As this place is essentially the font of all human knowledge and I’m such a Luddite that I regard the internet as a form of witchcraft, can you answer me this. I suspect that I already know the answer, but I’m clinging on to a slightly unrealistic sense of optimism….
I’ve had my website up and running for about 10 years and always had the same company hosting it. It’s nothing fancy. Standard Wordpress site that I built and which I upload all illustration my work to.
I went to update it the other day and get a message saying ‘this domain name is parked’ and no website. So I email my hosting company and haven’t had a reply. So I look into it and the companies house website tells me that the local company was dissolved last month. On looking at my bank statements the last hosting payment they took was the end of November.
Like I said, I probably know the answer to this already, but that’s all gone forever, isn’t it? An ex-website. If so, that’s a proper ballache as it’s got a decade’s worth of work on it.
Any answers from those more knowledgeable than me (which is everyone) would be greatly appreciated. Ta
who actually made the website? the hosting company? nobody given you a back-up anywhere?
i would imagine you'd have had some sort of communication about it? with perhaps migration guidance??? rather than them just up and gone?
there are websites out there which take archives of all internet stuff btw, you might find an archive at least you can copy and paste the pages from for future re uploading elsewhere
Your wordpress data is almost certain to have gone, but I'd check who's taken over the hosting of that website, it's possible they got backups as part of the liquidation/ fire sale.
Other than that, you might be able to recover the content from the way back machine / internet archive
i would imagine you’d have had some sort of communication about it? with perhaps migration guidance??? rather than them just up and gone?
You’d think so, wouldn’t you, but nothing. I’ve been through my emails and the last communication was an invoice for the hosting for November. Nothing other than that
Its Elon, you've been rude about him. Have you seen enemy of the state? This is just the beginning. Hide your blender.
I'm seeing some graphics from your site on the internet archive. You have to be patient with the loading.
go to archive.is and give it your domain name. You might get lucky. Though, retrieving a decade's worth of material page-by-page is going to be painful.
That sounds like a nightmare Binners.
Without wanting to derail the thread, could one of you techy types please explain to me (and maybe Binners too) how this website hosting thing works? For example- I have a website for my blog (adventures with prostate cancer.com). I wanted to have my blog as a website so I could play around with it and not have adverts. But I don't really understand how it works.
I understand I pay for a domain name, and use WordPress. Bluehost are involved... but what do they do?! And can I download / back-up my work? I'd hate to lose it all like Binners has. After my demise, and when I no longer pay for it, could my wife still read it all?
Any explanations or advice greatly received.
I don't know anything about wordpress.
But backups: this is why.
And also why reliance on one service provider is to be used very cautiously.
Even though all my primary personal data is on Google drive, I still keep mirrors and backups of all the important data on physical disks in my pc at home.
Without wanting to derail the thread, could one of you techy types please explain to me (and maybe Binners too) how this website hosting thing works?
In short, there are two main elements. The address/domain name, and the hosting. The address is what people type into the browser to get there, and the hosting is someone's computer somewhere that you're renting a bit of to run some software to actually show something when people do get there and is what contains what you think of as 'your website'.
You don't have to have the same company providing both.
Wordpress is a popular example of software people run to provide a website but other options exist. Whatever you choose it generally needs to be kept up to date.
If someone keeps paying the bills (and the companies involved don't go bust) then a website could stay online for quite a while. Sooner or later though, software will move on and whatever version it's running will be so out of date that modern devices won't run or load it any more, and that'll be that.
Having done a bit of digging, you can get access to your website with a bit of hosts file jiggery-pokery. I’ve sent you an email with details!
Well, I'm intrigued. What did you do?
I understand I pay for a domain name, and use WordPress. Bluehost are involved… but what do they do?! And can I download / back-up my work? I’d hate to lose it all like Binners has.
you can do everything (domain name, hosting) through Google now, so I'd probably just do that rather than rely on some random web hosting company that might suddenly just disappear! Plus you can manage everything including email through the same interface which makes things simpler.
Well, I’m intrigued. What did you do?
I ascertained that his domain name had expired (which was why he was seeing the parked message), then looked up historical IP address mappings for the hostname at https://viewdns.info/. I took the last reasonable looking IP address and added an IP address / hostname mapping for his website hostname in my /etc/hosts file (slightly different location for Windows people, something like C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts), and that then worked.
That's what I love about this place, there are some really clever sods here who just do stuff to help other differently talented sods, just because they can.
Nice work.
That path is correct for Windows, though you need to run Notepad as Admin to be able to write to the HOSTS file.
And then you need to login to Wordpress as admin (assume you’ve done that previously to make changes) and get a backup. Could be a bit fiddly if you’ve not done it before but absolutely necessary in case the hoster also goes belly up and you need to shift it all.
How expired is the domain? You may still be able to get it back, particularly if it's a UK domain.
you can do everything (domain name, hosting) through Google now, so I’d probably just do that rather than rely on some random web hosting company that might suddenly just disappear!
I'm biased, but I definitely wouldn't do that. There's plenty of non-evil, UK-based hosting companies with a long trading record, whereas Google have a long and proud history of ungracefully abandoning services.