404?

[Boojum]

This is bizarre.

 

Earlier, I invited someone to visit one of my pages in the Nation and World subdomain. A minute later, she informed me that she'd gotten a 404 page, and was getting them on all the pages in that subdomain except the index page.

 

Checking, I found that this is indeed so: All the internal pages in the subdomain return 404 pages.

 

Please have a look at this index page, and see what happens when you click on a button for, say, one of the essays.

 

Perhaps someone can figure out what happened here, and how long it's been going on?

[TweezerMan]

I'd suggest logging into your account via FTP and see if the files are really there or not, and see if perhaps they're not in the correct directory.

[TCH-Tim]

I'd agree with David. Check on the existence of the /issues/ directory and also the /alliance/ directory. They may be in the wrong place or named something else, etc. The Unity Party stuff in the /unity/ directory is working, so it's probably not a subdomain issue.

 

-Tim

[Boojum]

Thanks for checking. I will examine the site via my FTP program, as you have suggested.

 

This does leave me with a question, however: Why would either directory, or any of its contents, be in the wrong place or under the wrong name? All these files were correctly placed the last time I checked, and I have not moved or renamed anything since then.

 

Is it possible that I've been hacked?

[TCH-Tim]

Is it possible that I've been hacked?

 

Anything's possible, but it's always best to start with the basics.

[Boojum]

Confirmation: The subdirectories for quotes, essays and the Common Sense Alliance inside /nation-and-world/ are indeed missing.

 

Now: How and why would this occur, and what is the simplest remedy?

 

(It is noteworthy, by the way, that the missing directories contained most of the potentially contentious or controversial essays on the site. This does tend to lead to a suspicion of foul play.)

 

Also: How do I go about quickly detecting any future such errors or deletions from my site? Is there any less onerous method than hand-checking each page frequently?

[TCH-Tim]

(It is noteworthy, by the way, that the missing directories contained most of the potentially contentious or controversial essays on the site. This does tend to lead to a suspicion of foul play.)

 

This is normally where I'd throw in some comment about the Bush administration, but as this place is fairly politically neutral, I'll leave my comments to myself. Sorry about your loss anyway.

 

As far as preventing future loss, I don't know. I've heard of services (or rather, people send me junk email touting such things) that offer to constantly monitor your site for dead links. I can only imagine that with the help of some fine folks here and/or a little Google, such a tool could be found on your own.

 

Hopefully for the data itself you have backups.

 

-Tim

[TweezerMan]

Now: How and why would this occur, and what is the simplest remedy?

How and why may not ever be known, especially if the deletions occurred some time ago. I'd tend to suspect some sort of accidental deletion as opposed to someone maliciously deleting only some of the content on your site. The simplest remedy is to make periodic backups of your web site, and if something disappears / is deleted, then you just restore your files from your backup.

 

Also: How do I go about quickly detecting any future such errors or deletions from my site? Is there any less onerous method than hand-checking each page frequently?

What I'd probably do is periodically check the Error Log in your CPanel and look for "File does not exist:" errors for pages that you know should be there (which is how 404 errors will show up in the error log).

[Boojum]

Thank you, gentlemen.

 

The directories and their included files have been restored.

 

Now let's hope they stay put this time.