No matter how efficient cybersecurity platforms claim to be, websites are always vulnerable to cyber threats. Cyberworld facilitates us all with bulks of data but on the same side, it has a greater potential of compromising our data. Hacking and data breaching are few among the commonly found website damages of the contemporary cyberworld. WordPress websites, despite having superlative hosting solutions and cybersecurity certificated servers still tend to fall victim to data hacking. A hacking attempt may leave your WordPress infected with a virus or may completely crash it with no signs of immediate recovery.

Back-Up Before It’s Too Late!

While working with WordPress, you have a greater margin to create backups and this is something you must not take for granted. Creating backups can provide webmasters with the ability to restore a website with all data once that they gain control over it. Thus, creating backups is vital to overcome any cyber crisis or data loss.
If you have a clean and uncompromised back-up available, it becomes very easy to manually restore a hacked WordPress website.
How to Manually Migrate a WordPress Website

• Backup Existing Files

Login into the cPanel of the WordPress website and access the File Manager.
Force show any hidden files and proceed.
The WordPress Backup must consist of three files; wp-content, wp-config.php and the database SQL file.
To do so, it is essential to compress the wp-content file and download it. Next, download the wp-config.php file.
To download the database SQL file, you must access the phpMyAdmin and export all the WordPress website data into a SQL file. Once done, download it.
Now you have successfully downloaded three important files that you need for enabling migration.

• Download WordPress

To move forward with the recovery process, now you must download a fresh WordPress from WordPress.org.

To download WordPress using FTP you need to follow these steps:

Download the latest WordPress package on your system and extract the zip file. Within the folder, you will find a WordPress folder that contains all the files that are to be uploaded to the web server.
Connect the FTP client to the hosting server. Once successfully connected, upload the WordPress files from the system to the website server. It is essential to upload the WordPress files to the website’s root directory which is labelled as /public_html/.
Once done with the uploading, access the cPanel to investigate the SQL databases. From the cPanel dashboard, click on the SQL Databases icon.
Enter the name of the new database and create one. Once done, you will now see multiple fields to be filled, enter the username and password to Create a User.
To allow the new user to access the database you need to scroll down on the SQL databases page and Add User to a Database. Check all the privileges you want to allow the user with.
Note down the database name, MySQL username and password as you will need this information later.
Now access the URL (domain name) on which you uploaded the WordPress files. There you will see a language selection page, choose the language of your choice and proceed.
You will now see some installation instructions. Basically, WordPress will now tell you that it will need your database name, password, and MySQL host information.
After entering all the information, Run the Install by clicking the button.
You will now see a form where you need to add all important information related to your WordPress website. WordPress will now proceed to install, Later, you will see a success message showing your username. You can now click on the Log in button to sign in to your WordPress site.

• Drop files and Import

After accessing the phpMyAdmin and locating the new WordPress database, select all files and drop them. Now you will see a blank folder with no files available.
Import the saved database SQL file here. From the options folder, change the site URL and Home address to the new domain added while downloading the WordPress.

• Upload WordPress Files

Once that files are successfully extracted, you now need to access the File Manager and designated new WordPress directory.
You will now see various WordPress files including the wp-content and wp-config.php file.
Delete the existing wp-content file.
Next, upload the saved zip wp-content file that was saved as a back-up from the previous WordPress website and extract it. You must now delete the zip file as per not to make your website slow.
Now access the wp-config.php file and edit it. Remember to match all the details with the database that was uploaded, especially the table prefixes.

• Save and Test

After that all uploading has been successfully done, save changes made to the directories and visit the WordPress site to check all functionalities.

• Adjust Permalinks

Lastly, set up permalinks to match your current WordPress website and update changes. You can use handy WordPress plugins such as Custom Permalinks to help you with process.
There you go, you have successfully migrated a WordPress website from one host to another by using its updated backup. Thus, it is highly important to create regular backups to eliminate the risk of losing a website or its important data.
Finding difficulties to create a backup? Want more guidance to retrieve a WordPress website? Comment below to start the conversation.