We take backups of the accounts on our servers so that we can recover from a server-level problem. You should not, however, treat our backups as your only copy.
Why you should keep your own copy too
Backups protect against the server failing. They are much less useful against the things that actually go wrong on a website: a change made three weeks ago that nobody noticed, a file deleted by a plugin, or a compromise that has been quietly present for a month. The further back the problem started, the less likely any backup still holds a clean copy.
Taking your own
cPanel has a Backup tool that will produce a full account archive, or just the home directory, or just a database. Download it and keep it somewhere other than the hosting account. Doing this before any significant change – a software upgrade, a theme change, a plugin installation – takes a couple of minutes and has saved a great many sites.
Asking us for a restore
Open a support ticket and tell us, as precisely as you can:
- What needs restoring – the whole account, one folder, one file, or a database
- The date you want it from, or the date the problem started
- Whether it should be restored in place, or put alongside so you can compare
Restoring in place overwrites what is there now, so if you are not certain, ask for it alongside. We would always rather restore twice than restore over something you needed.
