massive thanks.....

Just to saye a huge "Thank you" to Jay, Richard, Newton and everyone else that have jumped in to help me save my site foolowing last nights disaster. Your help is very much appreciated and valued.

Its great to see people on here rallying in someones hour of need, and it just shows how sttrong the community spirit has become on here. I know there are fall outs, and spats - usually over money or code, but at the end of the day it is this spirit that keeps dolphin going.

Hopefully my site will be back to normal, or as near as dam it, by bed time tonight.

Thanks,

Nathan @ Debbie,

Global Dance Network Ltd.

Your site is back! That's great; could you share what happened?

It has to have been more than just uninstalling one module.

Well... technically, it is not back... It is there and online... but it is very poorley still lol.

I have lost a bucket load of custom work, a bigger bucket load of data, most of my sanity, and now need to spend an eternity getting to back to where it was.  So far all I can pinpoint is an sql database corruption but that cant be it. I will be digging some more tonight beforeIi start to piece everything back together how it was  and pray that i have custom files somewhere.......

Will let you know as soon as i know more...

Thanks......

I'm asking the obvious (and it may sound "blunt") but have you put in place a system to automatically backup your entire site every night, e.g. keeping 5 days worth of backups?  My programmer and I joke about how much I back up my site's code and db info (both automatically and manually) but I've learned the hard way that it's super important for complex sites... especially where a seemingly simple "safe" change can mess up the entire site... and we can't fix it quickly.

Why can't that be it?

Damage to data happens all the time. Thats why we have this thing called backups. :)

After looking over there file structure, it looks like a backup from 8/17/2011 from the time stamp of all the files but with a current database but with all the modules uninstalled.

I think they need to restore then entire site files and db from the most current they can find.  or there hosting can find.

HFW have no current backup.... they had it switched "off" on a managed server.... basically we have lost 2 years work and over £20K.....

I realize there's good reason for people to say "hindsight is 20-20"... but I'm surprised that neither you nor your programmer(s) have a more recent complete copy of all site files.  For that matter, I'm beyond surprised that your hosting company does not have a backup of the harddrive that contains your site files.  Just to be extra sure... PHONE THEM and talk to their lead techie to find out if they've "imaged" the harddrive(s) your site uses.

Apparently "Managed" server doesnt actually mean Managed server.... If I knew about servers I would not have paid through the nose for a "Managed" Server...... HFW are just washing their hands of us and this entire mess.....

Nice customer service HFW.....

HFW offers a "Managed" package without a backup service... know any good lawyers in Chicago?  At the very least, I'd ask for a complete refund of every penny I'd ever paid them. 

What package do you have... "Dedicated - Fully Managed" ?

Oh I see... they offer "Backup and Restore assistance" but then make you pay extra for the Daily Backups service @ $50 per month.  I'm glad I don't use HFW... I pay less than $50 per year for daily backup service with TMD Hosting.

We have a dedicated - managed server. It cost a lot each month and when it goes wrong they inform us that backups was not turned on even though they have done a restore in the past.... So it must have been on in the past to enable them to do the back up before...... and we didnt turn it off because we dont know how.....

Sounds like they screwed up... I'm under the impression that hosting companies will do at least monthly backups for their systems.  I think TMD backs up shared hosting servers once a week... keeping only one backup at a time.

 if you only had spent that much time in learning a thing or two about running a server this would never happen :)

I've been doing a lot of digging and found a backup from 8/17/2011 with a lot of data in it if that helps you at all ?