How To Backup Your Entire Wordpress Blog

Backup is a feature of your site's activity that is available to you on our Business and eCommerce Plans. It takes automatic backups of your site, allowing you to pick a point in your Activity Log and restore your site to the exact state it was in at that point in time.

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What Data is Backed Up?

We back up the following data:

Your WordPress database. (Specifically, any tables that begin with your WordPress table prefix and also have a unique key or primary key.)
All files in theplugins,mu-plugins,themes, anduploads directories.
Other select files inside the wp-content directory.

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How Often do Backups Occur?

Daily backups typically occur 24 hours from the previous backup. It is not possible to set a specific time window for daily backups.

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Accessing Backups

Backups can be found in your site's dashboard as part of the Activity Log. Head to My Sites → Jetpack → Activity Log.

If you are looking for the latest backup only, you can click My Sites → Jetpack → Backup. It will show you the latest backup of your site. On Activity Log, however, you will see a list of all activities as well as the restore points for your site. You can see below how to restore a backup from the Activity Log.

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Restoring From a Backup

To restore your WordPress.com site from a backup, select a point in your Activity Log by scrolling to a certain change, or use the date range and/or activity type filters.

Once you have found a restore point, click on the ellipsis (three dots) next to it.

Once you've clicked on the ellipsis, select Restore to this point.

You'll then be asked to confirm which parts of the site you'd like to restore. These include:

WordPress Themes: This will restore your site's theme folder to what it was at that point in time. Depending on the third-party theme you are using, this will not necessarily restore a theme's settings.
WordPress Plugins: This will restore your site's plugin folder to what it was at that point in time. Depending on the third-party plugin you are using, this will not necessarily restore a plugin's settings.
Media uploads: This will restore the contents of your media library to what was in there at that point in time. Please note that, if content was added after that point, this may result in loss of that content.
WordPress Root: This will restore WordPress root files to what they were at that point.
WP-Content Directory: This will restore the wp-content folder and its contents to the state it was in at the time of the backup. Please note that this will not restore the themes, plugins, or media uploads folders (see above).
Site Database: This will restore content for posts, pages, comments, and (depending on the third-party themes and plugins), some plugin and theme settings.

Please note that a backup will override and remove all content and settings created after a certain point, and may result in the loss of content and settings.

Select Confirm Restore, and the site restore will begin.

Once it's complete, you'll receive an email notification.

Please bear in mind that backups may take some time to complete, and that can range from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the size of your site.

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If the Business or eCommerce plan expires or is cancelled, backups will be purged and inaccessible after 30 days. If you are looking to migrate your content to another host, please ensure you download a backup of your content first.

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When to Use Backups

Backups are a great tool to use if:

You are missing content and it can not be restored via post and page revisions.
You've installed a plugin/theme that breaks your site, a backup is available to you, and you know for sure which plugin/theme is the culprit.

Plugins and themes can often conflict with each other and if this is the case, restoring to a backup won't always solve any issues you're facing with potential conflicts.

If you're in doubt about losing content as a result of restoring a backup on your site, you can take a backup of the content by exporting it first.

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Frequently Asked Questions

I have a .tar.gz file from my previous backup and I want to restore it. How do I do that?

The .tar.gz backup file needs to be restored manually. To do so, please follow the guide here: Jetpack: Manually Restore a Backup (starting from step 4.)