I discovered that Sooz Nooz had vanished on 26th December 2006.  All entry files and templates had disappeared from my web folders.

I still haven't had any reply from the web host intimating how this might have happened.  I think it may be time to consider moving my domain hosting elsewhere. 

There's a strong possibility that the site was hacked.  Or it could have been a security issue.  Following discussions with the web host, I did try installing a .htaccess file using a different FTP client called SmartFTP, which turns off an unsafe php setting, and that does seem to have worked.

Meanwhile, Pivot has released an updated version of its software.  One of the reasons it's taken me this long to get back up and running is that I had to compare old files with new.  The template layout and CSS values had changed very significantly.

I'm reasonably satisfied with my efforts to restore the look and feel of Sooz Nooz.  I still have problems with CSS values for container width in IE 6 and earlier, but that is comparably a minor irritation.

By great good fortune, Google had spidered the website just three days before I discovered it had gone.  As a result, I have been able to restore all the entries from Google's cached versions of the blog.  I would have been quite devastated if I had lost everything.

So now, all entries are being copied into files on my PC as well as into the blog, and backups of the database and configuration files are being rigorously applied.

First published 14th January 2007