- Joined
- Feb 28, 2003
- Messages
- 51,246
- Reaction score
- 8,254
- Location
- Huntsville
- First Name
- Scott
- Last Name
- Friday
I apologize for the site being down for the last 24 hours or so.
For the first time in 16 years, I accidentally nuked a bunch of threads that I did NOT intend to delete. Of course, an instant after clicking "YES" I realized the first pebble of the avalanche had been set in motion and there was no getting it back. It was a sick in the bottom of the gut feeling... I literally felt like I was gonna
What made it especially bad was that quite a few old but popular ride reports had recently been brought back to the top of the thread list. Many of them have several hundred replies and easily that many images... Once the threads were deleted, so were the images because all the linked images had recently been converted to attachments. So there was NO way I'd be able to rebuild these threads. Once I realized that the only way to recover the content would be to go back to the most recent backup of the site and do a complete restore. My hosting service does a complete back up of the server every other day. They did one about 15 minutes BEFORE I did the update, and then another just AFTER I nuked those threads!! Talk about bad timing! This meant losing all the new content since I did the upgrade just after Midnight Tuesday morning. The good thing is that most of it was just basic chatter type posts and not to much serious content, like another big ride report or massive event planning thread.
Getting the site back on line turned into a real mess. The hosting service had a hardware failure on their end this afternoon, which was delaying their ability to respond to my crisis because that was affecting a lot of other people. My home ISP seems to be having issues because of a storm that came through last night and this morning. That was causing me to experience PAINFULLY slow upload/download speeds for transferring files back and forth to the server. Then, apparently the upgrade file that I had downloaded originally from the XF site somehow got corrupted. Of course I did not realize this until after multiple attempts at uploading it and several failed attempts at executing the upgrade. So I had to go back to their site and download it again, then upload it again, and it FINALLY worked!!
I AM working to get automated backups in place to make a copy of everything daily. That was on the post upgrade to do list and I just didn't get it done in time... Another case of bad timing.
I still have the old HostGator VPS that I originally moved the site to when I made the change from vB to XF. That is good for at least another 2-1/2 years because they don't do refunds after the first six weeks. It's paid for, so I'll use it as an off-site backup of the live server. This is what I will be working on setting up for the rest of the evening.
Again, I am sorry for having to nuke the content of the last few days and I apologize if it messed anything up for you.
Thanks for being patient while I wear callouses on my forehead from banging it against the keyboard...
For the first time in 16 years, I accidentally nuked a bunch of threads that I did NOT intend to delete. Of course, an instant after clicking "YES" I realized the first pebble of the avalanche had been set in motion and there was no getting it back. It was a sick in the bottom of the gut feeling... I literally felt like I was gonna
What made it especially bad was that quite a few old but popular ride reports had recently been brought back to the top of the thread list. Many of them have several hundred replies and easily that many images... Once the threads were deleted, so were the images because all the linked images had recently been converted to attachments. So there was NO way I'd be able to rebuild these threads. Once I realized that the only way to recover the content would be to go back to the most recent backup of the site and do a complete restore. My hosting service does a complete back up of the server every other day. They did one about 15 minutes BEFORE I did the update, and then another just AFTER I nuked those threads!! Talk about bad timing! This meant losing all the new content since I did the upgrade just after Midnight Tuesday morning. The good thing is that most of it was just basic chatter type posts and not to much serious content, like another big ride report or massive event planning thread.
Getting the site back on line turned into a real mess. The hosting service had a hardware failure on their end this afternoon, which was delaying their ability to respond to my crisis because that was affecting a lot of other people. My home ISP seems to be having issues because of a storm that came through last night and this morning. That was causing me to experience PAINFULLY slow upload/download speeds for transferring files back and forth to the server. Then, apparently the upgrade file that I had downloaded originally from the XF site somehow got corrupted. Of course I did not realize this until after multiple attempts at uploading it and several failed attempts at executing the upgrade. So I had to go back to their site and download it again, then upload it again, and it FINALLY worked!!
I AM working to get automated backups in place to make a copy of everything daily. That was on the post upgrade to do list and I just didn't get it done in time... Another case of bad timing.
I still have the old HostGator VPS that I originally moved the site to when I made the change from vB to XF. That is good for at least another 2-1/2 years because they don't do refunds after the first six weeks. It's paid for, so I'll use it as an off-site backup of the live server. This is what I will be working on setting up for the rest of the evening.
Again, I am sorry for having to nuke the content of the last few days and I apologize if it messed anything up for you.
Thanks for being patient while I wear callouses on my forehead from banging it against the keyboard...