It happens to the best of us. You do an update, change your theme, add a new plugin, perhaps you did nothing at all, but suddenly all of your blog posts are gone. When you hop over to your blogfront, you have a nice little message stating “No posts match your criteria.” But, it isn’t just your posts. You have also lost your pages, and you are most likely unable to create any new posts also. Now what?

The great thing about WordPress and having a quality hosting company is that most hiccups can be repaired with little permanent damage. In this case, your wp_posts table has likely crashed. If that is the case, this is an easy fix.

Step One

Head over to your cPanel account. You likely don’t spend much time in here if you are running WP, but your login information should have been sent to by your hosting company when you registered your account. Navigate down to where you see phpAdmin.

Step Two

Once you have clicked through phpMyAdmin, your screen will look as follows. Click Databases.

Step Three

If you only have one domain, the following screen may populate automatically. If you are running several, you will need to choose the one you are having issues with. These are going to be numbered rather than listed with the domain name. Choose the _wrdp# that you need.

Step Four

Scroll down the screen to where you see wp_posts. Rather than looking like the screenshot below, you will most likely see “In Use” or “Crashed” on this line. Check the box by wp_posts, head down to the options box, click Repair.

Head back over to your blog, and see if everything is back up and running. Hopefully, this will be the case.

Not the Issue?

If this wasn’t the issue with your blog, now is when you find out if your host is worth their weight in salt. This is one of the most important reasons to invest in a quality host and why I always recommend HostGator. My experience with them is even when I submit a support ticket by email, I usually have an email back within 5 minutes. You should have a Help button within your cPanel. Submit a ticket to your host informing them of the problem.

If things are truly lost, most quality hosts run backups automatically. This is usually on a weekly basis. Ask your host to install the last backup. You may still lose a few days, but it is better than starting over from scratch. Some hosts do not run automatic backups. If you have a smaller-name hosting company, this option may not be available. Now is a great time to get moved to a new host.

Tips

If you plan on doing any “tweaking” in your blog, run a backup yourself first. Most hosts do charge a small fee for installing their backup copy. However, that fee is often waived if you have a copy of your own to hand over.