Obtaining Emergency Snapshot Access

Note: This feature is NOT applicable to those who already have our Backup Plan as you will already have access to your files for recovery. Your website will need to be hosted with us for at least 1 week for any snapshots to be available.

An important first step when recovering your website files from a backup is to determine when the problem started to occur. Knowing when the issue occurred with your website is helpful because you will need to find a snapshot from before this date. If you are unsure when exactly the issue occurred with your website, it can be helpful to recall the last time you remember your website working as intended. Please be aware that our Emergency Access feature will give you access to snapshots from the last 2 months. If the issue occurred with your website before the last 2 months, our Emergency Access will not have a snapshot before this timeframe.

Registering for Emergency Access

1. Login to your Bravenet account.
2. Visit the ‘Web Hosting’ tab in your account.
3. Click ‘Manage’ next to your website.
4. Click the ‘Backup/Export’ button found on this page.
5. Under the Emergency Access heading, click ‘Purchase Emergency Access’.
6. Your Backup Access plan will now be in your cart. Follow the prompts to check out.

Once you have completed your purchase, you will immediately have access to your emergency snapshots which can be explored by visiting the ‘Backup/Export’ button described in Step 4 above. You will have access to these snapshots for the next 7 days. Please see the ‘Downloading a Backup to your Computer’ for further steps on how to download a backup.

Downloading a Backup to your Computer

You will need to download the backup to your computer or external storage location in order to access your snapshot files. Please ensure you have plenty of adequate space on your computer or external storage location for the backup before downloading. All website snapshots can be downloaded in ZIP file format so you will need to extract the ZIP file on your computer to view the contents. Database snapshots are offered in SQL format which you can import to PhpMyAdmin in your Bravenet account.

Step 1: Locate your backup snapshots.

1. Login to your Bravenet account.
2. Visit the ‘Web Hosting’ tab in your account.
3. Click ‘Manage’ next to your website.
4. Click the ‘Backup/Export’ button found on this page.

You will now see all available snapshots under the ‘Available’ tab.

Step 2: Locate the correct type of snapshot.

All backup snapshots will list the date it was recorded under the ‘Date’ field and the type of snapshot under the ‘Type’ field. If you are looking for a website snapshot, these are listed as ‘monthly’ and ‘weekly’. If you are looking for a snapshot of your database files, these are listed as ‘Weekly SQL’ under the Type field. Once you have located the correct type of snapshot and the correct date, click ‘List Files’ next to the entry.

Step 3: Export and download your snapshot.

Click ‘Export’ next to the name of the website or database you are looking to recover. Depending on the size of the export, this may take a few minutes to process. Once this is processed, you will see your export listed under the ‘Downloads’ tab as a ZIP file or a SQL file. Click ‘Download’ next to your entry to download this to your computer, this may take some time to complete depending on the size of the backup.  

Step 4: Restore your website or database from backup.

If you are restoring a database, please see ‘How to Backup and or Restore your MySQL Database Using phpMyAdmin’.

You can recover your website by uploading your files to your website through your SFTP account (see our SFTP article if you do not have an SFTP account yet). You can upload missing files or the entire backup folder to recover an entire website. Note you will want to select the option to ‘Replace’ existing files in your SFTP manager if you are looking to replace your existing website with the backup files.