While Precedence has automatic nightly backups of your entire hosting account, it is a good idea to take a point-in-time backup of your WordPress website prior to making significant changes (e.g. plugins and upgrades). This means you can restore just your website, instead of your entire hosting account, if you find that your changes have not gone the way you hoped.
This guide will walk you through the process of backing up and restoring your WordPress website using cPanel's WP Toolkit feature.
Accessing cPanel
You can access cPanel through two ways:
- If you know your cPanel username and password, you can access it directly via https://www.example.com/cpanel where 'example.com' is your website's domain name
- Or, you can also access it through the services section of our Client Area — click the hosting service for your domain name, then click Log in to cPanel on the left. (If you don't know how to access our Client Area, click here for help.)
Creating a backup of a WordPress website
Step 1: Access WP Toolkit
Once you're in the cPanel dashboard, click WP Toolkit.
Step 2: Find Your Website
You'll see a list of all WordPress websites associated with your cPanel account. If there's more than one, locate the one that matches the domain name of your website.
Step 3: Open the Backup and Restore tool
Under the Dashboard tab, click the "Back Up / Restore" link. This will slide out the Backup and Restore section.
Step 4: Start a Backup
Click the "Backup" button. You'll see a progress bar indicating the progress of the backup. Depending on the size of your site, this process may take a few minutes to complete. Wait until it has finished before beginning work on your site.
Step 5 (Optional): Download Your Backup
The backup will be saved in your hosting account allowing you to revert to that if needed. If you want, you can also download a copy of that backup to your computer. You might wish to do this to permanently retain a point-in-time version of your website, for future reference. You don't need to do this if you are only making a backup as a temporary measure in case you need to revert changes you are about to make.
Restoring a backup of a WordPress website
Step 1: Open the Backup and Restore Tool
Follow steps 1–3 above to access cPanel > WP Toolkit > Backup and Restore.
Step 2: Restore a Backup
You will see a list of previously created backups. To restore one of these backups, locate the backup you wish to restore and click the circular restore icon. Depending on the size of your site, this process may take a few minutes to complete.
Once this has finished you should check your website to ensure it is restored to the previous version you were expecting.
