Overview
Your DreamHost panel offers a domain restore option to restore your domain. This only restores files on your web server, not your database server. Some websites do not use a database and only need this article to restore the site.
The instructions in this article do not apply to Dedicated Servers. If your sites are hosted on a Dedicated Server, you must manually restore backups using an admin user. See the following article for more information on this process:
When you restore a website, the files are restored from your site's web server. The restore service does not restore data from any other web server you may have previously migrated from.
If your site is running WordPress or any other software that uses a database, view the following article for instructions on how to also restore your database:
Restoring your website
As stated on the Restore page (described below), DreamHost does not guarantee domain backups. It is highly recommended that you keep local backups of your site contents in case a DreamHost backup is unavailable.
DreamHost cannot guarantee that any data will be retained on inactive (suspended/closed/disabled) accounts for longer than two weeks following the account's status change. See the following knowledge base articles for more information on how you can back up your account or make a payment:
To restore your website:
- Navigate to the Manage Websites page.
- Click the Manage button to open the Domain Settings page, which allows you to adjust various settings for your site.
- Click the Hosting tab.
- Scroll down to the Restore Files section and click the Restore button on the far right.
- The Restore page appears.
- Choose from the following sections:
- Available Backup Dates: There are three time-frame options available for your domain’s backups:
- 1 hour to 1 day
- 1 day to 2 weeks
- 2 weeks or possibly more
- Restore Options: The two options allow you to either restore the selected backups to your current live site or restore the selected backups as a separate folder.
Copy the backup files to: /home/username/example.com_TIMESTAMP
- The first option keeps the current site live. Your backup files are retrieved and stored in a new directory. This directory is named after your site, followed by a timestamp. Use this option if you want to view your backed up files before changing your site to the old version.
Make the backup copy live and back up all the current live files to /home/username/example.com_TIMESTAMP
- The second option takes the existing backup and immediately makes it your live website. The files on the site are then moved to a directory named after your site, followed by a timestamp. Use this option if you want your site to immediately revert to the old version.
- Click the Restore example.com now! button to complete this process. (Replace the domain name listed in the button with your domain name being restored.)
Restoring a local backup
View the following article for instructions on how to connect to your DreamHost server and upload the website files from a local backup: