Site Recovery

Sometimes there are unpleasant situations when for one reason or another the site is removed from the hosting. This can happen because the owner forgot to pay for hosting and discovered this fact only after a few months.In other cases, the webmaster himself deletes the site by accident or in the hope of starting anew, and then realizes that he did it in vain. In any of these cases, the question arises whether it is possible to restore the site and how to do it.

How to restore a website from backup: the easiest method

A modern website hosting service almost always includes automatic backup, as well as the ability to create a backup manually at the request of the user.

First of all, you need to remember the rule: before making any changes to your site, a backup copy of the site and database should be created and saved “in the cloud” or on your disk . But even if you have not done so, you can always request a copy of the site from the backup from your hoster.

By the way, many hosting companies keep archival copies of sites for many months after the account is no longer paid. So, even if you lost your site a few months ago, contact the support service, it is possible that you will be given instructions on how to recover a deleted site, or rather, how to get an archive copy of it.

A backup copy of the site usually looks like an archive containing all the files and folders that were on your hosting. And the answer to the question of how to restore a site from a backup is also very simple:

1. Unpack the archive.

2. Copy all files and folders to the root directory of your site via an ftp connection.

The easiest way to do this is with the help of file managers, for example Total Commander. It is possible to simply enter the site name, username and password into the ftp connection, after which you can work with hosting in the same way as with the disks on your computer. In some cases, these difficulties will not be needed, just press the “restore backup” button in the hosting control panel, and the site will be restored.

A bit harder to restore databases. They are also copied as a backup file. And to restore, you will have to go to the MYSQL panel on your hosting, click on the “Import” button and download the file. Sometimes after this the site still does not see the database. This may occur due to some kind of failure during import / export or due to the fact that the site is restored to another domain. It is very important to check the name of the database, it must be exactly the same as in the original version of the site. And then you need to go to the site configuration file (usually it is called configuration.php or confign.php), and there make some changes.

File configuration.php open in a regular notebook. Find the old domain name and change it to a new one. And so on throughout the text file. It also makes sense to check the lines in which the username and password to the databases are located (usually this data is contained in the variables DB_NAME and DB_PASSWORD), after which make sure that the name and password are correct. If you do it right, the site will be restored to its original form.

How to restore a copy of the site without backup

Of course, it is convenient if there is a backup copy of the site, and you can simply restore the site from the archive. But sometimes there are failures and accidents with data loss, unscrupulous hosters simply disappear in an unknown direction along with all the sites and backup archives, and the webmasters themselves sometimes remove the site permanently, and then they realize that they made a huge mistake.

In this case, you will be helped by the services with the help of which you can restore the pages of sites in HTML format. Of course, work with the engine, settings, scripts will have to be carried out from scratch. But often the information is extremely important, and I really do not want to lose it.

This is where web.archive.org comes to your rescue. Perhaps your site is preserved there. To get access to the pages available in the web archive, enter the command: site.ru/*. You will see the search results that lead to the pages of your site that are stored in the web archive.

Can also be used to restore information cache search engines. Go to Google in the advanced search mode, select the site whose pages you want to find, and when you go to the page, select the “saved copy” mode each time.

It is important to remember: each search engine maintains its own cache independently of the others. And therefore, in search of the desired page, you should not be limited to only the most popular search engines, maybe what you need lies somewhere on the servers bing.com.

There are other services that can save information from your site.

For example:

If you are trying to restore a blog that gave a full RSS, you should check various readers and aggregators, many pages there may be saved.

And so you should not be upset, even if you or your hoster deleted the site, how to recover information, to understand really. On the Internet, almost nothing is lost without a trace.

But it is better, of course, not to bring the situation to such a sad result. Moreover, it is very simple: save a backup copy of your resource in a timely manner and store the archive not only on the hosting, but also on your own disk or in your personal “cloud” storages.