Web Site Recovery

Hi Tim,

When I try to hit www.rigmachineryconsultants.com, I get the following message:

Did you keep your account current with the server host?

If this is your own server, do you have a back-up of your site?

If you were not hosting your site on your own server, you must contact the site admin.

Sorry I could not be of more help, hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will respond.

(Sorry, comment removed. - Usbport)

Hmmmm man here is the problem, I trusted the guy who helped me make the site, me not knowing anything in regards to this stuff. He is no longer avalible, is there anything that can be done at any price to recover this site?

Tim

How about this (with free help):

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/hosting3?p=WHMS35OFF&s_affiliate=wh_acq_links_20081101&AID=10823195&PID=3825396&SID=ADYa2MsnCO.efrzn16549897DA8162011YHigh

I found this book to be very easy to use for the basics of web site design:

http://www.amazon.com/Hands--Site-Design-Andreas-Ramos/dp/0875730760/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313539345&sr=1-4

So this is what I should have done from the start possibly, but is there any way possible to recover my site?

It seems there should be some way isnt there?

Regards,

Tim

You would need to talk to your ISP. Your website info is on their servers. Maybe they can restore your website.

Aside from that, you can copy the html code as I described above, which at least contains the info shown on your home page. If there were some graphics (I don't see any on the cached page) you would need those too.

I did a whois lookup on your domain. Here's the url for the lookup:

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/rigmachineryconsultants.com

It appears the domain name is still active (expires 10-21-2011) so it looks like the ISP took your site offline, probably for non-payment of hosting fees. Contact mediatemple.net to renew your hosting and you should be alright. When you contact them ask for the necessary name/password info to access the site.

Hooker

whois lookup data follows:

The page format gets screwed up when pasting here so look at it by using the url above.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

rigmachineryconsultants.com

Is this your domain name? Renew it now.

CR4 Moderator: Deleted Personal Info
Deleted the details from the report because they contained names and addresses. The person who is looking for the info can access it from the link above.

Evan,

Thanks for the terrific mini-tutorial! It is postings like yours that are one of the main reasons I peruse the message boards!

Tom,

If you have no experience building websites, contact the computer science department at your local high schools or technical schools for help rebuilding it. I'm sure they'd love to have a a real-world website for their students to work on.

Evan,

Thank you very much for the time spent making this into something I can understand! It is very much appreciated!

Tim (the computer dummie)

Nothing to add on the technical side but I went through a similar experience last year when the company we had used to create & maintain a web site connected with my spare time 'job' disappeared.

In line with the advice given here, I contacted the ISP & explained the problem. I was able to show them that I was genuine by sending a formal request on company headed paper & by reference to our company registration. After that it was a smooth & easy transfer and we now have control of our own web site & e-mail accounts.

Good luck with yours.

Or just hire a website development contractor/company. You should be able to find one or two with a Google search.

Your site works fine for me. Sounds like you just had a DNS issue.

You should back it up for yourself ASAP.

Get your FTP information...log on...and back it up...

I wouldn't hold my breath for your web designer to help you out. Clicking on their link at the bottom of your page brings us Mux Records (or some such site). Their tag line is "Who is we?" Nice.

Yea its working now, it turns out I didn't pay my little bill..... Man a couple dollars a month sure screwed up my day!

I really need to become more computer savvy and back up, etc, etc, but to tell you the truth I have my hands full with the work that I know. Mechanical rig issues, me backing up a web site would be like asking you to properly time the camshafts on a 4000 hp engine (LOL). Best that I do spend some time learning more and also pay a couple years in advance for my web hosting from now on!

Yeah, probably so...although I would love to see that.

That muxrec.com group is the new host, it looks like.

The old one. in the google cache (in a prior post - ftrls.cx), is the one that "disappeared".

"Who is we?" is more likely "artistic" or "cutesy" language than a measure of competency.

Yes I believe you are correct, the site designer has a pretty good command of the English language, both written and spoken.

"Get your FTP information...log on...and back it up..."

Yep, definitely. Always insist on getting an FTP username and password. However, sometimes web designers clump many sites in the same space and will refuse to give you access as you could then access several other people's websites too.

A good fallback when the designer says, "sure but that's a more expensive option...", is to get a "Web Ripper". Web Rippers will spider a site, download all the elements and build a copy of it on your hard disk. They're mostly used for offline browsing but also for backups, and for legal and regulatory snapshots of websites. Not perfect but better than nothing. Selection on Google. Black Widow ripper used to be very good but haven't used it in years.

Cheers,

Evan

IMHO your simple yet effective informational/contact-info web site does not require a large effort to create and maintain. I've done something similar for my own use and for friends in exchange for a case of beer ;-)

I copied the basic structure of your web site and made some minor changes to the HTML and directory names. Since "img" is an HTML tag, it is not usually good practice to use the same name as a file or directory name. I changed the "img" directory name to "images" and corrected the links in the HTML pages. I made other minor changes to comply with HTML4 and CSS validation rules and added the W3C logos/links for the validation sites. I also commented the validation logo/link additions so you can easily delete them if you don't like or want them on your pages.

Some hosting servers may require additional minor changes, but I tested the site structure on my computer using the Firefox (for Linux) web browser and it seems to work fine. Please note that the validation "links" won't work until this web site is uploaded to a host and is accessible for public browsing.

The files are compressed into a zip archive which I will attempt to send you via email attachment. I highly recommend you keep a local backup (like the zip archive) for your web site in case the host goes down or goes out of business.

I lost 4 sites earlier this year when my free host service had an irrecoverable server/drive failure. Since I develop and backup all my simple sites on a home computer, it only took about an hour to upload my files to a new host and redirect the domain name servers.

Good luck to you!