So all the old data has gone – well, I know where it is stored on certain distributor websites and how to access much of the information via Google’s cache. I may even recreate most of it.
So what happened? The page template I used for the blog allowed someone to hack the whole blog. To be fair, this happened to 200,000 other blogs, so it was not personal, just the kind of mindless vandalism found both on the internet and off it. However, the hack didn’t just trash the website, but also all the online backups. Needless to say, a certain company which provided the template will not have my business in future. They could have easily communicated there was a problem and knew about it in advance, but did not bother to communicate it.
So, the next steps are to start rebuilding and restructuring the blog. It’s going to take a few weeks to make it all shipshape again. The first stage will be to recover the content. Later, I’ll experiment with different templates and find one I’m happy with.
Overall, it’s irritating but not a complete disaster. I’ll also be returning to my old practice of storing backups offline.