blog content is GONE

  • John Brown

    (@johnbrowngreybeardgmailcom)


    13 years, 8 months ago

    For about two weeks I have been using WordPress to create two blogs hosted on our Hostmonster rented IP address. I am learning, everything was working great. I could access the blogs and others did also. I had maybe 20 posts on each blog. On Saturday March 5 I went to the URL and I got a blank page. I tried several times, always a blank page. I did not have access to my passwords that were at work so I just quit requesting. Sunday March 6 I tried to access the blog and got the welcome to wordpress, enter ??? to start your blog… page that we got when we had just installed wordpress. When I got to work today, my associate said the other blog was getting the same results. I looked at the directory on the server and there are php files in the correct directories, dated about two weeks ago probably when we set up wordpress for each blog.
    I spent the day refreshing my memory about PuTTY, MySQL, domains, usernames, and passwords. I finally found the databases wrd1 & wrd2. wrd1 was blank, not even any tables. wrd2 had several tables but the wp_post table only contained 3 records that looked like the samples, not our content.
    All of our content from both blogs disappeared. We are not hiding anything like “oh yes, I clicked the button erase all and restart”. We did nothing unusual. Right now it seems like the php files are there but the database content is missing. We never accessed the database directly or changed the passwords until today. Hostmonster has backups from the 2nd and 5th so we may get the data back.
    Any idea what happened? Does this happen often? Was I attacked?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • I think that something must have happened on the server. Have you asked them if they had any issues? Hopefully they can restore your database.

    Does this happen often?

    It is unusual to have database wiped in this manner

    Was I attacked?

    It’s possible. It’s also possible that your host may have made a boo-boo and wiped your databases. Do you have any recent database backups?

    Thread Starter John Brown

    (@johnbrowngreybeardgmailcom)

    It’s also possible that your host may have made a boo-boo and wiped your databases.

    I have other databases accessed via MySQL on this rented server and they seem to be OK. But it is not certain as the other DB is not active daily, but it was not wiped.

    Do you have any recent database backups?
    I do not (and I ask the same questions to my customers at least once a week). Hostmonster does have a backup from 2 and 5 days ago, thank you Hostmonster. But I will in the future!

    @john Brown

    I do not (and I ask the same questions to my customers at least once a week). Hostmonster does have a backup from 2 and 5 days ago, thank you Hostmonster. But I will in the future!

    You can use plugins to backup too — I use:

    Automatic WordPress Backup
    Backup WordPress

    One backs up files & DB on server daily, the other one backs up to an Amazon S3 bucket.

    Also, your data can be compromised by an attack but it could also potentially be compromised if WordPress simply cannot connect to certain parts of your database or the information is corrupted by a bad plugin, malware, etc. You should always back up your database!

    Definitely a good idea to regularly do a full backup of the data base. You always want to have this thought in mind:

    If my site got totally destroyed this exact second, am I ready to get the site right back up immediately?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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