For many reasons, including hacks and broken sites, WordPress users find themselves in the need to reinstall their blog software, to correct the problem. No matter what the reason is, you should use one of the easiest WordPress re-installation methods, to make your site works again.
But, you need to keep in mind that the first option lets you reinstall your blog from the WordPress dashboard, that’s easy and will help. The second way is using the cPanel control panel, where, you need to have a backup of your database, and the “wp-content” folder that includes your uploaded photos, plugins, and themes that you want to keep. Let’s started with the first options.
Reinstalling WordPress from the dashboard
This is the fastest and easiest method, all you have to do is to login into your WordPress admin area. Then, click the “Dashboard”, and, “Updates” as the below screenshot.
Now, you can just click the “Reinstall Now” buttons, and the fresh installation will replace the old one. This easy method can fix lots of problems with broken sites. The best thing about updating WordPress from the dashboard is that you don’t need to replace your files. It’s simple and effective, but, it can’t fix all the problems.
Reinstalling WordPress from cPanel
You need this method to completely reinstall WordPress from scratch. And then, you need to link the new installations to the old database, and the old “wp-content” files like themes, plugins, and more, if you have. So, the first thing you have to do is to create a backup, to make sure that all things are secured.
At the same time, if you want to save time downloading the files that you need only, then, download the database and the “wp-content” directory only. With the above folders, you can re-install WordPress without any issue.
To make things easy for you, download the database directly from the phpMyAdmin, click on the phpMyAdmin icon in your cPanel. Next, select the database you want to download and click “Export”, at the top of the page tables. The downloaded file will be compressed, and you can use it to restore your database in another install.
After downloading the two backups, login to cPanel and reinstall your WordPress sites. The majority of sites use Softaculous for the installation, so click that icon.
On the next page, you will see all your installed WordPress sites. Select the one that you want to remove, and click the deletion icon, and it will be fully removed. After that, you need to install WordPress for the same domain name, using Softaculous, or any other auto-installer software.
When you have a completely fresh WordPress install, the first thing you need to do is to upload and restore the old database. The easiest method is to login INto phpMyAdmin, then, select your new database name and select all the tables, then, select “Drop” from the drop-down menu. What you need now is to delete the new database tables just to restore the old one.
Just after dropping all the new tables, click on “Import” on the top of the page, and you will be given the choice to upload your old database, and then click the “Go” button. Next, wait some time depending on your database file size, and Internet connection speed, and the old database tables will be successfully imported into the new database and installation.
The second step that you need is to delete the directory “wp-content”, then, replace it with your old directory with the same name “wp-content”. That folder contains your themes, your plugins, and the uploaded files, such as images.
You don’t need any extra steps like linking databases or anything else. If you follow these steps, your new installation will save all the old site content and files, but, with a fresh WordPress install.
