When there is genuinely no backup.
WHAT IS AVAILABLE
Public archive services crawl and store copies of web pages. If your site was public, older versions may exist there.
Search engine caches sometimes hold recent versions.
WHAT YOU CAN RECOVER
Page text Page structure and layout, approximately Images, sometimes The site's URL structure
WHAT YOU CANNOT
The database User accounts Orders and transactions Anything behind a login Anything never crawled
HOW TO USE IT
Look up your domain in the archive service and browse to a date before the loss.
Copy the content page by page. Slow, and it recovers text that would otherwise be gone.
REBUILDING
You are rebuilding the site and repopulating content, not restoring. Expect it to take time.
PRIORITISE
The pages that brought traffic. Check your analytics or Search Console, if you still have access, for which those were.
THE HONEST POSITION
This is salvage rather than recovery. It is better than nothing and far worse than a backup.
