• Downloading Web Site

    From Jeff Gaines@21:1/5 to All on Thu Oct 3 21:14:43 2024
    It never rains....

    My daughter's website has been hacked and, effectively deleted. The
    company that maintains it and arranges hosting has said hers was the only target and that on checking their system the only one out off all the
    sites they manage that has never been backed up.

    Obviously questions to be answered for the future but they are re-building
    it from scratch to get her back in business, it is the only thing that
    stops her from standing on my doorstep with kids in tow saying she has
    nowhere to live!

    Once it is back up can she download it, i.e. is there a tool that will
    download a complete web site, pictures and all, for future security? It
    sounds a bit hacky but she can't risk being in this position again.

    --
    Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
    This mess is what happens when you elect a Labour government, in the end
    they will always run out of other people's money to spend.
    (Margaret Thatcher on her election in 1979)

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  • From Richard Kettlewell@21:1/5 to Jeff Gaines on Thu Oct 3 22:28:34 2024
    "Jeff Gaines" <jgnewsid@outlook.com> writes:
    It never rains....

    My daughter's website has been hacked and, effectively deleted. The
    company that maintains it and arranges hosting has said hers was the
    only target and that on checking their system the only one out off all
    the sites they manage that has never been backed up.

    Obviously questions to be answered for the future but they are
    re-building it from scratch to get her back in business, it is the
    only thing that stops her from standing on my doorstep with kids in
    tow saying she has nowhere to live!

    Once it is back up can she download it, i.e. is there a tool that will download a complete web site, pictures and all, for future security?
    It sounds a bit hacky but she can't risk being in this position again.

    wget can do it. But if her current provider can’t do backups then
    perhaps she should switch to one that can.

    --
    https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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  • From Abandoned Trolley@21:1/5 to Jeff Gaines on Fri Oct 4 08:57:54 2024
    On 03/10/2024 22:14, Jeff Gaines wrote:

    It never rains....

    My daughter's website has been hacked and, effectively deleted. The
    company that maintains it and arranges hosting has said hers was the
    only target and that on checking their system the only one out off all
    the sites they manage that has never been backed up.

    Obviously questions to be answered for the future but they are re-
    building it from scratch to get her back in business, it is the only
    thing that stops her from standing on my doorstep with kids in tow
    saying she has nowhere to live!

    Once it is back up can she download it, i.e. is there a tool that will download a complete web site, pictures and all, for future security? It sounds a bit hacky but she can't risk being in this position again.



    If you can find a copy of Microsoft Expression Web and get that to work,
    then theres a feature which allows you to copy a complete web site from
    the root page.


    Its a bit of a faff but it does work and it should be free

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  • From Mike Scott@21:1/5 to Richard Kettlewell on Fri Oct 4 08:27:47 2024
    On 03/10/2024 22:28, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
    Once it is back up can she download it, i.e. is there a tool that will
    download a complete web site, pictures and all, for future security?
    It sounds a bit hacky but she can't risk being in this position again.

    wget can do it. But if her current provider can’t do backups then
    perhaps she should switch to one that can.

    It's useful, but not complete. It only traces links from page to page,
    so if perchance there's a page that has no links to it, it would not be downloaded unless she ran a separate wget for it. Nor would it pick up
    any databases, log files, cgi scripts or similar.

    The only web site I've run on a commercial hosting site was made locally
    and uploaded nightly by weex, an rsync-like program. Bomb-proof. But
    that wouldn't work for a commerce site.


    She has the usual problem - as soon as you trust someone else with your
    data, you're at their mercy. Sounds, as the PP said, she should switch provider.


    --
    Mike Scott
    Harlow, England

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  • From GB@21:1/5 to Jeff Gaines on Fri Oct 4 09:30:16 2024
    On 03/10/2024 22:14, Jeff Gaines wrote:

    It never rains....

    My daughter's website has been hacked and, effectively deleted. The
    company that maintains it and arranges hosting has said hers was the
    only target and that on checking their system the only one out off all
    the sites they manage that has never been backed up.

    Obviously questions to be answered for the future but they are re-
    building it from scratch to get her back in business, it is the only
    thing that stops her from standing on my doorstep with kids in tow
    saying she has nowhere to live!

    Once it is back up can she download it, i.e. is there a tool that will download a complete web site, pictures and all, for future security? It sounds a bit hacky but she can't risk being in this position again.



    HTTrack.

    If she has access to her file space on the server, what's wrong with FTP?

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  • From GB@21:1/5 to Abandoned Trolley on Fri Oct 4 10:57:29 2024
    On 04/10/2024 10:47, Abandoned Trolley wrote:


    HTTrack.

    If she has access to her file space on the server, what's wrong with FTP?




    "has been hacked and, effectively deleted" ...


    "Once it is back up can she download it"

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  • From Abandoned Trolley@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 4 10:47:47 2024

    HTTrack.

    If she has access to her file space on the server, what's wrong with FTP?




    "has been hacked and, effectively deleted" ...

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  • From Theo@21:1/5 to Jeff Gaines on Fri Oct 4 13:59:14 2024
    Jeff Gaines <jgnewsid@outlook.com> wrote:
    Once it is back up can she download it, i.e. is there a tool that will download a complete web site, pictures and all, for future security? It sounds a bit hacky but she can't risk being in this position again.

    Most websites nowadays are programmatically generated. In other words you don't write HTML in a text editor like 1990s, you write words into an admin
    web page which stores them in a database. When somebody views the page the software retrieves the content for the database and adds appropriate HTML around it. Typically all the headings, menus, navigation, etc are added by
    the Content Management System that's generating the HTML, as well as
    features like comments, shopping carts, etc.

    If you use a download tool like wget you get the HTML, but it's then a job
    to reconstruct the DB - basically you have to copy out the text and create a new page in the CMS web UI with the paste of the old page. That's almost as much work as building the site from scratch.

    Instead, you should check what the web host offers in terms of backups. If
    you can backup the database itself, rather than the generated pages, then
    you can restore it and its config and the website will be back up and
    running again. Databases aren't files so you can't get at them via FTP, you need to go into the control panel and make backups - those backups are then files you download from the control panel or probably can pull via FTP.


    BTW, she may find it useful to look up the website on archives like https://web.archive.org/ and see if they have a capture of how it used to
    be. It's only the static HTML and images so she'd then have to reconstruct
    it on a new host as per my second paragraph. But easier than starting from nothing.

    Theo

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  • From Jeff Gaines@21:1/5 to Gaines on Fri Oct 4 22:32:05 2024
    On 03/10/2024 in message <xn0ormy8k1u42ug003@news.individual.net> Jeff
    Gaines wrote:

    My daughter's website has been hacked and, effectively deleted. The
    company that maintains it and arranges hosting has said hers was the only >target and that on checking their system the only one out off all the
    sites they manage that has never been backed up.

    Many thanks for all the input :-)

    Work is under way to rebuild the site which is the first priority, there
    was indeed a copy on https://web.archive.org/ - thanks Theo.

    Once she's up and running we'll go into why there was no backup, assuming
    it is dynamically presented from a database (I think it,s built on
    something called Shopping Cart) it does seem odd that was the only one not backed up.

    Thanks again!

    --
    Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
    All things being equal, fat people use more soap

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  • From Vir Campestris@21:1/5 to Jeff Gaines on Sun Oct 6 21:41:06 2024
    On 03/10/2024 22:14, Jeff Gaines wrote:

    It never rains....

    My daughter's website has been hacked and, effectively deleted. The
    company that maintains it and arranges hosting has said hers was the
    only target and that on checking their system the only one out off all
    the sites they manage that has never been backed up.

    Obviously questions to be answered for the future but they are re-
    building it from scratch to get her back in business, it is the only
    thing that stops her from standing on my doorstep with kids in tow
    saying she has nowhere to live!

    Once it is back up can she download it, i.e. is there a tool that will download a complete web site, pictures and all, for future security? It sounds a bit hacky but she can't risk being in this position again.


    The
    company that maintains it and arranges hosting has said hers was the
    only target and that on checking their system the only one out off all
    the sites they manage that has never been backed up.

    Yeah right. They just happened to hit the only one that wasn't backed
    up. And I'm Father Christmas.

    As others have said switch providers ASAP.

    Andy

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