It's All Gone :(

Well, I had a moderatley successful electronics review website, with ad revenue and a dedicated user base. companies would send us products to review for free, i would review them, then keep the products. not a bad deal eh? well after the domain expired, the person who i made the site with refused to renew the domain, so i lost all 15 of my reviews, with pictures, forever. how dissapointing is that!

You don't have a backup of the site? Why can't you buy the domain yourself? Once the domain expires it goes back out there for anyone to buy, right? (That happened with my sister. She had a great name and then a squatter came in and snatched it when she let her time lapse)

He had all the backups of the site on his computer, and the website expired while I was away on vacation. I can't get in contact with him, it's as if he is avoiding me. Those squatters took it over (diabolikal.org). I read an article that they were one of the like.. top 10 worst things about the internet or something like that.

I thought the owner of a domain had 45 days after it's expiration to repurchase it? A sort of "first refusal" thing. If the domain was bought by someone else within that 45 day period then you may be able to complain and get it back.

If it is the content you are worried about, then try the Web Archive. They have billions of mirrors of websites throughout their history, since 1996. See if your site was archived, and if it was then you should be able to copy off your images and reviews, and can set up your own site if you want. Even my site which only gets a few hits a month has been archived a few times.