VaultPress’ restore system is incredibly versatile allowing you to restore your whole site or just one image with a couple clicks of a button. Because of this though, we wanted to provide some clarity as to when you should run each kind of restore. This post is going to go over the three different levels of restorations VaultPress can perform and offer some recommendations for when to run each.

Full Site Restore

This is the most thorough restore we offer. If your site has a variety of things wrong with it and you’re unable to pinpoint what the problem is, your best bet is to restore your site in full. Please note that VaultPress can only restore a site if it is publicly accessible so if your site is completely down it’s best to start from a fresh WordPress installation first before restoring.

Example: Your site is hacked causing a variety of different files now to have malware and half your posts have been deleted. This is a great use case for a full site restoration followed by changing passwords and checking over the Codex’s security guidelines.

Partial Site Restore

This is a great middle ground option that will be much faster than a full site restore but not as specific as restoring just a single image, for example. Don’t be afraid to try this option first to see if it will fix something with your site before running a full site restore. Note that you can restore both single sections or a combination of them. All in all, you can choose from restoring the database, uploads, plugins, contents, and themes.

• Database: Your posts and other options
• Uploads: /wp-content/uploads
• Plugins: /wp-content/plugins
• Themes: /wp-content/themes
• Contents: Everything else in /wp-content that’s not covered by other category

Example: You added a new plugin to your site but it conflicts with another plugin you already have installed and need for your site to function properly. In this case, you can restore just the plugins on your site using a backup that doesn’t include the new plugin you tried to add. Here’s a GIF to show how you might do this:

Single File or Table Restore

This is the fastest and simplest restore you can run. If you know exactly what you want to restore and don’t want to roll back your entire site to a previous backup, this option is for you.

Example: You were editing a theme’s files when you accidentally deleted the CSS file causing the theme to break. Rather than restore your whole site or even the entire theme folder, use the backup browser functionality to restore the specific CSS file you deleted.

Need help deciding which kind of restore to run? Just contact us  – we’re happy to help.