Hi,
one of my clients just informed me that their website is not working anymore. Upon inspection, I realized that the content folder is almost entirely empty. The last modification of the content folder was two days ago, all other files have been untouched since the website was initially uploaded.
While we’re contacting the hosts’ customer support for a backup request, is there ANY way this could have happened without somebody with panel access deleting all the files?
Files could have been deleted manually from the server by anyone with FTP access. Client could have been hacked. Could be an issue with your code doing funny things… Hard to tell.
Have you checked the server logs?
Only content of the content folder and all corresponding files in the media folder have gone, which kind of suggests that things have been programmatically deleted.
Also I don’t believe that a hostile third party would have only deleted the contents of the content and media folders specifically. If somebody had FTP access or hacked into the server and would have just wanted to destroy the website, they would have probably deleted stuff more randomly.
I hope not! I have not set up any hooks or anything else for this project, only templates without crazy functionality like page deletion…
I currently don’t have full access to the host… Still trying to get my client to configure this for me.
From how things are looking, I kind of suspect that somebody got access to the panel and just deleted stuff until the website was broken. (I should have disabled deletion of important files…)
So yeah, I’ll wait for server logs but probably just gonna tell my client to change their password to something more secure, be careful who they give access and how to not make enemies 
Yes, definitely. You might also want to implement a content backup strategy (without having to involve the hosting provider).
You could use @bnomei’s Janitor plugin to create zips of the content…
Also, @sylvainjule is working on a tutorial how to create a backup section…
Thanks for the suggestions! I have always wanted to use Janitor for a project, but have never really felt the need to implement a custom backup strategy since the hosting providers I’m personally working with provide backup solutions. But in the specific case of this client, I should have done it differently.
@sylvainjule Excited for the tutorial! I’m currently working on setting up a customized plainkit for my projects, and a backup solution will be integrated. Definitely learned my lesson.
Yes, while many hosting providers to provide backups, you usually need their support which means waiting…
while one.com sometimes fails in different aspects and doesn’t offer a lot of server customisability, one of the reasons i recommend them to my clients is that they offer two weeks of backup and immediate restoring from their panel :~) (which probably only means they’re automating the backup request message and are still doing it manually but at least no talking to customer support)
But yeah - it’s time for Janitor plugin.