Website gone and no backup? Where to recover it from

First: secure the domain

Before looking for content, make sure you still control the address. Look the domain up in a WHOIS service and check its expiry date and status.

• Expired, but still in a grace period. Most registrars let the owner renew for some weeks after expiry, sometimes for an extra fee. Renew now.
• In redemption. For common endings such as .com, an expired domain usually enters a 30-day redemption period before it is released. The registrar can still restore it, at a higher price.
• Already dropped and re-registered by someone else. The domain is no longer yours. You can still recover the content, but it will need a new address.

Rules differ between domain endings and registrars, so ask yours directly and do it today.

Second: ask the hosting company

Most hosting companies keep their own backups, even if you never set any up. They also keep a closed account for a while before deleting it. Contact support with your domain, account email and the date the site went down, and ask three questions:

1. Do you have a backup of my files and database, and from which date?
2. If the account was suspended or closed, can it be reactivated, even for a short time?
3. How long do you keep data after an account is closed?

If the site was taken down for an unpaid bill, paying it often brings everything back as it was. If it was removed after a hack, ask for the most recent backup from before the hack.

This is the only source that can give you the database: users, orders, settings and unpublished posts. Every other source below holds only what visitors could see.

Third: your own files and accounts

Search places you may not think of as backups:

• Your computers. Old project folders, FTP client folders, downloaded theme files, exported databases with names ending in .sql or .sql.gz.
• Email. Search your mailbox for messages from the hosting company, the developer or a backup plugin. Attachments sometimes include exports, and automatic backup emails can hold a full copy.
• Cloud storage. WordPress backup plugins often send copies to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Amazon S3. Look for folders named after a backup plugin or your site.
• The people who worked on the site. Developers and agencies often keep a copy or a staging version long after a project ends.

Fourth: copies of your content elsewhere

Your text may live on in places you did not intend:

• Search for exact sentences. Put a sentence you remember in quotes into a search engine. Scraper sites often copied whole articles, with images.
• Feeds and cross-posts. Newsletter archives, RSS readers, social media posts, guest posts and directory listings keep text and images.
• Search engine caches. Mostly gone: Google removed its cached pages in 2024. Do not count on them.

These sources give you pieces, not a site. They help fill gaps in what the archive has.

Fifth: public web archives

The Wayback Machine is the largest public web archive and usually the most complete source for a lost site. For many sites it holds hundreds or thousands of pages, captured over years. Other archives exist: some save pages only when someone asks them to, and some national libraries archive sites under their country’s domains. Check them for pages the Wayback Machine missed.

An archive holds the pages, not the server behind them. Text, layout, images and addresses can come back. The database, logins, forms and search cannot.

What the archive cannot restore, and what to do instead →

Putting the pieces together

Use the most complete source as the base and fill the gaps from the others:

1. A hosting backup exists. Restore it. Use the archive only for pages added after the backup date.
2. No backup, but the archive holds the site. Rebuild from the archive on the original addresses, then add missing images and text from your own files and copies.
3. Neither. Collect what you can find and rebuild the important pages by hand. Give every old address you cannot restore a deliberate answer instead of an error.

Keep the original addresses in every case. Links, bookmarks and search results point to them; new addresses would leave all of those broken.

Rebuild from the archive, step by step →

So it does not happen again

A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a backup. The rule most professionals follow:

• Three copies: the live site and two backups.
• Two different places: for example, the hosting company and your own cloud storage.
• One copy off the server: a backup stored only on the server is lost together with the server.

Once a year, restore a backup to a test address and check that the site works.

Questions

Next step

If the archive holds your site, I restore it into WordPress on the original addresses, with a status and a reason for every old URL. The free audit shows what the archive has for your domain before you pay anything.