You shall be more than welcome to pop by and get a feel for the place! :)
We'll change the name of the server around next wipe (10 days from now) since we figured that VanillaRusty is a bit too generic and too easy to confuse with every other server named "Vanilla Rust", so it'll eventually be Pork & Rocks -> https://cloudup.com/cr-Njl0eg83 (design mockup...)
You bearly have a few visitors per day, check your rank, it's hilarious :) http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rustserverfinder.com#trafficstats so this is why I recommend a decent old topsite with tradition. Check Rust Servers from TopG.
Ive never had the problem of something I built disapearing after playing the game for 161 hours according to steam. I would encourage you to not give up on rust as it can be really fun. There are alot of servers to choose from with admins that are very nice and have more experience hosting then I do. This probably happened when the server reset and the data must not have been saved. Did you place a sleeping bag and click respawn at base because if not this might be that you simply respawned at a different area of the map. Please note that im not trying to encourage you to return to my new server but you are very welcome to, but to maybe continue your search till you find one that suits your needs and makes you feel at home. It took me many hours to find a nice server. I think that Rust has a fantastic future and you can follow the progress at https://trello.com/b/lG8jtz6v/rust-main while you wait for the full release of Rust.