All My Data Burnt Down!!!

[Stunty]

Seriously!!!

For me, prudence is something which comes with responsibility. However, when it comes to my data, I'm a very careful man - If it isn't backed up on at least three hard drives I struggle to sleep at night. So, I keep all my Actinic data on three drives at all times - I've even got a bit of software that backs it up for me.

Unfortunately, much to my despair, it wasn't enough.
Last Sunday morning I was greeted on my way to my office by a dozen policemen, three fire engines and a huge crowd of town folk standing in the street looking on in astonishment at the fire which was tearing through the building where my office was located. And not only my office either, oh no...
It was also where the three hard drives containing all my data was situated also!!! - So, it just goes to show, with regards to your Actinic data, you really can't be too careful.

Still, they say you can't a good man down - And I am quite a nice, if not good, man - So I've managed to set myself up in a small room above a chip shop just across the road from where my office used to be. And with some spare parts given to me by my friends coupled with a few bits I had lying around at home, I've managed to cobble myself together an emergency computer... Now all I need is my catalog data..

So yeah, I have a question for you guys if you wouldn't mind helping me out:
is there anyway of extracting Actinic data from the works data base from the website?

[george]

Sorry to hear that mate, fingers are crossed for you...

[jont]

I've managed to set myself up in a small room above a chip shop

Not all bad then

Sorry to hear about the fire. Alas you acn't recover the raw data from the website to load back into Actinic - the original templates and data are compiled together by Actinic during an upload so the original templates and data do not appear

You can obviously copy and paste text and if you FTP into the site the images and possibly other bits and pieces will be there to download and use again.

No need to tell you the prudence in taking a copy home or backup off-site in the future.

Hope you manage to get up and running again real soon

[Mike Hughes]

Judging by Chris's surveys in the 'other business' section it looks like actinic are planning to build in the ability to save snapshots to the webserver. Too late for you sadly, but might save a few people once it goes live.

Mike

[george]

I had an idea in the past to ftp snapshots to my webspace manually. Decided against it as I reckoned I'd be opening a huge can of worms regarding security. Maybe better to upload it to webspace other than the place you're sites hosted on?

[wjcampbe]

Stunty, you have my sympathy.

I take it the site is still up and taking orders, you may want to talk to Actinic to see if there is any way to at least get order processing running, though without a snapshot I really don't see how this could be done.

Do you have the physical hard disks? There is an outside chance that a data recovery firm could extract your site or a snapshot file even from a fire damaged disk. Depending on your order volume, it may be worth exploring.

I wish we could all chip in and each build part of the site for you... If you need anything, just holler.

[Stunty]

thanks for your sympathy guys...

to be honest, I kinda knew there was no way of retrieving the data base from the web space. However, all is not lost!!! - Luckily, I have my whole catalog on an .xls file on the site; It's a good way of offering your customers an easy way to browse through the products. Also, (thank god!!), I have a two month old copy of a .csv file I exported from Actinic and emailed to a friend working at Cargo Records. HE'S STILL GOT IT!!!!

How lucky is that?

Everything is going to be fine... Just a little hard work; some sleepless nights; a crate of prosaic, and a few weeks of celebacy... Things will soon be back on schedule..

All I can say is this: there are some lessons in life which can be learned relatively painlessly. On the other hand, some of life's lessons need to be accompanied with a good belt around the head in order to make sure it sinks in...

If I'm not too busy, I'll keep this thread up to date with regards to my process...

Right!! I need some coffee....

[jont]

You lucky blighter

Good luck with the rebuild

[jont]

I had an idea in the past to ftp snapshots to my webspace manually. Decided against it as I reckoned I'd be opening a huge can of worms regarding security. Maybe better to upload it to webspace other than the place you're sites hosted on?

I encrypt and upload mine to a subdirectory beneath the www folder with a completely random name eg asd79hJL0P which no-one will ever be able to guess and then password protect the folder using .htaccess - should anyone be able to find it, un-encrypt and download it then fair play to them as it is NEVER going to happen

[Stunty]

Hi

I've started work on the new catalog now - I'm hoping to be back up and running within a couple of weeks . There is something I could use some help with though: After reinstalling Actinic, I re-configured all the network setting and what not in the hope that I might still be able to download the orders I am still receiving, and tried downloading the orders - it didn't work...
Here's the error message actinic returned:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The username and password stored on the web site do not match those currently stored in the setup. Please refresh your site.

Possible Cause:
The username and password stored in the
Housekeeping | Security dialog do not match
those on the web site.
Recommendation:
Abort
Resolution:
Refresh the web site

Command: search Filename: .ord
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is there anyway I can bodge this so it'll work?

Cheers

[Mike Hughes]

If you have these stored somewhere then you can cut and paste them in, but otherwise there's no way actinic can decrypt the orders.

Mike

[jont]

Just as a note for people using the ACD to restore a site that the backup does not include any alterations you may have made to the various .PL scripts (eg orderscript.pl) - as I discovered when my PC died at the weekend but thankfully had the ACD on the website to restore from.