with a mixed set of versions/files due to the previous restore crashes. The permission corrections also let me run the Cpanel Restore operation but it was still not giving me an operational site. I could see that it was not replacing all the files that it should replace in the aforementioned directories.

    To solve that, I went in and renamed all the WordPress related folders and files in public_html. I re-ran the restore and everything was replaced. That corrected most of the run-time issues. There was still a plug-in throwing errors that was not a problem previously, but disabling that through FTP got the site working again. It’s not critical for us so I’ll leave it disabled for now.

    I do have some other questions regarding better site backup and transfer that will hopefully let us avoid another disaster like this… but I will address them in another thread specifically on those topics instead of mixing it with this fiasco.

    Thanks again.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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