How to Restore Your Old, Deleted or Expired Website

Step 1: Enter Your Domain Name

On your Dashboard (or the Restore Domain form), enter the URL of the website you want to recover. For instance, yourawesomewebsite.com.

• Make sure you only type the root domain (no trailing /path or query strings).
• Decide if you’ll be restoring the www version or the non-www version if you’re not sure, you can choose www or non-www in a later step.

Note: Some domains may be restricted (e.g., adult content or extremely large websites). If you see a “Domain Restricted” error, please contact support or try a different domain.

Step 2: View Available Snapshots

After clicking Submit, the system fetches available snapshots from the Wayback Machine. These snapshots represent different dates and times when the website was crawled.

You’ll be directed to a page showing a table of snapshots:

• Date & Time: The exact moment this snapshot was taken.
• Screenshot URL: A direct link to the archived version.
• Action Buttons: Fetch Screenshot lets you grab a preview to see if that snapshot is usable (i.e., has real content, not an error page).

You may need to scroll to find the best snapshots, or click Fetch Screenshots multiple times if the list is large.

Step 3: Identify the TO Date

The TO Date is essentially the “end” of the timeframe you’re restoring. Typically, you want the most recent, fully-functional snapshot of your site.

• Look for the snapshot that shows the best or latest version of your website.
• Preview it by clicking Fetch Screenshot.
• If the screenshot is a “This Site Can’t Be Reached” or an empty page, try an older snapshot or check the domain directly in web.archive.org .

Once decided, click the To button to lock in that snapshot date as your TO Date. This will highlight the row in green.

Step 4: Identify the FROM Date

The FROM Date is the earliest point in time you want to include. This ensures older files, images, or pages that might not exist in later snapshots are also restored.

• A common rule-of-thumb is to pick a date up to 1 year before the TO Date.
• If your site drastically changed over time, pick the earliest snapshot that still contains the structure and content you need.

After previewing, click the From button to lock in that snapshot date. This will highlight the row in yellow.

Step 5: Confirm www vs. non-www

Before saving the job, choose which version of your domain you prefer:

• www: e.g., www.yourawesomewebsite.com
• non-www: e.g., yourawesomewebsite.com

This is crucial for rewriting links properly during advanced restoration (so all internal links match your final domain setup).

Step 6: Save the Restore Job

Once both dates and the domain preference are selected, click Save Restore Job to finalize.

• You’ll be redirected back to My Jobs, where you can see the new job in pending status.
• From there, click Start Restore to begin the retrieval process for your selected time range.

Tip: If you accidentally chose the wrong snapshots, you can delete the job and create a new one at any time.

Step 7: Basic vs. Advanced Restoration

After the basic restore completes (if successful), you’ll see an option to Download Zip of your recovered files. However, if you want a more thorough restoration (e.g., fix broken links, download missing files or external resources), proceed with the Advanced Steps:

1. Extract URLs: Gathers all internal/external links from your restored pages.
2. Download External: Pulls external resources (images, CSS, JS from external domains).
3. Download Missing: Retrieves any remaining internal resources that Wayback might have missed initially.
4. Fix URLs: Rewrites all references to match your chosen domain version (www or non-www), ensuring a fully functional static site.

Each advanced step has a separate credit cost. If at any point you run out of credits, you can refill under your Billing or Credits section.

Step 8: Download & Host Your Website

Once all steps are completed (basic or advanced), you can click Download Zip to get your fully restored site.

• Hosting Tip: We recommend DreamHost (affiliate link) for smooth WordPress and static hosting experiences.
• Extract the Zip on your local machine or via cPanel, place the files in the public_html or www directory of your hosting account, and your site should go live (once DNS is correctly pointed).

Step 9: SEO & Monetization

After restoring your site, you might want to fine-tune it for search engines:

1. Fix SEO Action: If you purchased the Fix SEO advanced action, your <title>, <meta> tags, and more are automatically optimized. You can further tweak these manually once the files are in your hosting environment.
2. Insert Ads Action: For monetization, use Insert Ads to embed ad script placeholders. Then, just paste your ad codes into those placeholders for display.

Step 10: Convert to WordPress (Optional)

Many prefer WordPress’s convenience. If you want your newly restored static site converted into a WordPress theme or import, simply open a support ticket:

• Go to My Jobs → look for Open A Ticket button beside your domain/job.
• Provide details on how you want the WordPress site to function (blog, eCommerce, etc.).