Hey everyone, I need some help!

I have had the same host for my big forum since 2003, they have been pretty good.

In the past few weeks I just noticed my cpanel is expired, I can't get SSH, my phpmyadmin. Nothing.

All I have access to is my site through FTP. Sounds horrible huh?



Well, all I have is a backup of my site from january when I upgraded from 1.3 to 2.0 Since then my site has almost doubled in members (almost at 2000) and 219000 posts.


I have emailed and tried to contact my hosting company for over a week and they are nowhere to be found. Half of the links on the hosting website are dead links. I am panicking over my board.

Should I wait for them to contact me and hopefully say, 'alrighty, everything has been fixed.' or what if they just go under like I think they are? and I am wasting my time because I am already going to be out 6 months of posting and members I might as well get another host and attempt to move my board over to the new host?? Will IPS do this for me?


I am seriously almost crying and have a major headache

Hey Fleshy.

Move, and quickly. If your host has gone tits up (pardon the expression) and you are unable to contact them think seriously about backing up and moving out. How have you paid? Do you pay monthly or is it an annual fee?

monthly so I can stop paying them whenever (its through paypal)

but thats just the thing, I can't get a recent back up since I have no cpanel anymore, no SSH anymore board is too big. In january it was 94.9MB :'(

thats the back up I have.

I am looking into a new host. I hate this

Can't another host just transfer your whole board to there server with WHM all they need is your account login in and password.

Edit:
Can't you use the back up Dean made the sends url sql db to email automatically.

But don't panic. If this was me:
First I take the board offline and let people know why.
Then I'd make an announcement on the home page that I was having to move.
Then I'd get hold of scripts that can backup a MySQL database (Wraith's at Invisonize for example) and another that could zip up your files. You can FTP these up somewhere on your site. These scripts would be best if they FTPed to another host. But 2nd best they'll create a file that you can download to your PC.

All is not lost. This is recoverable.

I really have no idea. I am looking into it.

I hope its that easy!

You could always do a google search for a SSH php file that all you need to do is upload it via FTP. Then you put in the path for the .sql backup and sql logins, and etc. I found a script like that it worked but I dont have it anymore.

okay, I found that tool by Dean. and it looks like it worked. the sql file is 138MB which seems correct.


then I did the backup through the admin cp and see that the sql file it made was 168MB lol I have no idea which one is correct, but I hope that works.

they are on my computer

Well it's possible that through Dean's tool you used GZIP compression which would be considerabley smaller.

I would trust Dean's tool if I were you, it works great and I have used it several times. The SQL toolbox backup in the ACP is rather buggy anyway.

Make sure you have a backup of the files downloaded off the site too.

Quick tip to make things MUCH easier when you find a new host. Ask them for an account name and password the same as you have now. It makes it so much easier to restore if all the path names, database names etc are the sme.

Link to Dean's tool please?

I'm about to save the files off my site. I went with asmallorange.

here is the tool: http://tools.invisionize.com/db/index.php/f/4397

See if you can use something like phpmyshell or something...

How about IPS Hosting?

I would imagine that if you went with them the move of your board would be pretty quick and easy for you - just think about the experience they have, especially under circumstances like this!

Just a thought.

I know this is a moot point if she's leaving the host anyway, but many hosts (myself included) don't allow shell access via scripted solutions (PHP, PERL), and will immediately terminate an account found using it.
Just food for thought.

If you need help, I don't mind making a backup of everything/restoring it for you. I love doing that kind of stuff. The recommendation of moving hosts fast is a good one, I really doubt your host is going to get better. I use Liquenox for my hosting, but you seem like you chose asmallorange. Great hosting too, timdorr's a great guy.

If you need help, contact me. I have backed up full boards databases with only FTP and PHP. I think I am pretty good at it.

If you are still shopping for a host, talk to me. I'll let you pay your first year in skinning help for my own forums.

We've been hosting sites since 1994. (http://buildinghosting.com). We offer, free of charge, cPanel, Urchin, Spam assassin and few dozen free scripts such as Chat, Shopping Carts, etc., installed, ready for activation.

BTW - I've never tried using ARCHIVE.ORG to recover a forum - but it's served well in recovering HTML sites. It's worth a look.

ASO is great hosting...been on there for almost a year now. As far as your board...I've been through hosts like that who do just seem to leave. Always managed to get a backup though!

Good luck

oh! I already have the forum up and running, I switched to asmallorange and they did it for me. The domain name is propagating


thanks for all the advice and help everyone!

http://nightmarecult.com/forums is the forum. I ended up losing just 100 posts because that's how many were made when I ran Dean's sql backup tool

XHTML != SQL

so.... archive.org won't work.

I don't know if we can discuss hosts, but hostony.com is the best... Always have used them... tech support is great. I've friend at powweb and site5... who they said are great. CaribeJoe, you have a broken image when you rollover the first page... and I would make that page W3C valid. Just a thought.

Domain name has already resolved.

ooh, I don't know all the domain-ish terminology

yay anyways! lol

Its good everything is working for you fleshy.

oh my god , webhosting with no panel and no ssh would take u much trouble , it means anything u could do only with the script ( timeout limit , maybe php.ini could not decide by yourself) and ftp service ..

I suggest u change to new webhosting which offer pannel or ssh ...

She already moved if you read through the topic.

lol

Too late! :-"

what image is broken? Did you reload the page?

attached.

"Advertising, commercial-related or competing products are all forbidden in any relation to your account."
from the "golden rules" for this forum
:-"
Isn't promoting hosting a forum competing against IPS hosting?

I don't think the request for help in rescuing a forum from an apparently disappearing hosting company and the responses here are what the rule is aimed at.

But your diligence is greatly appreciated.




I suspect that if you reload it, it will work. But as to why you are having the problem, I don't know. The image is there.



Yes, I see that there is a problem. I failed to set the status. I'll fix it in the mrning.

Blablabla whatever. If I can't share my experiences with other hosts then sue me

Just had to say that

It's not the experience with other hosts...it's promoting your own hosting. I've seen other posts doing this that were immediately closed, and wondered why this post was left...that's all.

@CaribeJoe:
You're probably right, but it's still self promotion for a competing service, and that's why I asked.

Glad to see you recovered flesh. Over the course of 3 years we've probably moved 6 times, usually though because the host tells us to go rather than folds up. I've found that the offers of what they can provide often outstrips the caacity of their servers, until eventually our site overlopad them and they ask us to move so they can make easy money out of packing hundreds of $5 per month low bandwidth sites onto $1,000 worth of server. What me? Bitter? We choose all our hosts by searching on http://findmyhosting.com which is a sort of independent watchdog of hosting company performance.

Folks please keep in mind that the advertising of your own host or any other isn't allowed - we're not trying to be a stickler here, but we do have our own hosting company and obviously work to promote that. Thanks