Author Topic: Recent Downtime!  (Read 709 times)

Offline Noisy

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Recent Downtime!
« on: May 30, 2009, 04:21:59 PM »
Well, it's been a stressful couple of weeks managing all the problems with the website. :o So, finally, we've moved to a paid host. Yippee!

The idea is that this host will be much more reliable than the last. Having said that, there may be intermittent loss of service on Tuesday.

Best wishes and thanks for sticking with us!

Martin.  :)
Never a failure, always a lesson.

Offline interloper

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Re: Recent Downtime!
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2009, 04:29:54 PM »
About time you tightwad!  ;D

Best wishes and long live the BAF!


Offline Noisy

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Re: Recent Downtime!
« Reply #2 on: May 30, 2009, 04:38:41 PM »
Cheers mate! Scottish heritage! Just for the record though, it was a free host but I'd had to pay a fair amount for the extras that make the forum work. In an ideal world, I'd hoped to prove that the forum could be run on a shoestring budget. To be fair to the old host though, it's got us this far!

For the geeks!: The first major downtime came when the database randomly lost half of it's data. (Half our posts!) I back up at least twice a day now but, quite often with this host, the backups are corrupt. I tried to upload some recent database backups but it just wouldn't have it, citing syntax errors as the problem. How can there be a syntax error when this version worked before? Anyway, the answer was that there was a NULL value where there should have been a '0'. So I edited all the instances of that and it worked!

So.... all is good.......

Until the host went down with hard disk overload that took three days for them to fix. This was the last straw! The forum is now with a paid host and I will keep moving it until we find the reliability that we need demand! 

Martin.  :)
Never a failure, always a lesson.

Offline interloper

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Re: Recent Downtime!
« Reply #3 on: May 30, 2009, 05:38:26 PM »
Sometimes these problems are like looking for a needle in a haystack. Not that I've ever heard of anyone foolhardy enough to engage on such an exercise. Surely it would be quicker and more cost-effective to buy a new needle. And keep a spare. I digress. Well done for figuring out the NULL Vs. 0 issue. Seriously though it's not simply a matter of cost. Even expensive hosts can return poor service, but shared hosting is always a bit of a punt.


Offline Slimboy Jim

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Re: Recent Downtime!
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2009, 10:25:31 AM »
Big thumbs up to Martin for the time & effort in dealing with all these nasty IT gremlins.  ;D

Offline Noisy

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Re: Recent Downtime!
« Reply #5 on: May 31, 2009, 10:48:28 PM »
..........., but shared hosting is always a bit of a punt.


Cheers mate. Yes, I'm beginning tp get that impression. I've signed lots of people up with email/web hosting before without a single problem but me??? Just after I signed up to the new host, I received an email telling me that there will be maintenance on Monday so the site could go down (hopefully for 15 minutes at a time).

Big thumbs up to Martin for the time & effort in dealing with all these nasty IT gremlins.  ;D


Ta very much. The new host seems much more 'together' so hopefully there'll be less gremlins to deal with in future. Man, I loved that film, 'Gremlins' when I was a lad. ;D
Never a failure, always a lesson.