I originally created hackification.com as an addon domain and WordPress installation to an existing cpanel account, which was hosting a different site. The original domain was coming up for renewal, and I decided to let it expire, since it wasn’t really doing anything much.

Unfortunately I’ve since found out that cpanel really doesn’t like having its primary domain changed – Fantastico basically stopped working correctly and would leave me with files with permissions set to ’0000′ – unmodifiable by me.

In the end I decided just to start again: I asked my hosting company to completely trash and recreate my hosting. I’ve now restored from backups, which is a bit of a hassle:

1. Recreate the WordPress installation as closely as possible;
2. Import a previously exported WordPress XML file (which restores all the posts and comments);
3. Restore my “uploads” directory (which contains all the images referenced in my posts);
4. Restore various downloads directories (which contain various assets and demos);
5. Restore the custom theme I designed (the blue/orange one you can hopefully see);
6. Finally, try to remember my various WordPress and WordPress plug-in settings (particularly Akismet, since as soon as the blog went live the spam started appearing).

If I had to provide advice, it would be:

• Backup everything, in various ways (eg WordPress export, plus entire directory dumps, plus even screenshots of settings);
• If you’re planning to use a single cpanel to host multiple domains, make sure the primary domain is one you want to keep forever – it could even be a cheap-as-possible domain that no-one but you ever sees.

I was also very lucky with my hosting company, webhosting.uk.com: I’m not paying very much (£60 per year), but they were very quick getting me back up and running, and provide good service in the evenings (which is the only time I get to work on my blog), so thanks guys.

As coincidence would have it, I noticed a SitePoint article regarding WordPress backups: Keep Your Blog Safe: Back Up Your WordPress Installation. Hopefully that might be of use to anyone else with a cpanel blog to manage.

I’m Stu Smith, a developer in Exmouth, UK. I’m a director of BinaryComponents Ltd, a tiny ISV providing web design and bespoke software services. We also produce the FeedGhost RSS Reader, and we’ll shortly be launching a new web application.