Back up your site before you let an AI change anything

Before an AI assistant or coding tool changes anything on your hosting, take a backup that you know how to restore. This guide shows the three kinds you can make yourself in Plesk on Noiz hosting: a full backup of the subscription, a backup of one WordPress site in WP Toolkit, and, on sPremium, a staging copy the assistant can work on instead of your live site. It takes about ten minutes, and it is the step that turns a bad afternoon into a two-minute restore.

Last reviewed: 19 October 2026, against the current Plesk Obsidian and WP Toolkit releases. This guide is written for Noiz hosting. It complements, and does not replace, the official Plesk documentation linked below.

Official Documentation Reference

• Plesk Customer Guide: Backing Up and Restoring Websites: what a backup contains and how restore works.
• Plesk Customer Guide: Configuring Remote Storage: keeping a copy off the server.
• Plesk Customer Guide: Restoring Backups: restoring everything or selected objects.
• WP Toolkit (Plesk Customer Guide): Back up / Restore, Clone and Copy Data for one WordPress site.

Before you start

• You can log in to Plesk for the subscription the assistant will work on.
• Your subscription has enough free disk for a backup kept on the server. A full backup can be close to the size of your site, mail and databases together. See How to check disk and bandwidth usage in Plesk.
• You have a password manager, because a backup of a site with a database should be protected with a password of its own.

Which backup fits which change

The right backup depends on what the assistant is about to touch. When in doubt, take the full backup: it covers everything the others cover.

Step 1: Take a full backup in Plesk

A full backup copies the subscription's configuration, website files, databases and mail in one archive. It is the backup that restores everything at once.

1. In Plesk, go to Websites & Domains and open Backup Manager (on some layouts it is labelled Backup & Restore under the domain).
2. Click Back up.
3. Set Type to Full. Leave Mail messages and Databases selected.
4. For Store in, choose Server storage for a backup you can restore and download at once, or a remote storage you have already set up (Step 2).
5. Tick the option to be notified by email when the task is complete, and confirm the address.
6. Click OK. The backup runs in the background; a large subscription takes a while.

The steps with screenshots are in How to generate a full backup in Plesk. Note the date and time of the backup in the list. You will need it if you restore.

Step 2: Optional: keep a copy off the server

A backup on server storage protects you from a bad change. It does not protect you from losing the server, and it counts towards your disk. A copy elsewhere covers both.

1. In the Backup Manager, open Remote Storage Settings.
2. Choose a storage your plan offers, such as FTP or FTPS to a server you control.
3. Enter the details and save. From now on you can choose that storage under Store in for a backup you start yourself. Plesk treats scheduled backups to cloud storage such as Google Drive as a premium feature, so for a schedule, FTP storage is the dependable choice.

The FTP route is in How to configure remote backups in Plesk using FTP(S) storage. If you only want one copy on your own computer, download the backup instead: click the download icon next to it, tick Use password protection, set a password and save the file.

Step 3: For WordPress, also take a WP Toolkit backup

WP Toolkit can back up one WordPress site on its own: its files and its database, without the rest of the subscription. It is the quickest backup to restore when an assistant has worked inside WordPress.

1. In Plesk, open WordPress to see WP Toolkit's list of your sites.
2. On the card of the site the assistant will work on, click Back up / Restore.
3. Click Back up and wait for the new backup to appear in the list with today's date.

The full backup from Step 1 is still your fallback.

WP Toolkit also offers a restore point before an update. That is useful, but it is not a backup: each site keeps only one, it holds only what the update will change, and the next one overwrites it.

Step 4: On sPremium, give the assistant a staging copy

The safest change is the one that never touches your live site. On sPremium, WP Toolkit can clone a WordPress site to a staging address, where an assistant or coding tool can work as hard as it likes.

1. In WP Toolkit, on the site's card, click Clone.
2. Under the target, keep Create subdomain. WP Toolkit suggests the prefix staging, which gives staging.yourdomain.com (your own domain in place of the example).
3. Click Start. WP Toolkit copies the files, the database and the settings.
4. Connect the assistant to the staging site, not the live one: its own WordPress user and application password, or its own SSH key pointed at the staging folder.
5. When you are happy with the result, click Copy Data on the staging card and choose the live site as the Target. Choose Files Only, Database Only or Files and Database. With all tables selected, WP Toolkit leaves the live site's posts, pages and users alone by default, so new orders and comments are not overwritten; read the options before you start.
6. Keep Create a restore point ticked, and take a fresh full backup of the live site just before you copy.

If your plan has no staging copy, rely on the full backup. You can compare the shared hosting plans.

Step 5: Tell the assistant about the backup

An assistant that knows the rules follows them more reliably. Paste something like this at the start of the session, or into the tool's standing instructions:

Before you change anything on my site, ask me to confirm that a backup was
taken today, and tell me what you are about to change. Work on one thing at a
time and show me the result before moving on. Do not delete files, posts,
products, orders or database tables. If something goes wrong, stop and tell me
what you changed so that I can restore the backup.

The prompt asks for no password and gives the assistant no new access. It only makes the assistant stop at the points where you want to check.

How to restore

Know which restore you will use before you need it.

• A WP Toolkit backup. In WP Toolkit, open Back up / Restore on the site's card, click the restore icon next to the backup you want and click Restore. The site's files and database go back to that moment; anything added since, such as new orders or comments, is lost.
• A full backup, in part. In the Backup Manager, click the backup, choose Selected objects and a Type of object to restore: a mail account, a database, a site, the DNS zone or individual files (Files of domains, then Add files). Restored items overwrite the current ones without asking, so restore only what went wrong.
• A full backup, in whole. As above with All objects (entire system). This puts the whole subscription back, mail included, so mail received after the backup can be lost. Restore in part where you can.
• The weekly backup Noiz takes. Every Noiz shared plan includes a weekly panel backup kept off site. For a restore from it, open a ticket and say which site and which day.

Try one restore on a quiet day, for example of a WP Toolkit backup on a staging copy, so that you know how long it takes for your site before you need it in a hurry.

Troubleshooting

• The backup fails or stops part way. This is usually disk space. Remove backups you no longer need from the Backup Manager, or send the backup to remote storage instead.
• Remote storage does not appear under Store in. It has not been set up, or its test connection failed. Open Remote Storage Settings and check the details.
• Back up / Restore is missing in WP Toolkit. The site is not registered in WP Toolkit. Use Scan in WP Toolkit to find it, or rely on the full backup.
• A restore brought back old mail or lost new orders. A full restore returns everything to the backup's moment. Restore selected objects next time, and export new orders before restoring a shop's database.

When a weekly backup is not enough

The weekly backup on every shared plan is a safety net, not a plan for a site an assistant changes every day. If you need backups more often or restored for you, see Backup on our security store page, or open a ticket and tell us how often your site changes.