Ahhhhh! I Detroyed My Site!!

[StephenT]

For Those of you who have been following the thread, "Not As Bright As Some," you may know that I destroyed my site yesterday. I am posting here on a new thread because I don't want this to get lost in the shuffle.

What happened is that I thought I was following Traci's advice, but clearly wasn't. I reinstalled my Wordpress blog to my public-html file and when I did that, it started me out with a brand new site. I tried to copy and paste my old index.php file to the new one and now nothing at all works. If anyone has an idea how to retrieve my old files so that I don't have to re-build, I would be most appreciative. Otherwise I will delete all the wordpress files and start all over again!

[lindastacy]

Take a deep breath...... it's probably not completely destroyed. I just PM'd you.

[Rick Olsen]

StephenT -- You regularly backup your database for just these kinds of things, right? If you have a backup you haven't lost anything. Just dump the backup in your database and you should be good to go.

Before doing anything like this you should always backup your database.

[StephenT]

You would think I know that, but I didn't.

[CG12]

Stephen,

I can definitely sympathize with your situation. I know when my husband and I first started out we had a few bumps in the road too. We ran into some serious problems but our web host was able to help. I think someone already suggested that but have your checked with your web host for assistance?

As far as your posts go- do you write all of your posts directly on your website?
I know one thing that has helped me is to first write my posts in a Word document then I copy and paste them to a Notepad and then copy from the Notepad and paste onto my site.

I am no expert by any means as I am still trying to learn all of this myself. This is just a suggestion and you may already be doing this. So do you have your posts saved somewhere else?

I am sure some of the more resident experts will offer you a lot better advice.

Good luck to you. Hang in there, it can only look up from here!

Christine

[Lynn Terry]

I'm hosting our live webinar this morning, but I'll be back to help you out

Who is this site hosted with?

[wade_watson]

Stephen, your website data is not in index.php. That's just a theme file that makes the page look a certain way. Your data in a WordPress blog is in your database. You can't simply move that around as a file the way you can with HTML pages. I'd suggest not moving or deleting anything else without being certain what you're doing. If WordPress has a problem, you should be able to simply do a new reinstall over it. This should not affect your data files, which are in the MySQL database, separate from the WordPress files. When installing WordPress, you always either set up a new database or point an existing one to it. Since you already have one, you can simply point that one to it and your old data files will appear in the WordPress install. I would suggest going to WordPress.com and reading some of the how-tos on WP fixes and using the database.

[StephenT]

I am really learning a lot. Like Edison and his ten thousand ways not to make a light bulb, I am learning ten thousands ways not to do a website. I am rebuilding now!

[StephenT]

I'm hosting our live webinar this morning, but I'll be back to help you out

Who is this site hosted with?

It is through Hostgator, but I have had to start all over. I deleted my old files so there is not much to do but start over, which I am. I am getting faster at it!!

[angienewton]

Aww sorry about that Steve but maybe it's for the best. Starting fresh can be a good thing right? Gotta look at the positive.