What should I understand before undertaking a restoration?

Restoring parts of WordPress from inside WordPress always carries risks. Our aim is to reduce them as much as possible. If you are in doubt about anything, then remember that we sell a hands-on “we’ll do it for you” product in our shop, in the...

I get SSL certificate errors when backing up and/or restoring

SSL is a technology used to help you make sure that a) you really are communicating with the people you thought you were (authentication) and b) your communications with them cannot be eaves-dropped by others along the way (encryption). SSL uses entities called...

What format are backups made in? Is it nasty and proprietary?

UpdraftPlus backs up your files into ordinary zip files (the same format that WordPress and its plugins and themes directories use). The database is backed up into an ordinary SQL (text) file. Therefore you can use UpdraftPlus to restore backups, but do not have to....

I lost my encryption key – what can I do?

The answer is unfortunately very likely to be “nothing”. It’s real encryption; and people who don’t have the key can’t get the data; it’s meant to be mathematically impossible with current knowledge. National security agencies can...

I encrypted my database – how do I decrypt it?

If you have the encryption key (which you entered in your settings) and you are restoring from the settings interface, then it will automatically decrypt. i.e. If you’ve changed your encryption key setting in the mean-time since you backed up, then you should...