Help! HD died, can I get site back from website?

[Jordy]

Hi all

I hope someone can help. My Hard Drive bombed the other day taking the most our online actinic shore with it. Unfortunately I don't have a back up (I know how stupid!) so I can't just copy over an old site1 directory and update it.

Can I somehow restore it from the website by downloading the files from there? Is there a function in Actinic 7 that lets me download rather than upload?

Please help

Jordy

[jubbbird]

Are you saying that you don't have ANYTHING not except the online stuff? No theme? no site1 folder, nothing?

Correct me if I'm wrong, anyone, but it seems to me VERY unlikely that you are gonna find a magic button that whizzes through your online store and and recreateds all your templates and options...

You may be in a pickle :/

Are you sure your HDD is dead? I obviously don't want to insult your technical knowledge or intelligence, but its gotta be worth asking...? Sometimes its easy to mistake symptoms...

[Jordy]

Hi there

Cheers for the reply. Yep the HD is well and truly dead. It got damaged when the laptop was dropped. We sent it away and had some data recovered, but all the actinic stuff has been lost, so...

no actinic, no site 1, nadda. Indeed, I feel like I am well and truly stuffed.

With the site online, I was hoping I might be able to copy some of the files back into a new site1 folder in order to get the look and feel (images templates?) and then basically having to only go through and put in all the payment details again etc...

Is any of this possible?

Cheers

Jordy

[Duncan Rounding]

Search around on the internet there are companies out there that can recover data from faulty HDDs. Also try searching the forum I know Norman has quoteda company that does this some time ago.

You can obviously recover your images from your site but not the Actinic database. I would recommend download a copy of your acatalog and cgi-bin directories using an FTP client (not Actinic) in any case as it can do no harm and may be needed for reference if you have to rebuild from scratch.

[I-CC]

Do you have any site snapshots or anything from the original site archived maybe (local files archived that is)..

Also, with the site live, you can only download orders from it using the same encryption key that is on the original installation of the site, which a snapshot (if you made one) will have in it.

[Jordy]

Hi all

The HD was retained by the insurance company so the laptop came back with a fresh HD and the recovered data in a directory.

Eveything for this site was on the laptop, so hence my dilema we lost everything.

I am happy to go back and start again (I have all the payment security keys, merchant ids etc), but can I go and retrieve say, the framework and images, maybe even the pages? I use Golive so I can FTP to the server to retrieve them, it's just which files do I retreive?

Thanks for your continued help

Jordy

[pinbrook]

go to the webserver and download everything in the acatalog folder.

The stuff most helpful to you are all the html pages, you will be able to use these to copy/paste your product descriptions, prices etc back into actinic. and of course the images too.

Other than that you are in for the long haul of completely rebuilding your site.

[Jordy]

THE GODS ARE SMILING!

I have just found a backup on CD! Okay it's an old one, but it's a backup of the entire site1 folder, when the site went live a few months ago!

All I have to do is update this old version to match the new one online fantastic!

Thank you all so much for your help and fast response - you are all a credit to the Actinic comunity.

Final thought for Actinic - build in a website backup option into a future version of Actinic 8 for idiots like myself who haven't back up.

I've learned my lesson - i shall back up for sure in the future!

Actinic for Mac -> lets be having it!

[NormanRouxel]

Final thought for Actinic - build in a website backup option into a future version of Actinic 8 for idiots like myself who haven't back up.

It's already there. Every time you close Actinic you are prompted Do you wish to perform a backup?.

Use the Site Snapshot option, direct this to an external drive and you've got your entire site safe somewhere else every time you close down.

[Jordy]

Indeed, you are correct and we should have done that - I hold my hands up for being a dimlow.

Our whole company use Macs and we have one PC - typicaly the one that got busted. I shall now in future backup to one of the Macs for safe keeping to.

[jont]

Best also backing up and taking off-site ... if there is a fire / burglary then the backups will also vanish ... sounds far fetched but if you search the forum this did happen last year to a member

[Jordy]

Woah! Now that's not good.

Advice taking - will send a backup on CD on our other office.

[pinbrook]

Back up to CD, or online or flash drive or external HD

take copies of both site1 folder and snapshot.

there have been situations with people only using snapshot as a backup only to find the snapshot corrupt.

[jont]

It is worth searching the forum archives for backups as there is lots of advice on proceedures, routines and the different approaches forum members take in protecting their information.

[Jordy]

Good advice, will do that too

Cheers