Even the largest hosting companies are not immune from errors. Sometimes site owners find that their brainchild does not open. The reasons can be many - failures in the hosting systems, random actions of the owners themselves or hacking of the platform by intruders. What to do? Are months and even years of work lost in vain? Fortunately, site data recovery is possible with the help of certain actions. You can read the detailed step-by-step instructions for resuming a resource’s work in this article.
Site backup
What is a backup site? As you might guess, this is a duplication of all site files, databases, FTP accounts and other hosting parameters, with which you can completely recreate your resource. All parameters are copied to a stand-alone server, which is usually located in another place. This is done so that in the event of hosting disappearing or a hacker attack on it, your files would remain safe and sound. For example, in 2009, a fire broke out at the Hosting.ru storage facility, which destroyed most of the information from hosting clients. It was possible to recover the information only thanks to copies in the company's data center, which was located at a different address.
A backup copy of the site, or “backup”, is also needed in order to protect the owner from hacker attacks or accidental deletion of files. If you invested a lot of time and effort into a resource, it will be very disappointing to lose it. Therefore, experts strongly recommend that before buying a hosting, clarify information about whether it has a dual backup system . Better yet, keep a copy of the site every week on your computer. These measures to prevent the removal of the site will allow you to save information and customers in case of unpleasant surprises.
How to restore a site from backup?
Restoring a site from backup is usually very easy and simple, if you take care to save the necessary information in time or just choose the right hosting provider. 2010 showed that even hosters have serious problems during which user sites can be inactive or even deleted. Therefore, do not take everyone’s word for it, regularly save backups manually. If you do everything right, then restoring the site will not take much time. To do this, it will be enough to go to the administrative panel of your site and perform simple steps.
Step-by-step site recovery
What actions must be performed to resume the resource?
- Go to the admin panel and find the appropriate section. Usually it is designated as: "Backups" or BackUp.
- Open the version opposite the date you need.
- Select the domain of your site.
- In the event that it is necessary to restore all the site files, check the box next to public_html and click the "Restore" button. If you need only certain files, select them manually.
After the actions taken, the site should be updated, and before your eyes there will be a previous copy of the resource. If this does not happen, then most likely the site contains some additional problems.
Recovery recommendations from specialists
Experts recommend taking the necessary measures in advance for the possible restoration of the site:
- Regularly back up all site files. This is most convenient to do at night, because during this time all the SQL Server data will be duplicated, and in the future you can quickly restore it.
- Make sure that the size of the folder on the backup server in which you are going to store a copy of the site is sufficient for all files.
- Store site backups in a secure and remote repository that will be available if necessary.
- It’s best to have 12-20 copies of the site immediately over the last time on disk or in cloud storage.
These simple steps will help you avoid big problems in case of problems with the hosting.
How to backup?
There is another way to restore the site: via FTP connection and phpMyAdmin panel. In fact, these are two different ways. If copying files through FTP does not help, then you should try to restore the site through the database.
To create a copy, you need to connect to the hosting via FTP connection. This can be done using the "Explorer" or a special program for working with FTP-servers. Then you need to copy all the files and folders you need to the hosting. After the copying is completed, you just need to open the site and check its operation - most likely, its functionality will be restored.
If this does not happen, site restoration is possible by connecting to phpMyAdmin and importing the database. How to do it?
- Select the desired database.
- Click the Import tab.
- Select the backup database file.
- Complete the process by clicking the Forward button.
After that the process will be completed, you will again be able to enjoy the impeccable work of your site.
How to restore a site if there is no backup
As you can see, you can’t go far in restoring a site without a backup. Can this be done if no files and copies were saved?
There is a small chance. The search engine system stores many copies of various sites. You just need to type in the search engine the name of your resource and after the results are displayed, click on the “Copy” icon next to the direct link. In Yandex, the request will look like this:
- "Http://yandex.ru/yandsearch?numdoc=50&text=%23url%3D%22site.ru*%22%7C%23url%3D%22www.site.ru*%22&pag=d&rd=0", where "site .ru ”is the name of our site.
In the Google search engine, you can restore site pages by clicking on the link:
- "Http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Asite.ru&filter=0"
A significant disadvantage of this method is that search engines do not store pictures. Thus, only text will be available for reading, without any graphic images. If you still want to try to recreate the original look of the site, you can do this in another way: using the website web.archive.org. It stores web archives of a huge amount of resources. If your site is more than 2-3 years old, then it will most likely be in saved copies. To restore the site using the archive, you need to go to the site, enter the domain and click on the BROWSE HISTORY button. The site will show you the last date that information from your resource was saved, which you can recover using another wonderful site: r-tools.org. Now you know how to recover lost data using various methods.
Site Password Recovery
But access problems are not the only ones that have to meet those who maintain their blog. Often, resource owners are faced with the loss of a password from the site. Password recovery is possible via email or phone. If you are reading this article, it is likely that for some reason these options did not work. You can also change the password from the site’s administrative panel using another, more complex way:
- Through the MySQL database: you need to go into it and find the users column on the left. You will be immediately transferred to the editing page of admins and site owners. Opposite the users_password column, you can see the password, replacing which you will provide yourself with free access to the site.
- If you have a popular Wordpress platform, you can replace the password by clicking on the link: site / wp-admin, where site is the domain of your resource.
Summary
Losing a site password is a very unpleasant situation that is familiar to many. Even worse, when access to the resource is impossible due to problems in the hosting or hacker attacks. Fortunately, all these problems can be solved with the help of simple preventive measures. If you back up your site weekly, then you have nothing to fear.