Nightmare – Entire WordPress Site Deleted :(

  • Hi Folks.

    Having a nightmare here, I hope that someone can help.

    I run a few wordpress sites and was updating each of them yesterday to discover one had been erased from history. It was a site for a paying client that had taken ages to make and only been live for a number of weeks.

    It gave me a 403 Forbidden error:

    You don’t have permission to access / on this server.
    Server unable to read htaccess file, denying access to be safe

    I initially thought the server could be down or my IP had been blacklisted so signed in with Filezilla. Everything in there has been deleted apart from 3 ‘bash’ files.

    I’ve tried googling to find out what could have happened, to no avail. I thought it must be a hosting issue and they could of accidentally moved or deleted the folder from their server(?) They claim they haven’t touched anything.

    The wordpress itself was protected with a firewall and security and I got no alerts of anyone logging on. It was working fine as of last Friday, plus I don’t see why anyone would hack it just to delete everything?

    Does anybody have any idea what could have happened?

    Thanks in advance.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • Aren’t there logs from the server itself for logins, ftp access or user actions? There must be something written somewhere of what happened. Especially if you’re on a shared hosting plan the server guys should be able to find out as they have to know who logs on and does what etc. I’ve had a case in the past of a client giving ftp access to his ‘friend’ who got rid of everything as a ‘joke’ he said but they both denied it even though we had his IP from the logs, that’s why I’m asking.

    In any case I’ve never head of a full deletion out of the blue myself either.

    I hope at least you had backups.

    Best regards,
    Konstantinos

    Thread Starter davepez

    (@davepez)

    Thanks for your reply Xkon.

    Good thinking, I will ask them if they have any logs.

    I got an email from them an hour or so ago saying they are trying to rebuild the site from a backup so fingers crossed! If all else fails I have a ‘backupguard’ backup, however no idea how to restore it as of yet!

    Cheers.

    Thread Starter davepez

    (@davepez)

    Thanks for your reply Xkon.

    Good thinking, I will ask them if they have any logs.

    I got an email from them an hour or so ago saying they are trying to rebuild the site from a backup so fingers crossed! If all else fails I have a ‘backupguard’ backup, however no idea how to restore it as of yet!

    Cheers.

    Thread Starter davepez

    (@davepez)

    test

    Thread Starter davepez

    (@davepez)

    Testing 123. I can’t seem to reply to this now.

    Moderator Kathryn Presner

    (@zoonini)

    Your replies were caught in the forum’s spam filter. I’ve removed them now.

    No problem buddy. Inform us of any findings as it will be interesting for sure to see what went down.

    As for the backupguard it should be as easy as installing the plugin and selecting what backup file you want for the restoration I presume. Although I’ve never used it myself.

    Best regards,
    Konstantinos

    always use a backup plugin to take automatic weekly backup to a third party website like dropbox or someplace on your server.

    i hope the server guys are able to rebuild website through a backup.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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