Have I lost my website for good?

bass_junkie83

bass_junkie83

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Dave
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I have ballsed up massively.

I recently moved hosts as I was having trouble with my emails. Not very tech savvy so was in touch with the support guys for the new hosting company who said that they would transfer everything over.

Turns out they were referring to just my domains, not all my website files.

I never downloaded it all from my original host before moving and now have no site and none of the files to upload to my new host.

Anyone got any clever ideas, or am I up poo creek?
 
Your old hosts will possibly have a backup still. That's probably your best (only) chance.

Do you not have any old backups yourself?
 
Firstly I'd speak to the old hosting company and see if they have got a back up of your old site, they could zip up and send to you. Otherwise you'll have to get your content off of something like the Internet Archive, I've seen that there is a copy of your site from Feb 11th of this year https://web.archive.org/web/20140211100252/http://www.photographerinessex.com/ so you can get some of your content back (although they don't seem to keep copies of large images).

Hope this helps

Nick
 
Cheers guys. I will get in touch with the host first and see what they can do.

No recent backups I'm afraid. I'm strict with it with my local files, but never thought of it for my website.
 
I may be missing soemhtign.. But surely the site had to be put online? ie from yours or soemones computer.. surely theres an offline copy?
 
KIPAX said:
I may be missing soemhtign.. But surely the site had to be put online? ie from yours or soemones computer.. surely theres an offline copy?
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With online content management systems (CMS) like Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger etc, and some hosting companies now having their own CMS, users don't have to update their files locally and then FTP the files to the webserver in the 'traditional method', the site owners work on their sites 'live'.
 
KIPAX said:
I may be missing soemhtign.. But surely the site had to be put online? ie from yours or soemones computer.. surely theres an offline copy?
Click to expand...
My old host used Cpanel. So my website designer created the site and uploaded all the files. But I have modified it extensively since then, but by working on the files remotely, I have no copies here.

This was my first encounter with working on websites, I just assumed that was how it worked until I got my new hosting and they told me that I needed to install a ftp client.

Most of what I have learnt has come from making mistakes. I've learned more than I wanted to this time!
 
Looking at the source code of your files on the above link, I see that it's using a Yoast SEO Wordpress plugin, so I'd suggest it's was actually using Wordpress, hence you not having a backup locally. If you want to backup Wordpress sites in the future, have a look at this http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups
 
I used WordPress for the blog, but not the main site. A can see a long day ahead!
 
Also just be aware that if you were using software to run the site (like your own wordpress install or any other PHP scripts) then there'll also be a database which you should back up in the future.
 
You'll also need to recreate the pages with the original names or when Google indexes them it will 404 the old pages and treat your replacement pages as new. That could really mess with your SEO rankings
 
bass_junkie83 said:
How would I find the ip address of my previous host?
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Use a reverse dns lookup to find the IP address. FWIW I found your current website address IP but have no idea whether the WHOIS data is current i.e. does it still show the old hosts servers names or your new ones? EDIT ~ just rechecked and the date of the WHOIS database entry is 2nd June???

But I did as Meno suggested and got login dialogue for username & password?
 
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Broric said:
That'll just get his new IP address...
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I was also thinking that he could do a reverse DNS of his host web address..............granted if his host uses multiple servers (a list or range of IP addresses may get thrown up?) then a dead end as his cPanel may not show up when he tries to login, but worth a punt in case it is on the IP that turns comes up by this search method???
 
I done a DNS history check and sent him an IP from his previous host, no guarantees it's the right one thou.
 
It's back! All up and running just like it was before.
I got in touch withthe guy who owned the old server that it was hosted on and he was able to sync the files accross to my new host for me.

At the moment, the one thing I don't have is my wordpress blog. I'm just waiting to hear back as to wether the same thing can be done with that or if I need to recreate it from scratch, so fingers crossed.

But at least the site itself is back, that's the main thing. Will be sorting out a backup first thing when I get home tonight!
 
bass_junkie83 said:
At the moment, the one thing I don't have is my wordpress blog. I'm just waiting to hear back as to wether the same thing can be done with that or if I need to recreate it from scratch, so fingers crossed.
Click to expand...

Good to hear that the site is back up. As I mentioned yesterday, your blog is available from the Internet Archive of 24th April 2014, here https://web.archive.org/web/20140423005315/http://www.photographerinessex.com/blog/ so you should be able to rebuild it from there.

Nick
 
Fortunatly the blog is back up and running too, reinstated in the same way.

The only thing is I need to do is go through and update all the inkds tot he blog to include the www's as it no longer works without them.

Now that is all back up and on the new hosting, it's brought up a question.

Previously I had two domain names, on two different hosting account, one redirected tot he other. So no matter wich addresss was inputted, it always displayed the one where the site was hosted.

I now have the two same domain names, but both on one hosting account. One is mapped tot he other, but this means that either domains can be used.

Before, if you were to go to www.davidwalker-photography.co.uk, it would redirect you to www.photographerinessex.com and then from then on, any page you navigated to from there would be an extension of that domain.

Now it seems to be a mirror of some desctription rather than a redirect. For example, it is now possible to have www.davidwalker-photography.co.uk/Portfolio.html as well as www.photographerinessex.com/Portfolio.html, both displaying exactly the same thing.

Will this result in my being penalised by search engines for duplicate content, or will they know that they are one and the same and treat both as one site. Could I concievably end up in a situation where my site appears twice under the two domain names in search results?
 
I thought as much. I have contacted the host and sked them. Thank you!
 
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