Can you lose files during DNS Propagation?

Hi guys,

I recently had my website crash - so GoDaddy told me in order to trouble shoot the issue, I had to change the nameservers back to GoDaddy from Cloudflare… I did that and it took over 24 hours to propagate my website.

That being said, when my website finally loaded I was missing a number of installed plugins (WP Rocket) and published blog posts and It seems they are using a version of my website from a week or 2 ago.

Is there a technical explanation for this? Are there still files left on the Cloudflare server? I really don’t understand how this is possible.

I am looking for a technical explanation of how I can have an older version of my website loaded when I changed my nameservers from Cloudflare back to GoDaddy.

If anyone can shed any light on this I would greatly appreciate it. Fortunately I did not lose much a data and it could have been worse but I am still very bothered by this. I even have the URL’s of the missing blog posts.

Please advise.

Cloudflare doesnt store any files.

DNS and file storage are unrelated and you cant lose files when making changes to DNS. Simply make sure the DNS records on Cloudflare and your host match, to verify you didnt upload files to a wrong server. Apart from that only your host can tell you where your data is.

Yea thats what I thought, that’s why I cant figure out what happened.

I had some run-ins with GoDaddy reps on the phone due to hosting issues. Is it possible they sabatoged my site somehow?

Your site is on their servers, so of course they have access, though I would consider it unlikely they’d target your site specifically. I am afraid only they can clarify where your data is.

Godaddy is not exactly the best choice in general.

yes i am aware they are horrible but i bought this package 2 years ago and have been tied in. I use siteground now.

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