Are you worried that your WordPress backup might not work when you need it the most?
There are a lot of backup solutions but not all of them provide a restore test. Since WordPress backups are very important, it could be a disaster if you lose them.
What is surprising is that although many people are talking about backups, almost no one addresses restores. The real goal of having a backup in the first place is to be able to restore your website from it. Some people are unfortunate to discover that not all of their data has been backed up.
WordPress backup restore issues
It is good to be informed of what kind of issues you may encounter before we explain how a WP backup test can be run.
After a WordPress site is restored from a backup, it will run under a test domain and won’t work properly. The content you have previously added points to your domain name. When it is moved to a different domain, you must replace the old relationship in your database with the new one.
The other problem is that small website owners often lack the resources needed to perform a restore test.
The restore solutions
Perhaps there are already more than one solution to running a restore test but what I favor the most in the XCloner WP plugin. The plugin not only allows you to create a backup of your WordPress website, a feature that all WP backup plugins have in common, but also grants you the option tp restore your site at a different location without the need for replace actions and difficult database imports. For more information on how to use the plugin, please visit the aforementioned link.
blogVault Real-time Backup plugin is yet another solution to the problem, and according to the plugin’s authors, is “the most reliable way to perform WordPress backup for your site”. Among its many functionalities is the test-restore feature with which you can test backups and verify their integrity prior to deploying them to your live server. blogVault use their own servers to temporarily restore your WordPress backup on and validate it. In case you are reverting to an older backup, the plugin identifies the optimal backup to restore.
Some backup plugins for WordPress like Backup Buddy have a deployment feature allowing you to easily push or pull changes between your life and your development site. The functionality gives you the option to test a backup on your local development (also called staging) server and then just push it to your live server if you are comfortable with the result.
During the Backup Buddy’s deployment process, you are also presented with a status of the process and an opportunity to examine or test the changes you are going through. You have the opportunity to observe the differences in the settings of the server, the active themes and plugins, their versions and all the site’s media before deploying live.