Long story short:
ALMOST ALL THE MAPS BETWEEN JUNE 14th AND NOW ARE GONE - INCLUDING BACKUPS - FOREVER - NOTHING CAN BE DONE!
Please PM me on the forums or wherever (IRC?) to get the login details!
How did we get there?
So, our server uses some administration software called Plesk - it's quite awful and we don't use it for its intended purpose (re-selling hosting) at all but when I initially ordered the server it seemed like a nice idea since it came with a lot of stuff preconfigured and ready to go, while I have absolutely zero clue about setting up IIS (Internet Information Services).
The first warning signs came a few months ago when the forum was down for like four days because Plesk updated itself and fucked everything up. But that's OK - it was just the website.
What happened now is as follows:
* Plesk was bugging me about a pending update for a while and since I knew it had the tendency to auto-update, I wanted to be there when the update happens so I could fix problems.
* I tried backing up our system but the backup function was b0rked at the time since our virtual server was moved to a new host machine a while ago - I just said "Fuck it, how bad can it be? The website will be down for a while at the worst..." Little did I know!
* Plesk merrily proceeded to ERASE all our FTP directories without any warning, prompt, error or whatever, skipping the Recycle Bin and overwriting deleted data with its own installation files on the disk.
Any software company that designs something like this should be sued but alas...
* As you know I have given FTP access to logs and maps via a shared FTP account and thus everything was deleted by Plesk since it was cross-linked under the FTP root... Not in a million years would it have crossed my mind that a software update would DELETE non-native and totally unrelated files without any prompts...
* The hosting company doesn't have any backups of our system since regular backups are a paid-for service.
* This means everything is gone FOREVER - apart from the few maps I was able to rescue via a data recovery utility.
What can we do?
I am now considering requesting our host to uninstall Plesk from our system but at the same time I don't possess enough knowledge to set up IIS properly myself at the moment and am not really forward to investing a lot of time into acquiring the required skills.
We'll see...
For now all we can do is ask everybody who had access to the FTP whether they have any backups.
Also, set up manual back-up procedures to save everything every two weeks or so - I was doing this in the past back at SpA but in this community I haven't been tending to the Minecraft servers for a long time.
All I can say is that I'm sorry and the human part of this disaster rests fully on me, even though I don't believe I would have made any other decision at any other time - I simply could not foresee Plesk affecting anything apart from the website - and it never did!
Important note: If anybody lost his or her personal world and wants a donation refund, I will grant it. Otherwise a blank world will be provided as usual.