Restore Godaddy Managed WordPress Hosting from External Backup

So you have an existing website with a wordpress install. You’ve been hosting it on a free service like Google’s or Bluehost, and now you want to restore it to its original state. How do you do that? And would you be better off paying a small monthly fee for a reliable web host? Let’s explore the options.

Backup Your WordPress Database With WP-Clone

One of the best things you can do for your website is to make regular backups of its content. The great thing about WordPress is that it’s very easy to backup and restore the content of a website. All you need is WordPress itself and the good old SQLite database program. You can download the latter from your web host, for example.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed SQLite on your computer, you can use the command-line interface — also called the shell — to interact with it. A shell is a tool that allows you to connect to your SQLite database and make changes to it. For example, the following command will create a new table named “products” in your database:

$ sqlite3 mydbname.db
$ <type your command> 
$ exitsqlite3

Once you've entered that command, you can close the shell and go about your business. A while later, when you want to open the shell again, you can enter the above command to add a new table to your database.
WordPress backup and restore is very easy to do. After you've downloaded and installed the WordPress backup tool, you can run it by entering “php wp-cli.phar backup” in your computer's command window. That will create a.ZIP archive containing a copy of your entire blog. You can then download that archive to your computer and decompress it to get a copy of your original blog. All you need is an external hard drive, a broadband connection, and a little bit of patience. You can restore the backup to its previous state by opening it up in WordPress and importing the database. The above command will do that for you:
$ php wp-cli.phar backup > ~/Desktop/wordpress.sqlite3
$ <type your command> 
$ exitsqlite3

You can see from the above example how easy it is to use the WordPress database to store and restore all of your site's content. This method has the advantage of being completely free, as you're not paying for web hosting. The disadvantage is that you'll need to download and install a tool on your own computer in order to use it. That's not difficult, but it's not something you can just run off of a web host either.
Restore Godaddy Managed WordPress Hosting From External Backup
If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that Google's free web hosting is not what it used to be. Back in the day, you could gain considerable advantage by hosting your site on Google's Free Web Hosting. That was before they changed their TOS and now they've got you beat on bandwidth. It used to be that you'd get away with running a lower priority website on a free hosting plan. That's mainly because there was no option but to run a low priority website on free Google hosting. Now that they've updated their ToS to actively prevent low priority websites from being run on their service, it's no longer the best option for people who want to run a blog or a small business website.
Let's say that you've backed up your WordPress database and you want to restore the backup to your hosted server. You'll need to set up a PayPal account in order to pay for the service. You can use the above PayPal payment link to make the payment. Just make sure that you use the correct PayPal account as that will ensure that the payment goes through without any issues. When that's done, you can contact the support team at Godaddy and ask them to cancel your free hosting. You'll need to provide them with your FTP credentials so that they can remove your website from their servers.
One of the best things about Godaddy is that they provide you with a free domain if you have an existing account with them. You can use that free domain to create a new website or to point an existing domain to a new location. When you're ready to launch your new site, you can contact the support team at Godaddy again and ask them to activate your new site.
In the event that you don't have an existing account with them and you want to register a new domain, you can use the above email address and password to create an account. As soon as that's done, you can go back to the dashboard and point your domain to your new hosting package. If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that all of the configuration options for your new site have been pre-selected. Just make sure that you choose the correct plan based on the type of content you want to host. If you have a personal blog, go with the simple plan as it comes with limited resources. If you have a business site, consider their Plus or Pro plan as it offers more features and is more suitable for high traffic sites.
The Takeaway
If you're looking for a cost-effective way to host your blog or a small business website, then you can't go wrong with Google's free hosting. It's widely available and while not perfect, it's definitely the best option out there. However, if you're looking for a high-quality web host that offers additional features, then you can't go wrong with Godaddy. Their Plus or Pro plan is a great choice for people looking to run a business website or blog with all of the features they need. Thanks for reading! We hope this article was helpful.