Site is down (403 Access denied)

[Zoidberg]

@Frank419

there’s a good chance the DB is still there

@Frank419

causing the traditional file lost / no home directory / 403s like this.

I do use Wordpress, but what worries me is the word “traditional”. I’ve had no issues with this hosting provider in almost exacly a year. Do these things happen regularly? 'Cause if the answer is yes, there will be no database restoring for sure.

[Frank419]

@Zoidberg

happen regularly

No, but they do sometimes happen throughout the time I was here. Not on all volumes of course.

@Zoidberg

there will be no database restoring for sure.

DB is stored elsewhere and won’t be influenced by hosting volume outage.

Check your Account > MySQL Databases.

[Zoidberg]

@Frank419

Check your Account > MySQL Databases.

Man, I sincerely appreciate the help, but this is where I hit the brick wall. There is some sort of database, but I lack the skills to make any sense of it. It took me couple of evening to get my page up and running, and I seriously doubt I can figure out this database thing any quicker. I mean, I can change a tyre, but I’m not going to rebuild an engine.

[Frank419]

@Zoidberg

but I’m not going to rebuild an engine.

Nobody says you should rebuild an engine. I can provide you with a solution, but we must wait for the outage to be over.

[Zoidberg]

@Frank419

I can provide you with a solution

I’ll be more than happy to hear from you once we’re on the solid groung with all this, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other users who’s going to need this advice. Feel free to let me know of any developments. Cheers!

[Frank419]

Do you see the “Export” tab in phpMyAdmin?

Before you actually start to get into recovery, it’s wise to take a backup of your DB with that function to prevent further data loss.

[Zoidberg]

@Frank419

Do you see the “Export” tab in phpMyAdmin?

Got it. Nothing hard so far

[Frank419]

Great. But I guess we must wait and chill until Admin talks about the issue right now…

Starting right now makes things more difficult, and not very reliable.

---

Please also note that while most of the post data and layout, design, configs, etc, will remain intact, all the images are gone.

You’ll need to replace the old images with new ones you re-uploaded afterwards.

[Zoidberg]

@Frank419

we must wait and chill

Second that

@Frank419

Starting right now makes things more difficult, and not very reliable.

I’m ready to try it. Worst case scenario - I’ll be building site from scratch, which I have already done a few times.

@Frank419

all the images are gone

Fortunately, I got that covered. I guess, we’ll see how it goes

[Frank419]

The full step-by-step guide is here. Make sure to ask if you have trouble following it:

1. Create a new hosting account.
2. Remove the domain from your old account.
3. Get a clean copy of WordPress. Do not use softaculous.
4. Add the domain to your new account.

Make sure not to install WordPress at this step.

5. Go to your old DB and check the wpmi_options table. Tell me what is the value of active_plugins, template, and stylesheet.

This is used to determine what plugins and theme you are using right now. It would be better if you can figure it out yourself, but if not, I can help.

6. Extract WordPress locally.
7. Download the required plugins (usually from WordPress.org) and put the extracted files into wp-content/plugins.
8. Do the same for theme, and put the files into wp-content/themes.

This is to make sure the pages won’t broke due to a missing plugin or theme.

9. Create a new DB inside the new account.
10. Remember the following info of the new DB:
    • DB Name
    • DB Host
    • Account Username
    • Account password.
11. Import the DB:
    1. Open phpMyAdmin of the new DB.
    2. Hit “Import” tool in the tab.
    3. Upload the backup you just got (hopefully you got it!) and restore from the backup.

This will transfer the old DB data to the new DB.

12. Copy the wp-config-sample.php into wp-config.php. Then change the following lines (All the info is from the new DB and new account) :

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define( 'DB_NAME', 'DB Name' );

/** Database username */
define( 'DB_USER', 'Account Username' );

/** Database password */
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'Account password' );

/** Database hostname */
define( 'DB_HOST', 'DB Host' );

and this line:

$table_prefix = "wpmi_";

13. Upload all the content to the new account, inside the htdocs folder.

The final structure should look like this:

htdocs
    - wp-admin
    - wp-content
    - wp-includes
    - index.php
    - ...

Make sure to use a desktop ftp client like FileZilla, instead of the online file manager.

How to upload files with FTP

The best and most reliable way to upload files is to use FTP. To upload files with FTP, you will need to following: Your FTP username Your FTP password The FTP hostname An FTP client You can find your FTP username, password and hostname in the client area under the FTP Details section. The FTP password is the same as your hosting account and control panel password, which is different from the password for the client area. If you like videos better then text guides, you can find one at the bot…

14. If you previouly have an active SSL certificate for your old site, you’ll have to go to “Free SSL Certificate” and either reinstall or request for a new certificate.

Now after all these steps, if everything goes well, you should be able to see your site without images.

Then it’s the boring job: fix the images.

[Duka974]

Them there all files disapear…
More then 10 hours and no reply from admin ?

[masifola]

Website URL

http://bloxbux.rf.gd/

Error Message

403 Access denied

Other Information

My files are gone and i worked so hard at the website

[Munyaradzi]

It’s not looking good at the moment. Seems like two or more volumes have been affected and all the website files on these volumes have been lost.

Let’s be patient and wait for a reply from the admin. Mistakes happen all he time.

[Admin]

I’m sorry for not communicating about this issue before.

It seems like something happened to hosting volumes vol1_7 and vol1_8. I don’t know yet what exactly happened, or if there is any chance your website files can be recovered.

I’ve created an outage topic about this. I will update it as soon as I know more.

Website files missing on vol1_7 and vol1_8

Website files missing on vol1_7 and vol1_8 Since the 6th of February, we have been receiving a large number of reports of website files having disappeared from hosting volumes vol1_7 and vol1_8. It’s not entirely clear yet what is happening. I will update this topic as soon as I know more. Which components are affected by this issue Hosting accounts located on hosting volumes vol1_7 and vol1_8. You can find the hosting volume of your account in the Details in the client area. What issues may …

[Zoidberg]

Nice, the forum has blocked me for 15 hours for being too active

Thanks Frank419, this really helps me out. But Jeezless, what have I got myself into?!

I’m not starting to fix anything until the issue has been dealt with, but since we’re on this topic, is my understanding correct, that I have to import the database into the copy of Wordpress installed locally on my computer? Just out of curiosity, will it work, if I install the fresh WP on the hosting along with all the plugins and then restore the database from a backup?

@Frank419

Starting right now makes things more difficult, and not very reliable.

You weren’t wrong about that, that’s for sure

@Frank419

Tell me what is the value of active_plugins, template, and stylesheet.

Active plugins:
envira-gallery-lite
image-widget-rb
pagelayer
popularfx-templates
simply-gallery-block
w3-total-cache
wp-statistics

Both “template” and “stylesheet” simply say “neve”

[Frank419]

@Zoidberg

that I have to import the database into the copy of Wordpress installed locally on my computer

I never said you should install WordPress locally — the local operations only make sure that all the necessary files are there.

You’ll have to create a new hosting account, create a new DB inside that new account, and put the backup into that new DB.

@Zoidberg

Active plugins:
envira-gallery-lite
image-widget-rb
pagelayer
popularfx-templates
simply-gallery-block
w3-total-cache
wp-statistics

Both “template” and “stylesheet” simply say “neve”

You actually get a neat list, glad you are actually clever on this one! You can now easily know what plugins you are using; you may try searching these plugins on wordpress.org now.

As for the theme, it’s obvious you are using the Neve theme. I’m sure that theme is on wp.org so you can download it.

@Zoidberg

Just out of curiosity, will it work, if I install the fresh WP on the hosting along with all the plugins and then restore the database from a backup?

It’s also possible to do this, if you follow this approach then you can easily install plugins and themes in your dashboard.

But you’ll still have to change $table_prefix to "wpmi_" in wp-config.php after importing the DB, in order to connect your new site to the old DB.

[Zoidberg]

@Frank419

It’s also possible to do this, if you follow this approach then you can easily install plugins and themes in your dashboard.

Yeah, this seems like the way to go. I think I’ll try that. Thanks a bunch for the detailed instruction, you’ve brought me a few steps closer to fixing my page.

As I suspected, there’s no magic trick, and to get the site goes back online requires a lot of elbow-grease, one way or another. Maybe I should invest in a paid accout with a backup option. Room for thought

[Frank419]

@Zoidberg

Maybe I should invest in a paid accout with a backup option.

I cannot really disagree with this one; automatic backups are just that helpful. But you still have to learn about manually backing up websites.

[Admin]

@Frank419

I cannot really disagree with this one; automatic backups are just that helpful. But you still have to learn about manually backing up websites.

Even if your provider makes backups of your account, it’s still good to have your own backups, or at least know how to make them.

If your hosting provider has a problem which results in the backups not being created, or being created incorrectly, then you don’t have usable backups. Or they store the backups on the same servers which holds your website, so when the server breaks, those backups are gone too (server issues cascading to the backup storage is surprisingly common).

And if your accounts get suspended or terminated for whatever reason (suspected abuse, non-payment, technical error, or just because the host doesn’t like you), you may be unable to access the backups your provider made for you.