About this plugin
ZHBackup is a WordPress backup plugin for full-site backup, restore, and migration. Use it to back up a WordPress site, restore a backup onto the same install, clone a site to staging, or migrate WordPress to a new domain — without a license key.
It packages your database, media, plugins, themes, selected wp-content folders, root files, and optional custom root folders, then restores them through a chunked process designed to avoid request timeouts.
The database is stored as a structured package instead of one large SQL replay file, so large page-builder data, post meta, options, and other oversized values can be restored in smaller, traceable steps. Live activity logs show the progress of exports, imports, database rows, large values, file restore, validation, and cleanup.
After a restore, ZHBackup lets you review the site first and run stale-file cleanup separately from the restore process. This keeps restore completion predictable while still giving you a controlled way to remove old plugins, uploads, themes, and selected root-folder files that are not present in the backup.
Key Features:
- Full-Site WordPress Backup — Back up the database, uploads, plugins, themes, mu-plugins, selected wp-content folders, root files, and optional custom root folders.
- Structured Database Package — Export database schemas, row chunks, and large values separately for reliable restores of Elementor/page-builder data and other large rows.
- Chunked Export and Restore — Process database and file operations in small AJAX steps to reduce timeout and memory-limit issues.
- Browser Upload or Server Restore — Upload backups through the browser in resumable chunks, or place backups on the server via FTP/SFTP and restore from a table of available files.
- Flexible Archive Formats — Create standard.zip backups or optimized.zhbackup archives.
- Live Activity Logs — Follow professional export/import logs with database checkpoints, row counts, large-value restore events, file progress, validation, and cleanup status.
- Post-Restore Cleanup — Save a cleanup plan after restore and run stale-file cleanup manually after reviewing the restored site.
- Scheduled Backups — Automatic daily or weekly full-site backups via WP-Cron, processed in small resumable bursts.
- Serialized-Safe Find & Replace — Update URLs safely across serialized PHP data, JSON-escaped URLs, and Elementor widget data — chunked, resumable, with a dry-run preview mode.
- Secure Backup Storage — Store backups outside the webroot when available. Inside-webroot fallbacks use an unguessable folder and filename, plus.htaccess, web.config, and index.php protections.
- Retention Policies — Automatically clean up older backups by count or age using WP-Cron. Only backups the plugin created are ever deleted; uploaded archives are never touched.
- No Required Account — Use all backup, restore, migration, and cleanup features without a license key or forced signup.
org Compliant:
- No obfuscated or encoded PHP
- Proper sanitization for all inputs
- Escaped outputs throughout
- Nonces for all form submissions
- Capability checks on every action
- No hidden external API calls
- No telemetry without explicit consent
External services
ZHBackup includes an optional newsletter signup form on the plugin Settings page.
com. It is used only to add the submitted email address to the ZHBackup newsletter or product updates list.
Data is sent only when an administrator manually submits the optional signup form. The plugin does not contact this service during normal backup, restore, migration, import, export, or find-and-replace usage.
When the form is submitted, the plugin sends:
- Email address entered in the signup form
- Site URL ( home_url() )
- Plugin slug ( zhbackup )
- Plugin version
com/terms-and-conditions
com/privacy-policy
Privacy
ZHBackup does not send telemetry or usage analytics during normal backup, restore, migration, import, export, or find-and-replace operations.
The only optional external data transfer is the administrator-initiated newsletter signup described above.