How to Recover a Deleted WordPress Site

Step 1: Check If Your Site is Really Deleted

Feeling like you’ve lost access to your WordPress site can be a total nightmare – all the hard work you put into building your website gone in an instant. It might be a massive relief to know, however, that it’s not necessarily the end of the road. Before jumping to conclusions, double-check with your hosting provider to ensure that your site has been erased. It may be that your site is temporarily down, undergoing maintenance, or facing a connectivity issue.

Step 2: Restore Your Website from Backup

Creating backups of your website is crucial, as restoring it can be as simple as uploading an older version. If you backed up your website using a plugin like UpdraftPlus or BackupBuddy, you’ll be good to go, and you won’t even have to stress too much. Here are the steps you’ll need to follow:

1. Log in to your hosting account and locate the cPanel.
2. Navigate to the “File Manager” and access the “public_html” folder.
3. Locate the backup file that you previously saved and extract it.
4. Upload the extracted files to the “public_html” folder located on your hosting account.
5. Visit your WordPress dashboard and make sure that everything – including themes, plugins, settings, and content – is in place.

Step 3: Recover Your Website from Google Cache

If you don’t have a backup, despair not. Google cache saves a copy of websites that have been crawled by Google. If your website was last crawled by Google before it was deleted, Google cache can prove a lifesaver:

1. Open Google.com and search for the URL of your deleted website.
2. Find the URL and click on the down arrow beside it.
3. Click on “Cached,” and wait for Google to display the cached version of your website.
4. Save the webpage and other assets like images or videos to your computer.
5. Upload the files to your hosting account’s “public_html” folder.
6. Make sure that everything looks perfect before proceeding.

Step 4: Contact Your Hosting Provider

Your hosting provider may be able to help you recover your deleted website if the previous options don’t sound good to you:

1. Collect as much information as possible before calling.
2. Be sure to provide your domain name and the exact time your website went down.

Step 5: Ask The Way To Restore The Deleted Website

Dialogue with your hosting provider to learn about its website recovery procedures. They’ll have all the answers to get you on track to restoring your website.

Step 6: Use the Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine is an Internet Archive service that archives the internet, saving snapshots of websites over time. This service can prove remarkably useful when it comes to recovering deleted websites:

1. Visit archive.org/web.
2. Search your deleted website’s URL.
3. Choose the date when the website was last available and click on it.
4. Click on the latest snapshot of the website that is available.
5. Save the webpage and other assets like images or videos to your computer.
6. Upload the files to your hosting account’s “public_html” folder.
7. Make sure that everything looks good and operates correctly.

Step 7: Seek Professional Help

If nothing works and you’re still unable to recover your deleted website, you can always seek the help of professional WordPress developers. They possess the necessary tools and expertise to recover deleted WordPress sites:

1. Search online for reputed developers or agencies, then contact them.
2. Provide them with as much information as possible to help them identify and recover your website.

Wrapping up

It’s tough to lose your WordPress site, but there are plenty of ways to recover it. With regular backups and other methods like Google cache, contacting your hosting provider, using the Wayback Machine, or seeking professional help, your site doesn’t have to be gone forever. However, it’s always a good idea to take preventive measures and make regular backups to ensure that your website is always safe and secure.