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As long as you have a backup, your site is NOT gone.

The restoration instructions are in the documentation, and also our video tutorial. I recommend watching the video, as it will help you familiarise yourself with the process before you do anything. The better you are prepared, the less you will suffer.

Before you start, copy your backup archives to your local computer, and keep another copy on a flash drive. The backup archives are in your configured output directory. The default is administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup. It is all files with a .jpa, .j01, .j02 etc, or .zip, .z01, .z02 etc extensions depending on whether you chose JPA (default) or ZIP archive type. You may or may note have file with the .j01, .j02, ..., .z01, .z02, ... extensions depending on how big your backup is.

Find your site's root folder a.k.a. web root or, simply, the "site's root". Your site's root folder is usually called public_html, htdocs, or is the same as your site's domain name on most hosts. You know you are in the right folder if you see Joomla's index.php and configuration.php files. If unsure, ask your host. They will be happy to tell you, or point you to their Knowledge Base article which tells you how to access it.

If your backup archives are NOT in the default output directory you need to now move them into your site's root. If they are in the default backup output directory you should not need to do that; Kickstart will look into the default backup output directory when it does not find anything that looks like a backup archive file in your site's root.

Open your site's configuration.php file. You will need to note down the following information. Please note that technically this is not necessary as you are restoring onto the same site you backed up from, but it's a good idea to have this information on hand just in case. Keep this information in a text file on your desktop until you have fully restored your site.

• Database server hostname: found in the line beginning with public $host.
• Database name: found in the line beginning with public $db.
• Database username: found in the line beginning with public $user.
• Database password: found in the line beginning with public $password.
• Database table name prefix: found in the line beginning with public $dbprefix.

Download Akeeba Kickstart Core from our Download page. Extract the ZIP file on your local device, and upload the kickstart.php file into your site's root. 

Delete the .htaccess file from your site's root. Do note that all files whose name starts with a dot are hidden on Linux. You will have to tell your hosting control panel's file manager or your FTP/SFTP client to show hidden files.

Now access the /kickstart.php URL on your site and follow the instructions on your screen. At this point it should basically be a matter of just clicking Next a bunch of times.