Nick Costanzo
Oct 9, 2007, 10:47 am
Hey there folks,
Its been a tough couple of days, but at this point we've finally gotten things stable to the point where I'm comfortable opening the forum back up.
The purpose of the server move was to provide Comixfan with a faster, more secure, more tech-support-friendly server. However, the move was wrought with so many errors that it almost felt planned. Our old server shut off earlier than they had promised, and demanded a full month's payment in order to turn it back on. For a week. From there, following a delay in getting the server turned back on at all, we learned that the database itself was corrupted. Some tables made it through without a problem, but there was something massive in that beast of a database that was refusing to load. After some trial and error, we learned the sad truth that some, possibly all of the post database was corrupted. Worse still, we received no tech support from our now infamous old server, and we were fearful that this corruption would cause the entirety of Comixfan's data to be lost. All the while, the clock was ticking down until we'd lose the ability to save anything at all.
Fearing the worst, the Comixfan staff went into overdrive this weekend, systematically copying nearly every thread contained in Comixfan's extensive network of Columns, Resources, Reviews and Special Features. Several thousand threads were saved, up until the last hours before the site was set to turn off.
Following the actual move, there was a brief fear that we had indeed lost everything, as any attempt to view or post a new thread was met with rather nasty-sounding error dialogue. However, thanks to some fancy tech support (and the sheer dumb luck that I even thought to download a few individual tables last week that we were missing), we managed to solve this problem, and now the full extent of what happened may be known.
We lost between a month and a year's worth of posts, depending on which forum you look at. Although the links remain, they led to an empty page. So last night, the site administrators went in, and cleaned up the dead links. Work is already underway to replace what was lost. It is a large task, but one that is not nearly so daunting as we had feared, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief in that the classic Comixfan material still remains for all to enjoy. In addition, all user accounts except for those initiated just after the backup have been maintained, all images have been saved (including smilies and avatars), and even all the PMs are still in your mailboxes.
For now, you'll likely notice two primary "bugs" in the site for the next couple of weeks until we straighten it all out:
-Links to "dead" threads. These poor threads were lost during the move, and will be deleted in short order. These are primarily relatively small posts, that were made relatively recently. The definition of "relatively" seems to change from forum to forum, and stranger still, some recent threads survived the change without a problem. As of now, what survived appears to be completely random.
-Lost posts. Many large threads survived the move. However, weeks if not months worth of posts may now be missing. Although the "last post" might suggest differently, when you open the thread don’t be surprised to find the latest post from January or earlier. Unfortunately, these posts can't be recovered. However, I don’t doubt that you guys will be able to replace these numbers in short order :)
If you find that one of your threads is now dead, feel free to replace it, though make sure no one else has beaten you to it. During this time, the Comixfan staff would appreciate your help in minimizing the effort it takes to locate all the dead threads. For this reason, please keep new posts that don’t replace something that was lost to a minimum, at least for a good week or so. This will help us find the problems without having to search through a constantly-changing list of threads. In addition, please do not vote in any polls that are attached to otherwise dead links.
Now that the clean-ups are mostly complete for Comixfan's original content, I've decided to re-open the site. Thank you for all the support and kind words that were sent during this difficult time period, and you can rest assured that Comixfan is already back on its feet, and looking to be better than ever in the future :)
Its been a tough couple of days, but at this point we've finally gotten things stable to the point where I'm comfortable opening the forum back up.
The purpose of the server move was to provide Comixfan with a faster, more secure, more tech-support-friendly server. However, the move was wrought with so many errors that it almost felt planned. Our old server shut off earlier than they had promised, and demanded a full month's payment in order to turn it back on. For a week. From there, following a delay in getting the server turned back on at all, we learned that the database itself was corrupted. Some tables made it through without a problem, but there was something massive in that beast of a database that was refusing to load. After some trial and error, we learned the sad truth that some, possibly all of the post database was corrupted. Worse still, we received no tech support from our now infamous old server, and we were fearful that this corruption would cause the entirety of Comixfan's data to be lost. All the while, the clock was ticking down until we'd lose the ability to save anything at all.
Fearing the worst, the Comixfan staff went into overdrive this weekend, systematically copying nearly every thread contained in Comixfan's extensive network of Columns, Resources, Reviews and Special Features. Several thousand threads were saved, up until the last hours before the site was set to turn off.
Following the actual move, there was a brief fear that we had indeed lost everything, as any attempt to view or post a new thread was met with rather nasty-sounding error dialogue. However, thanks to some fancy tech support (and the sheer dumb luck that I even thought to download a few individual tables last week that we were missing), we managed to solve this problem, and now the full extent of what happened may be known.
We lost between a month and a year's worth of posts, depending on which forum you look at. Although the links remain, they led to an empty page. So last night, the site administrators went in, and cleaned up the dead links. Work is already underway to replace what was lost. It is a large task, but one that is not nearly so daunting as we had feared, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief in that the classic Comixfan material still remains for all to enjoy. In addition, all user accounts except for those initiated just after the backup have been maintained, all images have been saved (including smilies and avatars), and even all the PMs are still in your mailboxes.
For now, you'll likely notice two primary "bugs" in the site for the next couple of weeks until we straighten it all out:
-Links to "dead" threads. These poor threads were lost during the move, and will be deleted in short order. These are primarily relatively small posts, that were made relatively recently. The definition of "relatively" seems to change from forum to forum, and stranger still, some recent threads survived the change without a problem. As of now, what survived appears to be completely random.
-Lost posts. Many large threads survived the move. However, weeks if not months worth of posts may now be missing. Although the "last post" might suggest differently, when you open the thread don’t be surprised to find the latest post from January or earlier. Unfortunately, these posts can't be recovered. However, I don’t doubt that you guys will be able to replace these numbers in short order :)
If you find that one of your threads is now dead, feel free to replace it, though make sure no one else has beaten you to it. During this time, the Comixfan staff would appreciate your help in minimizing the effort it takes to locate all the dead threads. For this reason, please keep new posts that don’t replace something that was lost to a minimum, at least for a good week or so. This will help us find the problems without having to search through a constantly-changing list of threads. In addition, please do not vote in any polls that are attached to otherwise dead links.
Now that the clean-ups are mostly complete for Comixfan's original content, I've decided to re-open the site. Thank you for all the support and kind words that were sent during this difficult time period, and you can rest assured that Comixfan is already back on its feet, and looking to be better than ever in the future :)