Have you ever had to start over with your forum?

My forum had over 2000 posts before we disappeared, and I lost everything. We just relaunched and started over from scratch with no backup. I'm wondering if anyone else had a similar experience, and had to start there forum over from scratch? If you did, why, what happened?

 

Yep. Had to because I changed servers. I could have just changed the details on my other one but we had decided that it was too messy to do and we had so many errors.

The new host is awesome.

 

I got hacked twice in the past prior to re-starting my forum last year in 2011. I didn't have any backups, so I had to start from scratch.

 

I was on free hosting(forumotion) and our rival literally told lies to get forumotion to get our site closed down.
Of course with that type of site, host and software i didn't technically own it since it was free hosting and forumotion software so i lost my site.

it was a 4 month old site with 1,100 members and nearly 30,000 posts.

We rebranded and came back stronger....luckily i was able to stay in contact with my members and right before forumotion closed/deleted my site, i had already started on the new version of my forum.

This was earlier this year in Febrruary...
We have less members compared to the original site(600 vs 1,100) but we have 3 times as many posts now( just recently hit 100,000 posts).

I am actually glad that i lost my site(the original) because it has challenged me to learn more about different softwares(xf, ipb, vb, smf, mybb) and it gives me more freedom to do as i wish.

 

I hope everyone who has lost their site due to not having a backup now has a backup plan in place. I have an automated cPanel backup script that runs as a cron job 2x a week backing up all of the files off my host to my home NAS box. I also have my database backed up nightly to the same box via a vBulletin plugin.

If you value your site, make sure you have a backup solution.

 

Oh wow. No, I have never had anything like that happen before. I have always had backups in place, even if something did go wrong. What happened with yours to cause such loss? And did you not have any backups? That really sucks, man.

If I lost everything, I'm really not sure I would start over at all..

 

I got robbed, my laptop was stolen which had the most recent backups. I only started over because of my ambition, and it was only 3 months work. We plan to be around for YEARS, so this is only a minor setback.

 

I understand the part about your laptop being stolen and you losing your backups but what caused you to lose your online site?

 

Oh wow. That's a double whammy, huh? Losing your forum *and* your laptop like that? That sucks.

I'm glad to see that you see it as only a minor setback in the grand scheme of things, though. That's dedication!

 

Damn bro, I'm going to do my best to help you out!

 

On my current forum no. But I did have to start over a few years back when I ran a different site, since I moved from Invisionfree to vBulletin and didn't want to pay those ridiculous fees to get the database back.

 

Nope, I never had any such issues before. I usually have daily backups, and hence even if it something is wrong, I shall atleast have the backup of the previous day. Its better than having no backup. Plus, since I always use paid hosts, they wont close our accounts so easily like free hosts. Even if they suspend our accounts, we can easily talk with the support and they shall restore everything to back it was earlier. Hence no problem so far.

 

Ouch. Hopefully you didn't have to many posts. Another reason why I hate free forum sites. I'm not sure if they're all like that, but I'd assume that's what they want is for your forum to get big, and for you to pay a big fee to get the database.

 

Nope. Every forum I've ran was never re-opened. One time though, when one of the mods I had hired deleted almost every thread in the site, I had to perform a database backup to restore them. But that was just as far as it went; luckily, I never had to re-start things from scratch.

 

I used to use Mybb.. Though I noticed that updates take too long to be released, so XenForo was for me. I couldn't transfer my forum over so I just had to restart, though I mainly had bots and not many posts/threads so it wasn't too bad I guess.

 

That's awful. I hope you ip banned that moderator. It's not nice having moderators that go behind your back and pull stupid moves like that.

 

Sorry to read about that incident. Maybe we had the same moderator

A very popular entertainment forum needed two new moderators, therefore, we chose two active members. One of them immediately went through and deleted thousands of threads.

 

Seems like they're everywhere! I don't see the point of them doing it though. Being active and then throwing it all away by doing something really stupid.

 

I haven't ever lost a forum due to my taking it down but I have had a forum stall when a toxic mix of my lack of time combined with an off-season period led to my not doing what it takes to generate interest prior to the season starting again. My competitors didn't make the same mistake and new members gravitated towards them.

I made a plan of action and reversed much of the damage, including hiring a couple of moderators from the forum who stuck through the slow period. Never again will I take even the smallest of forums for granted, they ALL have value.

 

Starting over really does suck. What's even better is watching the community grow into bigger and a better community that what you accomplished before and also having more members.