Website Downtime

Announcements
#1

[right]Category: Website News[/right]
Our host has mysteriously disappeared out of the blue. Whether this is due to their own technical difficulties, a DDOS attack or simply just shutting down, we do not know and have not been informed. The host’s domain name does not expire until 2012 so I don’t think it is intentionally down.

Regardless, we’ve purchased a new web server hence why you are able to see this website.

So why is our website not up on the new server?
I do have all the files and data, however the backup of all the forum and ban data is 3 weeks old. Our old host did not have a proper backup system and I had to manually download every file and export all the database data myself which was both very time consuming and tedious.

Why were the servers lagging?
The servers pulled the rank data and ban list from the website. As the website was presumably down, it kept trying to ping it and anyone who knows how CPU threads work will understand why this is a problem. For now, I’ve disabled rank updating and the ban list.

What are we doing now?
[s]We have two options:

a. Restore the website back to 3 weeks ago (a lot of forum posts and bans will be missing)
b. Wait for our host to come back online and grab the current data when it does.

This has happened once in the past to our host. They returned several days later after some downtime. Perhaps it’s the same issue?[/s]
We have gone with option A as we needed the ban and rank system online to stop griefers nuking our Creative server. The missing data will be restored if (and hopefully when) our host reappears.

A lot of data is now missing!
We are missing roughly 2 and a half weeks of data from the forums, ranks and ban list. We appologise for the inconvenience that this creates. If you are missing a rank feel free to let myself or any other staff member know.

[size=18pt]Edit: All attachments and avatars were corrupted. You will need to reupload them

#2

Say your old host pops back up tomorrow, will you grab the data from there and restore the site again? :smiley:

#3

That’s the plan, yep. I won’t be restoring it entirely though, just the data that is missing.

#4

What is the name of the host Andy?

#5

MainVista is our old host

#6

One of my friends actually runs a hosting company now… I think I could strike a deal if you want to. They do web, minecraft, and voice servers. Since they are brand new (the site came online today) and need testimonials I could do some talking. If this actually becomes an option from Andy’s perspective I’ll talk to my friend.

#7

We’ve already paid for a year of our new web hosting so as much as I appreciate the offer I’d rather make full use of this one :stuck_out_tongue:

#8

I figured xD

But always an option if needed.

#9

My god Andy’s right. It’s just dropped off the face of the earth.

#10

Everyone will need to reupload their avatars.

The attachments all had no extensions and were downloaded using an ASCII transfer method instead of Binary - ie. they were all corrupted. I can redownload them properly if our host comes back up. Sorry!

Alternatively, I could make the default avatar your face+helmet skin?

#11

That would be good andy. It’s better than a greyed out steve or nothing at all :stuck_out_tongue:

#12

Actually now that you say that could you fetch the face part of a skin from minecraft.net and auto-apply that? I think that possibly gives a chance for everyone to get to know each other just by skin.

Edit I failed. Disregard anything I said.

#13

Thats odd, becasue i still have my old avatar… AND SIG!

#14

Andy, you may want to consider hostiń with sip’s friend. At least then we’d know what’s happening with the host if anything happens.

#15

From what i have read in other topics, this crash was another host, we have since switched, and hopefully to a better one. I think if this host does have a fail, I could get a server from my friend as soon as I see that it is down.

#16