Lost website

  • Unknown's avatar
    duranddarts · Member ·

    Hi – We had a death in our organization last year and some items got the ball dropped. One of them was evidently renewing our website fee and it appears that our website is gone. From what I can tell, our domain was purchased through GoDaddy and we used WordPress for the website. I talked to somebody before and they insisted it had been too long to retrieve the website and it was gone. But, I just received an email that we have a comment on our webpage that needs to be approved. So how am I still getting emails and notifications about a website that supposedly doesn’t exist anymore? Is there a way to get it back? The renewal expired in December.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    duranddarts · Member ·

    I’m also getting an error that says Please Check your Primary Site’s Jetpack connection — I don’t know what that means or what to do.

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Firstly, sorry for your organization’s loss. Sadly in this instance we are not able to help. To clarify, we are just one provider of WordPress sites, and while we can help with sites that are hosted with us, we do not have a connection to WordPress sites hosted with other providers like GoDaddy.

    We do have full backup data for sites we host directly, but not for sites with other providers, unfortunately. Even though we are not able to assist you directly, let me see if I can help by pointing you in the right direction to get the help you need. :)

    From what I can tell, our domain was purchased through GoDaddy and we used WordPress for the website. I talked to somebody before and they insisted it had been too long to retrieve the website and it was gone.

    I can confirm that duranddarts.com was a site that was hosted at one time with GoDaddy, but at this time appears to not be online. Instead a blank starter site has taken it’s place, and I assume you are already aware of this.

    Because we don’t have a connection to GoDaddy, it’s difficult to say if they still have a copy of the site or not. I would say it’s a good idea to contact them directly and ask if they have retained any backups. If you do not have access to the GoDaddy account this site was hosted under, you may want to follow this process they offer for other folks in your situation: https://godaddy.com/help/how-to-gain-access-to-domainsaccounts-after-owners-death-8356

    If they do not have a backup of the site, there is still a copy that I was able to find here in the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20210510043447/https://duranddarts.com/

    The Internet Archive is not a backup service, but a non-profit organization that is trying to create an archive of the internet for history. So they would not have anything more than you see at that link, but still it may be enough that you can copy and paste some of the more important text as a starting point for a replacement site.

    But, I just received an email that we have a comment on our webpage that needs to be approved. So how am I still getting emails and notifications about a website that supposedly doesn’t exist anymore? Is there a way to get it back? The renewal expired in December.

    To clarify, on sites we host directly we offer a built in commenting service, but WordPress sites on other providers do not offer this by default. Instead we offer a plugin called “Jetpack” that adds to other sites the things the we offer pre-installed on sites we host directly on WordPress.com.

    I am not able to see the contents of that email, but I suspect that its a “phantom” email of some kind related to the fact that duranddarts.com used to use the Jetpack plugin before it was taken offline. I would refer you to Jetpack support for a closer look, but again, sadly, we would not have a backup of the site, regardless of the Jetpack connection it once had.

    In the meantime I recommend reaching out to GoDaddy support as they are your best bet for recovering the site. At a minimum you will want to regain access to that account so that you can transfer the domain to your control so it does not expire.

    Hope this helps point you in the right direction!

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