My webmaster screwed me

I did not know where else to refer other than here since I use zencart. My webmaster screwed me royally. He is hosting and editing my zencart. Unfortunately he has everything on his server. He hasn't been doing the work for me and then I found out he built a website same as mine and is taking my customers and my products and he had access to all my manufacturers. He will not give me ftp or sql server login info. I do have access however to the zen cart control panel. A friend of mine will help me resetup on a different server because I have access to change the nameserver since I bought the domain. I have thousands of products and was wondering if I can somehow extract them with just access to then zencart admin panel. I have been reading into SQL Injection and so forth but I unfortunately am not technical enough to do any of this. Is there any way for me to recover my products and zencart settings? I am in desperate need of assistance. Thank you in advance for your time and cooperation.

mejmanyme:

I did not know where else to refer other than here since I use zencart. My webmaster screwed me royally. He is hosting and editing my zencart. Unfortunately he has everything on his server. He hasn't been doing the work for me and then I found out he built a website same as mine and is taking my customers and my products and he had access to all my manufacturers. He will not give me ftp or sql server login info. I do have access however to the zen cart control panel. A friend of mine will help me resetup on a different server because I have access to change the nameserver since I bought the domain. I have thousands of products and was wondering if I can somehow extract them with just access to then zencart admin panel. I have been reading into SQL Injection and so forth but I unfortunately am not technical enough to do any of this. Is there any way for me to recover my products and zencart settings? I am in desperate need of assistance. Thank you in advance for your time and cooperation.

do you have easy populate installed on the zencart install ?

whilst i am thinking about it - you could use BlackWidow, from SoftByte Labs to rip the site and extract the products data from the files it downloads to your local PC

hope this helps

jamie2k:

do you have easy populate installed on the zencart install ?

whilst i am thinking about it - you could use BlackWidow, from SoftByte Labs to rip the site and extract the products data from the files it downloads to your local PC

hope this helps

Thank you for the reply. No easy populate isn't installed. That was the first thing I checked after searching google. I am downloading the website with BlackWidow, how would I extract the products afterwards? I thought it was on the SQL database. That is why I was reading into SQL Injection. However I only have basic knowledge so I may be wrong. BlackWidow however will help with the images for the products after I import them, thank you, this will def. save a lot of time.

My friend said that I could run SQL queries through the admin panel to extract the products most likely. I have no idea how to do that though, neither does he, he was just listing ideas. Thank you again I really appreciate any assistance. I am loosing a lot of money with the site just sitting there and him stealing my clients.

As far as I know, there's no way to get the data from the admin panel. The only sure way to get it would be through the webmaster panel.

afo:

As far as I know, there's no way to get the data from the admin panel. The only sure way to get it would be through the webmaster panel.

I asked him for access but he basically said no. I am trying to learn what I can about SQL to write a query to backup my database to a CSV file but I do not know if it will even work from the ZenCart query application in my manager.

do you have access to the admin side and if so find out if sql backup module is installed

mejmanyme:

Thank you for the reply. No easy populate isn't installed. That was the first thing I checked after searching google. I am downloading the website with BlackWidow, how would I extract the products afterwards? I thought it was on the SQL database. That is why I was reading into SQL Injection. However I only have basic knowledge so I may be wrong. BlackWidow however will help with the images for the products after I import them, thank you, this will def. save a lot of time.

My friend said that I could run SQL queries through the admin panel to extract the products most likely. I have no idea how to do that though, neither does he, he was just listing ideas. Thank you again I really appreciate any assistance. I am loosing a lot of money with the site just sitting there and him stealing my clients.

Once you have the BlackWidow files on your local PC you will need to PARSE them with a text stripper and look for the unique identifier for each peice of data you want to extract from the source of your page, which will take a little time, but once you have it nailed down you will only have to do it once.

look at the "view source" for one of your products pages (this can be done by right clicking on a blank area of one of your products pages and then choose "view source").

example

product name, model & description will come from the header

<meta name="description" content= "your info will be here"

or in the centercolumn, in the lower portion of the page source

(<div class="centerColumn" id="productGeneral">):

so set the above text as your start point and collect all text between the "'s and parse that to a spreadsheet or text file for use when building your SQL INSERT script.

**<h1> **thisis your product name </h1>

selling price is next

<h2>£10.99</h2>

and so on...

There are all sorts of ways of producing the above data into a manageable data set to re-populate your site.

GOOGLE is your friend to find the best tool to PARSE the files -

You will have to learn how to create a text parsing script, but there is plenty of options for this out there and its not tom difficult.

hope you get there :) let me know if i can help.

After many attempts of parsing i was unsuccessful my daughters boyfriend (who is helping a lot) put the site up on msobrane.com in attempt to rebuild then I will forward the name server to his server. He told me it is virtually impossible to download non-parsed php scripts. I was wondering however if there's anyway to find out my sql server/database/login/password and maybe extract it this way. Is there anyway to get that info?

What your webmaster is doing is clearly unethical if not illegal. Maybe if you went to the host with a full explanation of the situation they would help you. You would likely have to prove that it is your shop and that he is using the info elsewhere. Even if he were to learn that you are trying to get around him and delete the shop, the host should have a full backup.

this is just me but once you get to a point that is no-joy,
I would run a simple delete command inthe database through thre zc sql updated,

IF you cant have your info they damn sure wont have it

Oops sorry, I forgot the first post where you explained that he has it on his own server. Maybe his ISP would take action against him for what he is doing, but I guess nobody has the power to get your info.

If you are the owner of the domain (? - 480autotrim.com) do a whois search for it and it will tell you the host information - (http://www.networksolutions.com)

If you can prove you're the owner of the domain they will give you all the login and password information.

Then go in and change the passwords and back everything up.

The point is that this guy is the host and is refusing the site owner access to her site.

I would take this to your local police station and tell them what is going on. Take all your paper work with you. He is breaking the law (possible the DA will look at this to that why I want you to take this is the police) you paid for a service and you have every right to have access to your website. There are ways to write an SQL were you can delete or retreive information, but you need to know what the tables names are and the db as well.
I would also see if he is license to have a hosting server as well. Which you can do on the computer.

nomad
PS please keep us posted on this matter.
Good luck

My point is that VERY FEW web designers host any sites themselves.

If 480autotrim.com is the actual site you are referring to (I have guessed by looking at you site you posted) then go to http://whois.domaintools.com/480autotrim.com and see that godaddy.com is the actual host NOT a private webdesigner, and the registrar is http://www.networksolutions.com/

godaddy.com will be able to help you out although you may need to prove that you own the domain by dealing with http://www.networksolutions.com

Chuck

I see you're right. So the webmaster doesn't have the site hosted on his own server as the OP said, but on server space he's renting.

Go to Godaddy and get them to dislodge this creep!

I agree with Glenn, also get GoDaddy to back up your system and have them point it to your new server, also get them so that you can access your db. Get your info and then dump the db. After that is done, file charges against your web designer. That is fraud...

nomad
Good luck

Interesting post.

The site is copy righted:

Copyright © 2006-2007 480autotrim. Powered by 480autotrim

I thought that was illegal since it is all Zen-cart material.

The copyright can go to the site owner if they make substantial modifications to the template... however, I don't think changing the color of tile_back.gif qualifies as substantial.
The Powered by Zen Cart can be removed but not changed, and what they have done is strictly prohibited.

have you got the mysql easy backup installed??

if he is stealing customer just up your google adward budget and you will out do him on google and get more customers.