Backups and restore

A ZIP of your media with titles, folders and collections: download it, or send it to storage of your own. Bring single items back when you need them.

What a media backup is, and is not

It holds your media files and what belongs to them: titles, captions, descriptions, alt text, folders, collections. It is made so that you can open it and take it elsewhere.

Careful: It is not a backup of your website. Pages, products, orders, customers, the database, your theme and your plugins are not in it. Keep your normal full-site backup as well.

Make one

Open Backups.
Choose what: all media, one folder or one collection.
Choose the profile:

Profile	Contains
Essential recovery	The original files and their details and organization.
Published media recovery	The same, plus the picture sizes WordPress made and the lighter copies. Larger.

Create media backup. It works in steps and can be paused.
Download the ZIP and keep it somewhere safe. Your hosting may clear its temporary storage, so a backup that only lies on the server is not safe.

If your hosting supports it, you can set a password. Keep it separate from the file: without it the backup cannot be restored.

Bring something back

Use Import backup for a backup ZIP (with its password, if it has one). Importing checks the file and lists what is in it; it changes nothing yet. Then pick an item, choose where it goes and select Restore this item:

As a new Media Library item. Always possible, also on another site. You get a new item and put it where you need it.
In place on this same-site attachment. Only on the site the backup came from, for an item that still exists. The current file is saved first, then replaced, and everything that uses the item stays connected.

Folders and collections are recreated by name. A restore does not put a picture back onto a page by itself: after "as new" you choose it there.

Send backups to your own storage

In Backups you can connect one destination:

Google Drive, with a Google connection you set up yourself (the screen shows the address Google asks for).
S3-compatible storage (Amazon S3 and services that work the same way): address, region, bucket, access keys.

Run the connection test, send one small backup, and check that it arrives before you rely on it.

Then you can let it run by itself: Daily or Weekly, with what to back up and how many backups to keep (1 to 30; 3 at the start). Older ones are removed only after a newer one has arrived safely.

The storage holds backups only. It does not serve your pictures to visitors.

If something does not work

What you see	Usual cause
Backups cannot be created	The hosting lacks ZIP support or a private folder outside the public web folder. Tools names what is missing.
A scheduled backup did not run	Background tasks are not running regularly on the site (see Tools → Check background processing).
An upload to the storage stops	It continues from where it stopped: open Backups and resume. Check the connection test.
"In place on this same-site attachment" is not offered	The backup is from another site, or the item no longer exists. Restore it as a new Media Library item.