Can’t access site (errors 403/404)

  • Hello,

    For a school project, I decided with colleagues to update our master’s website. We got admin login credentials from an alumni that maintained the site last year. Then, our group met up and we tried out how to apply a new theme, before reverting the changes. That’s all. But the following week, we found that the site was down, despite no one having logged to it.

      The concrete problem :

    • The home page returns a 403 error
    • All other pages, including the admin logon page, return a 404 error
    • We don’t have access to a local copy of the website, and haven’t yet installed WordPress on our computers, though we’re willing to do so if required.
    • We know very little about the site itself. In particular, we don’t know the WordPress version, used extensions, and even the theme used (despite having tried modifying it…)
    • We’re complete beginners with WordPress, and barely know any HTML/CSS and PHP
      What we know

    • Admin login credentials, obviously
    • The website is hosted at https://www.1and1.fr . We’re trying to get in contact with them but so far, we’re looking for the client code of whoever first created the site
    • We reached out to our university’s computer support service, but they can’t help us at all, because the site is completely independent.We’re left on our own to autonomously maintain the website…
    • The expiration date is set to November 5th 2018
    • The website is down since at least December 11th 2017. Here‘s the latest snapshot of the homepage from archive.org, dated from September 22nd 2017

    I know I’m asking for help quite late, and I don’t have much useful info, but does anyone know of a way to recover our website?
    Thanks in advance.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

  • Hi.,

    Try downloading WordPress again, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel, and delete then replace your copies of everything except the wp-config.php file and the /wp-content/ directory with fresh copies from the download. This will effectively replace all of your core files without damaging your content and settings.
    Some uploaders tend to be unreliable when overwriting files, so don’t forget to delete the original files before replacing them.

    If you want further help I’ll be happy to assist.

    Thanks.,
    Rajan V

    The OP said, “The website is hosted at https://www.1and1.fr . We’re trying to get in contact with them but so far, we’re looking for the client code of whoever first created the site”

    It sounds like they can’t log into the server and overwrite files, unless maybe the person that owns the website (whomever started it) maybe left some FTP login info around for them to find.

    And, who owns the domain?

    If you can’t track down this person, you may have to start another website.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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