Besides google’s cache, there is a website that tries to archive old pages, http://web.archive.org/. I first saw the link to it in http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=212201”]this SDMB thread. You can go there, type in your website address, and see if they have an old copy of it.
To answer the unasked question about web pages disappearing:
A web site is nothing more (or less) than a set of computer files on one or more web servers somewhere.
A web server is some computer running some software that tells it how to give up these pages on request connected to the internet. The other key piece is the concept of “domain registration”. This means that someone has paid for the right to a website (say, “www.straightdope.com”), and registers the IP address that is associated with that web site name. That’s a set of numbers that will tell the right software that the phrase “www.straightdope.com” means “that computer, there, in the Chicago Reader’s basement, with Jerry and the hamsters next to it”.
So you type the address into your browser. It sends it to your internet server provider, sending a code that says (in essence) “give me a web page corresponding to this address”. The server looks up in the registration tables to find where to actually send that request to. (I’m leaving out all of the technical details, based on your “It’s all magic to me”, but speak up if you want more). It goes across the internet, from computer to computer, hopefully in an efficient fashion but not necessarily in a repeatable fashion, until it gets to that computer. The web server software running there goes “okay, he wants this file here”, and sends it back. (From which you can see, since I didn’t mention it, that the requests go out with your address tacked on to them, so it knows where to send the files back to.) It goes back through the computers on the internet – maybe the same route, maybe not – and back to your computer. Which then tries to interpret the resulting html, and may well say, “oh, I also need this graphic, and that one, and…”
So, you can’t get to your web site. One of these (probably) has happened:
- The person who put the file on the server in the first place, took it off. Maybe they wanted to; maybe they changed ISP’s, or ran out of their allotted space.
- The computer is down, or not connected to the internet anymore, or isn’t running as a server anymore. (Likely temporary if it’s on a major ISP, more likely to be permanent if the server was a hobby machine in someone’s basement.)
- They didn’t keep their registration up for their domain, and still have the computer and the file, but no longer have the connection.
Of course, other things could go wrong, but those are the common ones. I’m noting these because, in a couple of these examples, you could contact the person who had the website (if you can remember or look up who it was), and they might still have the files you want and be willing to send them to you. And to answer your question of “Do you have any chance of seeing it again”, in some of these cases, the owner might choose to correct the problem in time.
Hope this helps.