Restoring a backup

Restoring a backup on Staq is simple. Below are instructions on how you can restore a backup from the Staq dashboard.

Before we go through the instructions on restoring a backup, all backup entries display the date and time in UTC timezone format. If you do not want to convert UTC timezone to your local timezone, it is recommended that you change your timezone.

Backups – General

Firstly, go to the website’s Staq Panel in question and click Backups:

When restoring a backup, Staq will only restore the backup separately for the following files:

• plugins
• themes
• content
• database

Inside the Staq dashboard, under Data, it clearly labels the type of backup. Inside the Type column tells you if it’s a full or incremental backup:

Before restoring, you need to understand if you need to restore a full backup or a partial (incremental) backup.

Incremental Backups

Incremental Backups means that it has detected a slight file change and rather backing up the full theme for example, it only backs up the recent change.

If you restore that backup, it is removing that file for example.

Full Backups

As the name suggests, it’s a full restore.

Restore Backup Instructions

Find the desired backup file to restore. Click Restore.

A popup will open and it will ask you what you wish to restore by selecting 1 or multiple:

By clicking Restore, the process will run.

Restoring plugin or theme backup after plugin updates failed

If your website crashes after updating plugins—whether through a third-party plugin update management tool or directly via the WordPress dashboard—this often happens because a plugin update caused a PHP error, resulting in a critical error that blocks access to both the frontend and backend of the site. To regain access, follow this guide on recovering access to the WordPress backend.

Alternatively, if you’d like to debug the issue to regain access, refer to our guide on using Staq Debug for troubleshooting.

For those who prefer to restore a backup, please note that you do not need to do a full backup restore. Instead, if it was a plugin update that caused the issue, you can restore a plugin backup only. To do so, identify which plugin update you wish to restore i.e. the last one or a previous version, followed by clicking the triple dots and clicking Restore:

Then a popup will open. Select i.e. Plugins followed by Restore:

To avoid such scenarios in the future, consider enabling Staq Automatic Plugin Updates. This feature ensures plugins are updated safely, and if a plugin update fails or causes a site issue, the system will automatically roll back to the previous version, leveraging built-in regression testing to maintain stability.

Error establishing a database connection after database restore

While rare to see, the database may be corrupted. If this occurs, try a different backup to see if that resolves the issue. Alternatively, perhaps the wp-config.php file was altered which changed the location of the database.

If in doubt, please contact our support team.

Restoring a deleted website

If you’ve deleted a website in Staq within the last 14 days, we likely still have the backup files. Please reach out to our support team to request the restoration of your website.

If you have your own backup file, simply upload it to Google Drive or Dropbox and share it with our support team. We’ll gladly restore the site for you.