Troubleshooting Jetpack Restores

Please try the recommendations below if you’re having trouble restoring a site using Jetpack VaultPress Backup.

Confirm Your Site Has a WordPress Installation

A WordPress installation must be present on the site you are restoring a backup to. If your site does not have a WordPress installation, you’ll need to create one before restoring a backup; please contact your host for assistance. 

If you create a new WordPress installation for the purpose of restoring your site, you’ll need to follow the steps to Clone/Migrate a Site instead of performing a regular restore.

Make Sure Your Site Loads Over HTTP or HTTPS, Not Both

If your site is accessible via both the HTTP and HTTPS versions of its URL, Jetpack can experience issues accessing your site to restore it. Check to make sure that your site is only accessible over HTTPS or HTTP before starting a restore. 

If your site is accessible via HTTP and HTTPS, please make sure your site is configured to redirect all HTTP traffic to the HTTPS version of your domain name. If you’re not sure how to do this, please contact your host for assistance.

Check Your Server Credentials

Working server credentials are required for Jetpack to restore your site. You can check whether Jetpack has valid credentials for your site by visiting: https://cloud.jetpack.com/settings/[YOUR DOMAIN]

If your server credentials are valid, you will see a “connected” status, as seen here:

You can find instructions on how to add or update server credentials from various hosts here.

Cloudflare, Sucuri or Other Web Application Firewall Issues

Sites using Cloudflare/Sucuri or any other Web Application Firewall (WAF) can encounter issues during a restore if a site doesn’t respond to requests before they time out. If you’re running Cloudflare, Sucuri, or another WAF on your site and experience issues restoring, please ensure our IP addresses are not blocked by your WAF, any security plugins, .htaccess rules, or rate-limiting at your host. If issues persist, please ensure that you and your host have allowed our IPs. 

If your site uses Cloudflare, we also recommend following the Cloudflare-specific troubleshooting available here.

File Permissions

Ensure your SSH/SFTP/FTP user has full read and write file permissions to your WordPress installation directory. Jetpack needs full read and write permissions to your WordPress installation directory in order to successfully restore a backup. Please reach out to your host and make sure your server credentials have full read and write permissions. For more information about file access permissions, please review the guidance here.

Database Errors

Confirm that your database credentials are correct and have proper access to your site’s database. Your WordPress site’s content lives in your site database, and Jetpack needs to be able to access your site database in order to restore a backup. Please review our database troubleshooting recommendations available here.