Missing categories - Major issue, please help.

[kobra]

there aren't that many products affected

Well if there aren't that many - just re-create them from the admin

[logicalstep]

update for you:

It turns out that when the major server crash happened, the host in restoring the server, they had pointed the Name records to an instance of our server which was a year old!. I discovered this when trying to make changes to the files on FTP wasn't having any affect on the website.
They have now redirected the records and I'm just waiting for them to update.

This has taken them a week and me telling them that I was looking at a different instance to get fixed...not happy at all they didn't spot something so obvious.

I'll keep this updated if it doesn't start working again, but for now, thanks for the assistance.

Logicalstep

[kobra]

they had pointed the Name records to an instance of our server which was a year old

Well servers can malfunction/crash but another instance???
Looks like they do not keep their servers cleaned up!!

[logicalstep]

That's correct, the thing that worried me and that took so long was the fact that there seemed to be no internal log of the changes they were making to the system and as such, one person didn't know what had or hadn't been done and this contributed to the delay.
I'm now going to take weekly backups and as soon as I can (given I'm doing a new template and upgrading to 1.5) I'm going to move hosts.
They have never been that reliable, we had all sorts of issues with renewing thew SSL Cert as well and I monitor the up-time with Pingdom and I'm always getting emails.

There is a massive problem in the UK of finding a decent host, it looks like all the review sites I see are just fake comments and scores.
I wish we had a bluehost in the UK. I think I'll stick with Cpanel hosts from now on, most have automated backup services that can be run by the customer and not have to rely on the host.

Thanks again for your help, I'm sure you'll read more 'help-me' posts around the forums whilst trying to get the new design sorted!

Logicalstep