Baconlove

So we created a server yesterday and with some changes and adding of mods we actually did get some hours of gameplay. Our first problem was that all items in preserving bin disappered when we restarted the server, but our characters remained where we logged out. We restarted a couple of times to make changes. When we were satisfied with the changes we tamed some dinos and made a barge(from a mod) where we put all our items and machines. We then decided to stop the server so it wasnt running while we slept irl. We thougt that wise. But apparently it wasnt, cause when we logged in to the server today we had to reload our characters which was completely naked, no weapons or gear. The boat is gone all the dinos aswell. And it doesnt matter if we try start from a backup version of game. Its like it didnt save anything. The icons on the chars is there tho and an old base we made in the beginning. We dont really know much about server management but we wanted a server 3-4 people could play on. We want to breed dinos and therefor we want to be able to stop the server at night so babys dont die. But we dont want to lose everything every time! Am i the one wrong here? Is that not possible?