How do I restore my website from backup?

Host might uses R1Soft to backup the entire server to a remote location , giving you a choice of 56 restore points. You have direct access to your file backups via the R1Soft link in your site's cPanel. For database restores, please contact our helpdesk.

R1Soft gives you 3 options:

  • "Restore" will restore the files to your website in their original location. Any existing files will be overwritten
  • "Download" allows you to download a compressed file containing your backup
  • "Send to Agent" sends a compressed file to your website's home directory. It does NOT restore the site but will place a tar file into your /home/ folder.

"Download" and "Send to agent" are useful if you wish to manually review an older backup version without modifying your live account.

For "Restore", R1Soft works similar to an FTP transfer. R1Soft will overwrite and add but not delete. For a clean restore it is therefore important to first delete all data from your website and then run the restore.

Restoring a site with R1Soft
  1. Log into your site's cPanel and click on the R1Soft link 

    R1Soft link cPanel

  2. On the list, choose the right date and time. You then have 3 options:
    • Click the folder symbol "browse" to select specific files or folders from the backup
    • Click on the file symbol "download" if you wish to download the entire backup
    • Click on the send symbol "send to agent" if you wish to send a compressed file containing the entire backup to your website (nb: this will not restore the site)
    R1Soft recovery point listing

  3. If you selected "browse", you will see the "/home/" folder which contains all cPanel files.
  4. Doubleclick on "home" to open it up. 

    R1Soft recovery point listing

  5. All your website files are within "/public_html/". You now have 3 options:
    • Restore the entire /public_html/ folder by ticking the box next to it and click "Restore Selected"
    • Browser further by double clicking the public_html folder
    • Download the folder by ticking the box next to it and clicking "Download selected"
    • Send a compressed copy of the folder to your home directory by ticking the box next to it and clicking "Send selected to agent". NB: This will NOT restore your site.
  6. If you selected "restore", you will be asked if you wish to proceed. Click "Restore". 

    R1Soft restore

  7. A new screen will show you the restore progress. 

    R1Soft restore
    • Select "Files Restored" for a listing of all files
    • Check "Files failed" and "Alerts" for any possible errors
  8. Log out of R1Soft and check your site
Restoring a database

If you need to restore a database, please contact our helpdesk and let us know:

  • Whether you wish to receive a compressed file of your db or if we have permission overwrite your live database
  • Recovery point or Date/Time when the site was last working
  • Database name
  • Whether your database is using InnoDB (applies usually for all Magento sites)

Please note that if you opt to receive a compressed backup, the files will be in MySQL format and not a .sql export file. If you are unable to work with raw MySQL files, please let us know and we can output the database as .sql.

Common errors
THE SITE IS STILL NOT WORKING AFTER A RESTORE

This usually means that you did not go back far enough in time and/or that you did not delete the files from the live account first. If a site is still not working, please try:

  • Delete all files and folders from within /public_html/
  • Choose a restore point far enough back in time to guarantee it's a working copy and restore the entire /public_html/ folder

If this does not do the trick, then please ask our helpdesk to restore both the files and database for you and give permission to delete/overwrite your live account. Many database-driven websites will store information partially in the database, partially in files, so for a complete restore, we first need to create a clean slate (delete content from live account) and then restore both db and files.

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