How to Retrieve and Restore Your Subscribers from a cPanel Backup

We recommend that you export your subscribers before installing a major update.

This way, you can always re-import the subscribers if anything goes wrong.

This tutorial shows you a workaround you can use to import your subscribers in case you forgot to export your subscribers.

Step 1: Access cPanel and Open phpMyAdmin

1. Log in to your cPanel account.
2. Navigate to the Databases section and click on phpMyAdmin.

Step 2: Locate the Backup and Extract the SQL File

1. Download the backup file from your cPanel to your local machine if you haven’t already.
2. Extract the backup file using a file extraction tool like 7-Zip or WinRAR.
3. Inside the extracted files, locate the SQL dump of your database. This file usually ends with .sql.

Step 3: Open and Read the SQL File

1. Open the SQL file in a text editor (e.g., Notepad++, VS Code).
2. Find the SQL commands for the wp_noptin_subscribers table. Look for the section that begins with CREATE TABLE followed by wp_noptin_subscribers and the subsequent INSERT INTO statements. If you’re using a different database prefix then look for “${your_prefix}_noptin_subscribers“.

Step 4: Copy the SQL Commands

1. Copy the SQL commands related to the wp_noptin_subscribers table. Ensure you include both the CREATE TABLE statement and all INSERT INTO statements.

Step 5: Prepare to Import the Table

1. Go back to phpMyAdmin in your cPanel.
2. Select the database where you want to restore the table.

Step 6: Import the Table

1. Click on the Import tab in phpMyAdmin.
2. Create a new SQL file on your computer and paste the copied SQL commands into this file. For example, “noptin-import.sql“.
3. In phpMyAdmin, click on Choose File and select the newly created SQL file.
4. Click Go to import the table into the selected database.