Back up and restore your website

Jetpack VaultPress Backup automatically saves every change and helps you get back online quickly with one‑click restores. This guide will show you how to access your site’s backups and restore your website to any previous point.

This feature is available on sites with the WordPress.com Business and Commerce plans, and the legacy Pro plan. If you have a Business plan, make sure to activate it. For sites on the Free, Personal, and Premium plans, upgrade your plan to access this feature.

Backups are powered by Jetpack VaultPress Backup and included with eligible plans. After you activate your plan, backups start automatically — no manual setup or extra plugins needed. Backups run at least once every 24 hours. If your site changes frequently, backups may run multiple times per day. The following data is backed up:

• Your pages, posts, media files, followers, and other content in your wp-content folder.
• Your installed themes and plugins.
• Your site’s root-level WordPress files.
• Your site’s WordPress database, including any tables that start with your WordPress table prefix and have a unique or primary key.

The following data is not backed up:

• WordPress core files, which WordPress.com manages for you.
• Files outside the folders listed above.
• Database tables that are not part of WordPress or do not have a unique identifier.
• Cache and backup directories.
• Additional WordPress installs inside subdirectories.

With built-in backup functionality, you don’t have to upload a backup from your computer to restore your site to a previous point. Instead, you can restore a backup directly in your WordPress.com dashboard.

To restore your site from a backup, follow these steps:

1. Go to your dashboard.
2. In the left menu, hover over Jetpack.
3. Select Backup (or VaultPress if you are using WP Admin).
4. Use the date options to select the backup you want to restore.

5. Click the “Restore to this point” button.

6. Click the “Restore now” button to restore your entire site, or choose which parts of your site to restore first:
   • WordPress themes: Restores your theme folder to the selected backup. Some theme settings may not be restored if they are saved outside the theme folder.
   • WordPress plugins: Restores your plugin folder. Some plugin settings may not be restored if they are saved outside the plugin folder.
   • WordPress root: Restores root files, such as wp-config.php and other configuration files.
   • WP-content directory: Restores the wp-content folder, excluding themes, plugins, and media uploads, which you can select separately.
   • Site database: Restores your posts, pages, comments, and some plugin or theme settings.
   • Media uploads: Restores your media library. To restore media uploads, you must also select Site database.
7. After you click the “Restore now” button, the restoration process can take anywhere between several minutes to a few hours, depending on your site’s size.
8. You can navigate away from the screen while the restore is in progress. You will receive an email notification once your site is restored.

If you want to keep content created after your chosen restore point, make a copy of it before restoring your backup.

• For small changes, such as a blog post, copy the content into a document on your computer. After the restore, you can add it back to your site.
• For larger changes, consider creating a staging site as a backup of your current site before restoring.

What will happen to my WooCommerce orders if I restore a backup?

We’ve developed Jetpack VaultPress Backup with WooCommerce in mind. You can safely restore your site to any past state — all orders and products will be kept current.

I want to migrate one WordPress.com site to another WordPress.com site. Can I do that with a Jetpack Backup?

This is possible with backups but can be a challenging process. Instead of using a backup, the recommended methods are as follows:

• Move your domain from one site to another, which is generally easier than moving a website’s content and design.
• Clone your WordPress.com site to create an exact copy of it, that you can then add a domain to.
• Use the Migrate to WordPress.com tool to create an export of your source site and then import that content to the destination site.

How do I download a copy of my site?

Whether you’re moving to a new platform, creating a backup for safety, or just want peace of mind, you can save a copy of your site’s data.

On all sites, including free WordPress.com sites, you can export your website’s content and import it to another WordPress.com site, a self-hosted WordPress site, or another platform that supports XML imports. Use this export tool if you’re just trying to move your content or make a quick copy.

On plugin-enabled sites, you can download a full backup of your site using the built-in Jetpack VaultPress Backup service. As an alternative option, you can also use a plugin to export a full copy of your website to move to another host.

How do I exclude certain files from being backed up?

You have two options for excluding certain files from being backed up:

• Create a new directory to exclude: You can move files to a new directory called donotbackup. Jetpack VaultPress Backup will know to skip this directory automatically. This is a great way to reduce the storage size of your backups.
• Exclude an existing directory: You can add a file called .donotbackup to any existing directory. Jetpack VaultPress Backup will skip the entire directory that includes the .donotbackup file.