HELP! My website has vanished and I can’t find my backup files

  • Hi there, sorry but I am in panic mode right now.

    I have had a fully functioning website on www.remarpro.com since 2021, hosted by Namecheap. I paid a web designer to set everything up for me in 2021, but she passed it all off to me a while ago. I have only had a few minor issues with my website, but generally it has always worked since 2021.

    In November 2022 I updgraded from a basic subscription with Namecheap to “Stellar” so I could use the cPanel app. I did have a minor issue with the SSL but was able to sort it out.

    Early this week I was not able to access my webpage or WP-admin page .I found out that it was an SSL certificate issue with Namecheap, so I contacted them to make sure my SSL certificate was being re-issued. They told me that “my domain name wasn’t pointed to our hosting”, and that I had to make a few changes so the domain would point to the hosting. They told me all my old DNS records would be overwritten. So I did that, and was able to access cPanel and update my DNS records. However, after the SSL certificate was re-issued, my website is literally gone. They told me I need to install wordpress from cPanel, and that “my WordPress Files are not present in the domain root folder, and there are no such files in server backups either.”

    I know that I used one of the file backup services in the Wp-admin (I can’t remember which one, I think it was rocket backup or something like that), but I can’t find the files anywhere on my computer. I thought that the backup files were stored somewhere on the cloud server.

    Now that I re-installed WordPress through cPanel, I am able to login into my wp-admin, but it is a COMPLETELY blank slate.

    How can I access all of my old back up files so I can restore my webpage?? This is 2 years of webpage development that has just vanished!! The files have to be out there somewhere right??

    Thank you for the help!

    -Caleb

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • @gruberca If you don’t have a copy of the backup files, and they aren’t found on your web server then I’m afraid they may actually be gone. Generally when you backup your website it is done off server, in the event the server crashes or gets wiped. You’d either want them locally, or stored somewhere like dropbox, Google cloud, aws etc.

    Depending on your web host, they may store a copy of your backups. It depends how you have your backups setup, who is managing them and where they are being stored.

    Thread Starter gruberca

    (@gruberca)

    Thank you @eherman24

    Ok, so turns out the person who designed my website in 2021 never told me that my website was being hosted by her personal Siteground account. She closed her business in 2022 and she gave me access to Namecheap which was hosting my domain but not to Siteground. Since I thought Namecheap was my host and also my domain provider, I had them re-direct my domain to Namecheap and away from Siteground without realizing what would happen (I’m not a web person so this all kind of new to me). Luckily I was able to contact her, and she transfered ownership of the Siteground account to me, and Siteground had a back-up of my website. I am currently working on uploading my backup files via FTP and transferring my sql database. At the moment is still saying there is a critical error in loading the website.

    But basically this person has been paying for my hosting service for almost 3 years and never transfered it to me after she closed her business.

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by gruberca.
    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by gruberca.
    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by gruberca.
    Thread Starter gruberca

    (@gruberca)

    Ok so I finished transferring all of my files (everything under public_html) and MySql database, and I reconfigured my wp-config file to point to the database, but I’m still getting “there has been a critical error on this website”

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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