Site down or hacked? Start here.
Skip the reading, skip the quiz. Do the three things below, in order.
Site Rescue is the emergency lane at Greg Drake Digital: recovery for websites that are down, defaced, hacked, or stuck with an unreachable host or developer. Contact is by email with the subject RESCUE. One documented rescue restored a business's site the same evening its hosting server was deleted.
The dispatcher script
Touch nothing else. Do not delete, reinstall, or "start fresh." Whatever state the site is in holds evidence and, often, recoverable content.
Write down what you know. When it went down, what changed recently, who hosts it (if you know), and any error message on the screen. Rough is fine.
Email me with the subject line RESCUE. Include your domain name and what you wrote down.
Or write directly to greg@gregdrake.com, subject RESCUE. That subject goes to the top of the pile; you will hear back the same business day.
A host once deleted a client's server at end of day. The site was back that evening.
The hosting company confirmed the server could not be restored. Because a recent audit had recorded the site's structure and content outside that server, the site was rebuilt from records and public archives and relaunched the same evening, new security certificate and all.
Then the permanent fix: a rebuild with no server to delete. Every change versioned, so the whole site can be rebuilt identically, anywhere, in minutes. The scoreboard from that rebuild is on the Evidence page.
Rescues end with you owning everything: domain, files, content. Whether anything comes after the rescue is a separate conversation, with a written quote, when your site is back up and your heart rate is down.