My Former Blog Host “Accidentally” Deleted My Blog! (And How I Fixed it)
If you have been visiting my blog in the last 3 weeks, you could see that it had a lot of errors and it was behaving weirdly. Here’s why.
My former host, Host Commando, ‘accidentally’ deleted my blog.
And in this post, I will tell you how I restored my blog completely. I did not backup my blog for about 1 month, really! I had to restore the posts and comments in 1 month manually, which I’m going to tell you how!
What Happened
1. Host Commando’s billing system went wrong
My father paid the fees for next month’s hosting. But somehow, their billing system went wrong and said that my father didn’t pay. Then, my account was suspended.
2. They said they ‘accidentally’ deleted my hosting account and all the files
My dad went to their office and told them the matter. They said they were working on some sort of ‘transferring-into-a-new-server’ process or something. They also said in the process, they ‘accidentally’ deleted the files in my account!
3. What happened
Then, I changed the DNS (Domain name servers) of Gloson Blog to point it to my older host, which was outdated (25 September 2009). That’s why you might have noticed that my blog lost October’s posts.
(I also lost the information of my affiliates and customers of my poetry book on my other site, Poetry Talents too.)
Oh, and as I said, and I didn’t make any backups during October, so all the posts in October were gone!
How I fixed it
How to transfer blog hosts in 7 steps
So, I bought a HostGator account. I transferred the files from my older host to HostGator. Here are the 7 steps which I used to successfully transfer the blog files from one host to another:
1. Use the WordPress Database Backup Plugin to backup the database of your older host and download the database backup file.
2. Download all the files of your blog in wp-content from an FTP client like Filezilla.
3. Point the Domain Name Servers (DNS) to the new host so you can create an addon domain. If you don’t know what DNS looks like, it looks like this:
ns2163.hostgator.com
ns2164.hostgator.com
4. Go to your new host’s cpanel and go to fantastico, the automatic wordpress installation tool, and install wordpress.
5. Upload the database backup file to phpmyadmin (to the correct database using the import feature) in cpanel.
6. Upload and overwrite all the wp-content files to the same folder in the new host using an FTP client.
7. After that, your posts and pages will be 404 pages. Log in to your wordpress and navigate to every sub page under ‘Settings’ until ‘Miscellaneous. I don’t know why, but it works!
But the problem wasn’t over yet… the blog was still outdated!
So I had to restore the posts, comments, and other changes manually that were made after the latest backup.
1. How I Restored Posts
Windows Live Writer
Luckily, I use Windows Live Writer (WLW) to write my posts. It stores all your blog posts in your computer.
So, I opened the October posts in my computer and edited the publish date to the date they were published. Then, I published them.
Luckily wordpress has this feature that allows you to edit posts dates! That means you can publish a post with the date set to 1st of January 2001! And if you set the posts to a future date, they will be published at that time.
How to edit publish dates in Windows Live Writer and WordPress
But..what if you didn’t use Windows Live Writer? Don’t worry, here are other methods.
Google Cache
You can also use Google Cache to get your lost posts (this works if only your posts are indexed).
Just type “cache:http://www.(yourblogaddress).com/(yourpost)/” in Google search and hopefully, you’ll get a cached version of your post of a particular date Google spidered your site.
Feed Reader
If you’ve subscribed to your own blog, that’s great! Because it lets you see how your other subscribers see your posts… and stores your posts in case you’ve lost them.
I subscribe to my blog via Google Reader. I’m not sure if this works for other readers but it probably would.
Just click your blog feed’s name and click ‘All items’. Your posts’ latest version will be displayed.
Email
If you subscribe to your own blog via email, you can retrieve it from there.
2. Restoring Comments
Here’s how I restored my precious comments.
If you choose to receive blog comment notifications, which I think most of you do, you’ll receive the comment with the author’s name, email, website, and the date of the comment.
All I had to do is post the comments with the author’s name, email, and website, and set the correct dates. Though, the IP addresses were mine.
Thank goodness wordpress also allows you to edit comment dates, so I can edit the time and date to when the comment was posted, which is the time and date the comment notification email is sent to you.
You can also use Google Cache to help you.
3. Uploaded images
I had to re-upload the images that were lost. Just upload them from your computer into where it was before.
4. Updated Gloson Blog’s layout
I also updated Gloson Blog’s layout. I did this by checking my blog in Google Cache. I could see how the sidebar looked like and what the differences are.
I’ve learned my lessons
1. Backup Your Blog Regularly
If you are blogging on a small blog and you are not posting often, I recommend you backup every week.
But when your blog gets popular and you post very often, you should backup everyday so that you won’t lose your precious posts and comments.
Now I decided to backup two times a week.
2. Have a Backup Hosting
You should get a free hosting where you can place all your files there. Free hosting can be unreliable and can have down times often but who cares? You just need a place to store your backups.
3. Think carefully before buying a cheap host
Even though it’s cheap, a cheap host’s quality may probably not be very good and have frequent downtimes and errors and poor customer support. So you’ll end up losing more if you buy a cheap host.
Instead, buy a popular blog host that is recommended by a lot of people. Their quality would probably be high.
What you should do to make sure your blog is safe
1. Backup often
I’ve now got an alarm that reminds me to backup my blog twice every week. To backup,
1. Use the WordPress Database Backup Plugin to backup your blog’s database.
2. Download the backup file.
3. Download all the files of your blog in wp-content.
And don’t forget to test your backups!
2. Subscribe to your blog
If you subscribe to your own blog by RSS or email, you’ll receive your blog posts and can restore them in case they are lost.
Besides, you should also subscribe to your own blog to see how your feed looks like for other subscribers, and whether there are errors in your feed.
3. Get comment notifications by email/Subscribe to your comments
This will make sure your precious comments are safe. Comments are very precious and is one of the best ways to bring a blog to life.
Where Gloson Blog is hosted now
Gloson Blog is now hosted on HostGator, which is probably going to be a good host as I had heard from many. I hope there will be no more problems this time. I hope that now Gloson Blog is much faster too!
What’s been going on last three weeks
You might have wondered why it took more than half a month for this process. Well, it was because I was writing and illustrating my new poetry book for kids in which the poems are to be sung to the tune of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’, which is done now.
__________
So I hope you understand what was going on on Gloson Blog and why it was behaving weirdly. I hope there are no more problems or bugs on Gloson Blog (If there are some, please tell me!). I hope Gloson Blog will be running smoothly again!
If you have anything to add to this post, or if you have any questions, please comment! 
Update (19 March 2010): Hostgator has been the best hosting for me! Almost no downtimes at all! =)
More tips from rocking commentators below
Gerald Weber
Gloson,
I had an interesting experience where a silly hosting company erroneously canceled my account. Ever since that incident I always make full backups which is easy simple to do. In cpanel click on backups, generate and then generate and download a full backup.
It will email you once the backup is complete and then you can FTP the full backup to your hard drive. This will backup EVERYTHING. Files database and the whole nine yards.
Now the good news is Hostgator make full backups on all their shared plans every Sunday. So as a fail safe you can always get a full backup from them from the most recent Sunday.
Glad you got your blog back together.
Marie Culver
I love Hostgator and I don’t doubt you will enjoy it too.
However, I wouldn’t recommend anybody depending on them or any other host to be responsible for backups. No matter how good the hosting is.
One, many hosts that include backup services have caveats, like file limits. Too many files or too large and you’re on your own. Hostgator has an “inode” limit (one file of any type equals one inode).
Two, even if a host gets back to you in an hour, that’s still an hour that your site is down when you could have fixed things yourself in a third of the time or less.
Three, there is no guarantee that a host backup is even that good or readily available. Sometimes files do get corrupted, you might need a backup right before the next backup cycle (you may have made many site changes by then), or if the host is having issues, your files are out with your site.
It’s better to take other steps and be able to verify that your backups are not only there, but viable for usage. An interesting site about backing up files is the Tao of Backup (taobackup.com). Ultimately it promotes a backup utility but it’s both entertaining and informative.
Marie Culver´s last blog ..I Love My Thesis 
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July 13, 2010 3:08 AM
PC Tricks and Tips
November 19, 2009
5:43 pm
You have expressing a good point through your personal experience. People learn from mistake or we learn from people mistake to alert ourselves. I schedule auto backup my blog DB everyday and auto forward to my webmail. But I have never tested my backup whether workable or not.
Simon Liew´s last blog ..The Google Story
November 20, 2009
6:09 pm
That’s right, Simon! We should always learn from other people’s mistakes because we are going to make a lot of mistakes ourselves, so we better start learning
.
November 19, 2009
6:25 pm
Great detailed post took all the necessary notes thanks for sharing
November 20, 2009
8:01 am
Gloson,
I had an interesting experience where a silly hosting company erroneously canceled my account. Ever since that incident I always make full backups which is easy simple to do. In cpanel click on backups, generate and then generate and download a full backup. It will email you once the backup is complete and then you can FTP the full backup to your hard drive. This will backup EVERYTHING. Files database and the whole nine yards.
Now the good news is Hostgator make full backups on all their shared plans every Sunday. So as a fail safe you can always get a full backup from them from the most recent Sunday.
Glad you got your blog back together.
Gerald Weber´s last blog ..Multi-Author Blogs – Should you use Single WordPress or WPMU
November 20, 2009
6:13 pm
Thank you for the very informative comment, Gerald! Gosh, I never knew making full backups were that simple! And thanks for sharing that Hostgator makes backups too! I didn’t know that!
November 22, 2009
6:50 am
Yes Hostgator makes backups on all their shared plans every Sunday.
I went through several bad hosting companies before I found Hostgator. The cool thing is Hostgator is right here in Houston where I live. Besides that their support is awesome and I’ve had nothing but great experiences with them.
Gerald Weber´s last blog ..Multi-Author Blogs – Should you use Single WordPress or WPMU
November 20, 2009
8:19 am
Very insightful tips, and thanks god that you got all the hard work back.
November 20, 2009
5:03 pm
Hi there! Great article. I am also looking to move hosts and am considering HostGator. THey have a lot of different plans available, which plan did you settle on for Glosonblog?
November 20, 2009
6:17 pm
This is my first time trying HostGator so I’m using the baby plan. Looking forward to upgrade if they are good!
November 21, 2009
5:53 pm
If you are holding multiple domain name, it is worth to subscribe ‘Baby’ hosting plan.
Simon Liew´s last blog ..The Google Story
November 20, 2009
9:03 pm
Thats terrible buddy. I backup my blog every month so tht i dont face any problem
Rahul Jadhav´s last blog ..IntenseDebate Introduces CommentLuv Plugin
November 22, 2009
3:35 pm
Hi Rahul. I think you should backup more frequently than that. I think once a week would be ok.
November 20, 2009
10:19 pm
Gloson, you are learning more and more every day !
Keep up the good work.
November 24, 2009
1:06 pm
backup.. yeah.. this is the answer , but i still hate that if that thing happen to me…lol
December 1, 2009
2:13 am
I had lot of problem initially before having backups for my blog…… I used to mess up with my blog then it used to go down, and every time I used to reinstall wordpress to rectify the problem……… Now a days I backup on a daily basis………..
December 3, 2009
10:08 pm
Gloson, not all hosting companies offer the same apps and utilities; not all cpanels look alike. I paid $12/year extra for the ability to do backups on demand (but it schedules them like every four hours, so that’s hardly needed). THAT utility, however, does NOT back up the database. That’s a separate chore and one worth figuring out before you need it. But a good hosting company does keep its own backups, and odds are you’d lose no more than a few days’ worth of data if you needed their help to restore.
Hey, thanks for supporting the businesses in my community – HostGator’s offices are less than 20 miles from me. I passed them on the highway the other day! Ironically, my hosting company is FatCow, out of Canada – I chose them before I knew HostGator was local. (I’m really happy with FatCow, though, too.)
I have a lot of difficulties with Live Writer, and have nearly stopped using it. I LOVE the program, but the latest version crashes several times a day, usually while I’m in the middle of a post. Grrr. Lately, I just copy/paste from Word. But you’re right about it being a nice, easy way to save local copies of your posts.
You went to a lot of trouble, there, to restore comments! Good for you. It’s a nice thing for your readers, and you learned a lot about how your hosting works and the importance of keeping good, recent backups.
Holly Jahangiri´s last blog ..Balut (Rhymes with “Foot”)
December 3, 2009
11:17 pm
Hi Holly!
As Gerald said above, HostGator makes backups on all of their shared plans every Sunday, which is really good! HostGator is the best web host ever!
Hmm… Windows Live Writer doesn’t crash for me. In fact, it is quite fast for me. Strange… :/
And yeah, restoring comments was really hard work! I really learned an important lesson!
December 3, 2009
10:09 pm
I meant to tell you – your new plug-ins are looking GOOD.
Nice additions to your blog, Gloson, I like them.
Holly Jahangiri´s last blog ..Win Prizes and Fame with Famous Bloggers
December 3, 2009
11:20 pm
Thanks! I appreciate you for telling me about those plugins! I really love Comment Form Quicktags and LinkWithin!
December 5, 2009
7:45 am
I admit I had no idea how to do this. You have been so helpful.
Maxie´s last blog ..The Roses of Winter
December 6, 2009
11:14 pm
I Have No Idea how a boy like you can do that… Im Impressed..
iJestarz…New Post
December 7, 2009
3:27 pm
Due to my Cpanel Themes problem, my blog has completely wipe off from hosting. Thanks for this informative article, I managed restore my blog within 30 minutes. I wish to add in some point here related to WordPress DB Restore process.
After the point no.6 “Upload and overwrite all the wp-content files to the same folder in the new host using an FTP client”…
It is recommended perform a DB Check & Repair in CPanel under mySQL Databases. This step basically fix and rebuild any corrupted SQL DB.
Simon Liew´s last blog ..Google Wave Overview
December 12, 2009
9:05 pm
MERRY CHRISTMAS GLOSON !!!
Hi Gloson. I know it is a bit early but wanted to wish you
and your family a Merry Christmas.
Hope you have a nice holiday and Christmas and
keep up the good work.
God bless
December 15, 2009
7:46 am
Glad that you finally joined in the HostGator family like I do
I found it funny though because you did the transfer manually where you could simply asked HostGator to do all the transfer for you for free (I did that)
Michael Aulia´s last blog ..Razer Imperator Unboxing
December 15, 2009
3:31 pm
Cool! My father knew that. But I wanted to transfer it myself to acquire some hosting-transfering knowledge
.
December 18, 2009
8:57 pm
I’m actually having some issues with my blog right now. Besides the issues I’m having, however, I’m looking around for how to design my blog as I website is now. I just launched my new website today! Backups are always a good idea and in my opinion they should be done at least once a week. That’s pretty good amount of time to me.
December 26, 2009
5:46 pm
Hey Gloson..Some pretty nice tips..! Liked them..! I actually started a website 3 years back and then every few months my hosting company reset their server (guess so)..so in this process my all the data was lost…! It took off all my energy to restore my website(no backup’s). And sadly it didn’t continued more than a year.!
Now i am back in blogging, started 2 months back..and i make a backup every week..!
Shubham´s last blog ..Dofollow Blog With Page Rank 6: Backlinks
December 26, 2009
5:51 pm
Hi Shubham!
I’m glad that you are now making backups every week. Backups are very important and losing all the hard work is painful!
By the way, cool tech blog you’ve got there
.
December 28, 2009
2:52 pm
Thanks..Gloson.! I too Love your Blog layout..!
Shubham´s last blog ..WordPress 2.9 Carmen- What’s New?
December 31, 2009
4:19 am
Whoa! I would freak out if such a thing happened to me.
Smaller hosts, can be a bad option at times.
January 1, 2010
10:05 pm
Thanks for the tip.
My hosting did the backup everyday, so I don’t have to backup often
January 11, 2010
1:14 am
I love Hostgator and I don’t doubt you will enjoy it too.
However, I wouldn’t recommend anybody depending on them or any other host to be responsible for backups. No matter how good the hosting is.
One, many hosts that include backup services have caveats, like file limits. Too many files or too large and you’re on your own. Hostgator has an “inode” limit (one file of any type equals one inode).
Two, even if a host gets back to you in an hour, that’s still an hour that your site is down when you could have fixed things yourself in a third of the time or less.
Three, there is no guarantee that a host backup is even that good or readily available. Sometimes files do get corrupted, you might need a backup right before the next backup cycle (you may have made many site changes by then), or if the host is having issues, your files are out with your site.
It’s better to take other steps and be able to verify that your backups are not only there, but viable for usage. An interesting site about backing up files is the Tao of Backup (taobackup.com). Ultimately it promotes a backup utility but it’s both entertaining and informative.
Marie Culver´s last blog ..I Love My Thesis
January 11, 2010
7:29 pm
Hi Marie!
Thank you very much for your very informative comment!
I strongly agree with you that we shouldn’t be fully dependent on our hosting! Because even though the hosting is good, they might have problems too.
So we should always make a backup just in case the host’s backup doesn’t work, and also so that you can restore it by yourself instead of waiting for the host to provide it.
Thanks for sharing the Tao of Backup! It is really informative and entertaining. LOL. I really enjoyed it!
Cheers!
Gloson
March 28, 2010
9:56 pm
i backup my blog everyday.. auto-backup in fact.. therefore i have an archive of blog backups.. usually delete the later ones tough.. =)
kenwooi´s last blog ..Supporting Earth Hour: The Hidden Purposes
March 29, 2010
7:01 pm
Haha.. You shouldn’t delete those backups though, because sometimes old backups are the most precious and important. Archive them somewhere on your computer or a CD.
April 13, 2010
1:03 pm
Thanks for sharing information about Windows Live Writer
I didn’t know that it stores all blog posts on the computer 
Mrinmay Bhattacharjee´s last blog ..Purchase Cheap Storage for your Google Account
April 13, 2010
5:33 pm
You’re welcome!
It is really a great way to blog offline!
September 1, 2010
2:42 am
I use hostgator to host my blogs. Long time ago, I used my cpanel click on backups and got an email with full my blog’s backup. The database of backup is so complicated that I never do that again.
Today I read your post and feel so luck that my blog host is ok now for I have no idea about how to fix it if something really happens. I just store all my original content including images in my computer.
Your suggestions on “Subscribe to your blog” and “Get comment notifications by email/Subscribe to your comments” are great. I will do it now. And I will backup my blogs frequently.
I also bookmarked this page and the page you mentioned how to “test your blog backup”. Thanks for your information.
ayuan from article marketing tools´s last blog ..Free Blog Commenting Software–Fast Blog Finder
September 1, 2010
1:36 pm
Hi Ayuan! Thanks so much for bookmarking my post. I’m glad you have found it useful!
Yeah, when I went to the cpanel backup section, I felt that it was really complicated too. LOL. But now I have no problem using WP DB Backup.