How to Recover a Deleted WordPress Site (Step-by-Step)

Your hosting company is the first call when you need to recover a deleted WordPress site: most sites come back from the host’s own server backups, not from anything inside WordPress. Act the same day, because those backups roll over and older copies disappear.

This guide is for business owners and marketers who have just found their site gone, after an expired hosting plan, a mistake in the control panel, a hack or a developer who left. It sorts out what was actually deleted, gives you the steps to try in order, shows what recovery costs, and explains what to do if there is no backup anywhere.

First, work out what was deleted

“My site is gone” can mean five different problems, and each one has a different place to look. Find your row before you touch anything.

What you see	What probably happened	Where to look first	How long you have
One page or post is missing; the rest of the site works	It was moved to the Trash or deleted permanently	Pages or Posts, then the Trash tab in WordPress	30 days by default before the Trash empties
The domain shows a host error or an empty folder	Site files or the database were deleted in the hosting panel	Your host’s backup or restore tool, then support	Depends on your host’s backup schedule
The host says the account no longer exists	The hosting plan expired or was closed	Host billing and support: ask if the account can be reactivated	Set by the host; ask today
The domain shows a parking page or does not load at all	The domain registration expired	Your domain registrar	30-day Redemption Grace Period after deletion for generic domains
The site was defaced, redirects or was wiped after a warning	A hack or malware cleanup removed files	A clean backup from before the attack	As long as clean backups exist

If the site loads but shows an error message rather than missing content, nothing was deleted. Our guide to the WordPress critical error and white screen covers that case instead.

Do these things in the first hour

The biggest risk now is making recovery harder by accident. A few steps protect what is left.

1. Stop changing the server. Do not install a fresh copy of WordPress in the same folder, and do not run a one-click installer. New files can overwrite the folder a host would restore into.
2. Open a support ticket with your host. Ask, in writing, for the dates of every backup they still hold for your account, and whether each one includes both files and the database.
3. Write down the timeline. When did the site last work? Who had access? Any emails from the host or registrar about payment, suspension or expiry?
4. Search your email for backups. Many backup plugins send a notice when a backup finishes, which tells you whether one exists and where it was stored.
5. Ask anyone who built or maintained the site. Former developers and agencies often still have a backup or a staging copy.

If the site was hacked, change your hosting, WordPress and FTP passwords before you restore anything, or the attacker may simply return. Our checklist for the first hour after a hack goes through that in detail.

Restore the site from your host’s backups

Host backups are the fastest route because the host already has a full copy of your files and database on its own systems. How you use them depends on the host.

• Self-service restore. Many hosting panels have a backup or restore area where you pick a date and restore files, the database or both. Choose the most recent date when the site was working.
• Restore by request. Some hosts restore only through support, sometimes for a fee. Ask for a restore to a temporary folder or staging site first, so a wrong date does not wipe something newer.
• Closed accounts. If the plan expired, ask whether paying the overdue invoice reactivates the account with its data. Some hosts keep data for a short period after suspension; others delete it quickly. The answer is on the host’s terms of service, but support can tell you faster.

After the restore, check the home page, a few inner pages, the contact form and the login. Then download a copy of the restored site to your own computer before you do anything else.

Restore from a backup plugin or a copy you have

If the host has nothing, look for a backup made by a plugin such as UpdraftPlus, Jetpack VaultPress Backup or BlogVault. These often store copies off the server, in Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3 or the vendor’s own cloud, so they survive when the hosting account does not.

A complete WordPress backup has two parts, and you need both:

• The files: above all the wp-content folder, which holds your theme, plugins and uploaded images.
• The database: usually a .sql file, which holds every page, post, setting and user.

With both parts, the site can be restored on the same host or a new one. The usual order is: set up hosting, install a clean WordPress, then restore through the same plugin that made the backup, or upload the files and import the database by hand. If you are moving to a new host at the same time, our guide to moving a WordPress site to a new host covers DNS, testing and the switch-over.

A files-only backup brings back the design and images but not the content. A database-only backup brings back the text but not the theme. Either is still worth a lot: the missing half can usually be rebuilt.

Recover a single deleted page or post

When only one item is missing, check the Trash. In the WordPress dashboard, open Pages (or Posts), click the Trash link above the list, hover over the item and choose Restore. According to the WordPress configuration documentation, the Trash keeps posts, pages, attachments and comments for 30 days by default before deleting them permanently. A developer can change that setting, so the window on your site may be shorter.

Once an item is deleted permanently, its revisions go with it. The only routes left are a database backup, which a developer can search for the single page without restoring the whole site, or an archived copy of the public page.

If your domain expired rather than your site

Sometimes the website still exists on the server, but nobody can reach it because the domain lapsed. Log in to your registrar and renew it if you can. Under ICANN’s Expired Registration Recovery Policy, generic domain registries such as .com must offer a 30-day Redemption Grace Period after a registration is deleted, during which the registrar that deleted it can restore it at your request. Restoring in this period usually costs more than a normal renewal.

Country domains such as .co.uk or .ie follow their own registry rules, so ask your registrar for the exact deadline. Once the domain is back, the site usually returns on its own when DNS updates.

When there is no backup at all

No host copy, no plugin backup, no developer copy: the site can still be rebuilt, but not restored. The working WordPress install is gone, so the aim becomes recovering the content and design and putting them into a new site.

• The Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine stores snapshots of many public pages, often with text, images and layout. Our guide on restoring a website from the Wayback Machine explains what it can and cannot give back.
• Not Google’s cache. Older guides tell you to search for a cached copy on Google. Google removed cache links from its results in early 2024, and said the cache search operator would go too, as Search Engine Land reported at the time. Do not count on it.
• Your own files. Brochures, email newsletters, social posts, design files and documents from your designer often hold the text and images you need.

From our projects: every recovery project starts with a free archive check, so you know how much of the site can be brought back before you pay anything. We then rebuild the site as WordPress or HTML and fix links and images where the archives allow. Medium rebuilds come with a page-by-page recovery report, and large rebuilds include redirects for recovered URLs.

Functions such as forms, logins, stores and bookings are not in any archive. They have to be set up again, which is why a rebuild is quoted on the page count and features.

What it costs to recover a deleted WordPress site

The cost depends on which route works. Here are our published prices from the website recovery and restoration service and the Attors pricing page.

Situation	Who does it	Attors price	Typical time with us
Host has a backup and restores it	Your host	Nothing from us; some hosts charge a restore fee	Set by your host
You have a backup file and need it restored and checked	Attors on-demand development	$35 an hour, booked in blocks of 5 hours	Depends on the size and state of the backup
No backup; rebuild a site of up to 20 pages from archives	Attors recovery, Small Site	$290	3–5 days
No backup; rebuild up to 100 pages	Attors recovery, Medium Site	$590	1–2 weeks
No backup; 100+ pages, or a database or store rebuild	Attors recovery, Large Site	From $1,190	2–4 weeks
Site was hacked and needs cleaning before or after restore	Attors malware removal	From $199	24–48 hours

All recovery plans include 30 days of free support. Hosting and domain renewals are paid directly to your host and registrar. If malware is involved, see our WordPress malware removal service before restoring, because restoring an infected backup brings the infection back.

How to make sure this never happens again

The most common weak point is simple: the only backup lived inside the same account that disappeared. Fix that and most of the risk goes away.

• Keep at least one backup off the server, in cloud storage you control, not only with the host.
• Back up daily if the site changes often, weekly at the very least, and keep several weeks of copies.
• Test a restore once or twice a year on a staging copy. A backup you have never restored is a guess.
• Put hosting and the domain in your own name and your own billing, with auto-renew on and a card that will not expire unnoticed.
• Keep access details in a shared password manager, so a developer leaving never means losing the keys.

If you would rather not manage this yourself, our WordPress care plans start at $49 a month with daily backups, uptime monitoring and tested updates.

Sources checked on November 5, 2026: WordPress Trash default of 30 days from the wp-config page of the WordPress developer documentation; the 30-day Redemption Grace Period from ICANN’s Expired Registration Recovery Policy; the removal of Google cache links from Search Engine Land’s February 2024 report. Attors prices from our pricing page on the same date.

Get your site back, or find out what is recoverable

Attors Technologies is a web development agency that restores and rebuilds WordPress sites for businesses in the US, UK and Europe. Send us your domain and what happened. We will check your options and the archives for free, tell you what can come back, and give you a fixed price before any work starts.

Request a free recovery check