What to Check Before Restoring a Website

When something breaks, the instinct is to restore the most recent backup and move on. But restoring is not undo — it replaces your current state with a past one, and if you pick the wrong point in time, you can lose good work along with the problem you were trying to fix. A few minutes of checking before you restore can save hours of cleanup after.

1. Confirm what actually broke

Before choosing a backup, be specific about the problem. Is it a broken page, a failed update, unexpected content, or something else? The clearer you are about the symptom, the easier it is to identify roughly when it started — and therefore which backup predates it.

2. Identify the last known-good point in time

Work backward from when you noticed the issue:

• When did you last see the site working correctly?
• Were there any changes — updates, edits, configuration changes — made since then?
• Is there a backup that falls just before those changes?

3. Check what will be lost

Restoring a backup replaces your current state, which means any changes made after that backup’s timestamp will be lost unless they’re captured elsewhere. Before restoring, ask:

• Has any content been added or edited since the backup was taken?
• Are there orders, form submissions, or user activity that happened after that point?
• Is there a way to manually preserve that recent activity before restoring?

If there’s meaningful activity you’d lose, consider exporting or noting it down first, even manually, so you can reapply it after the restore.

4. Verify the backup is complete

Not all backups capture the same things. Before restoring, confirm what’s actually included — files, themes, plugins, configuration — so you know what you’re getting back and what, if anything, you’ll need to reapply manually afterward.

5. Have a rollback plan for the restore itself

It’s worth taking a fresh backup of your current (broken) state before restoring an older one. If the restore doesn’t fix the issue, or introduces a new one, you’ll want the ability to go back to where you started rather than being stuck between two unwanted states.

6. Restore, then verify

After restoring, don’t assume success — check it:

• Does the site load correctly across a few key pages?
• Is the issue that prompted the restore actually gone?
• Does anything look unexpectedly different from what you remember?

The takeaway

A restore is a powerful tool, but it’s a blunt one. Taking a few minutes to confirm the timing, understand what you’ll lose, and verify the backup’s contents turns a risky guess into a controlled recovery step. For a broader look at planning this process ahead of time, see Website Recovery Planning Guide.