Forum History

[jstrahan]

I would be interested to read a detailed accounting of what happened to the forum and why almost all data was lost. Is such a thing being contemplated?

[Rocketboy1313]

Maybe that will be a video down the line.

Be a side piece to a book review of "Neuromancer" or something.

[Karha of Honor]

I would be interested to read a detailed accounting of what happened to the forum and why almost all data was lost. Is such a thing being contemplated?

Thins got politically tense and i was not banned for having a controversial opinions. It was paradise. The Rey Mary Sue debate was big and raging.

[TheNewTeddy]

From when I was admin (and broke the forum and may have delayed the xmas recording *ick*) a problem was something related to the host and the SQL version/database. I have a logical mind and that often lets me help with tech stuff, but I do not have an understanding of the syntax, so I have no idea what any of that means. My understanding is that the folks Chuck pays to host the server all of this is on were running old software/programming and that this was the core of the problems on the old forum.

As for loss of data, unless you are using the exact same 'kind' of forum, it's very difficult to move data over, and my understanding is that this would mean you'd need to use outdated stuff, and given the problems last time, it may simply have not been practicable to switch everything over.


On a personal level, I'm fine with the wipe. I don't recall when the forum went down, but it was only created in September of 2015 (or thereso abouts) so, in short, it's been down for as long as it was up, and, a total wipe is not uncommon in a new forum that runs into tech troubles.



Of course all of that comes with a huge DISCLAIMER - I'm not an admin anymore (I wasn't very good at it anyway) and never had a good understanding of this stuff. This post is 80% my personal opinion, and 20% the memories of the guy who broke the forum.

[TGLS]

From the various tweets, here's a quick summary:
1) In August 2016, (Russian?) hackers attacked the server, and the hosting company took the site down. This brought the forum down too.
2) The hosting company wanted the site secured before it was brought up. The site proper was brought up, but the forum needed to be updated or something for it to be properly secured.
3) They ran into problems restoring the content of the forum and updating it, because the August attack caused damages that affected the forum.
4) They gave up restoring the content and apparently created a new website to store the forum (note the URL is SFDebris.net not .com.)
5) The forum was reopened.

[PerrySimm]

Is the forum now being backed up periodically?

[Durandal_1707]

Of course all of that comes with a huge DISCLAIMER - I'm not an admin anymore (I wasn't very good at it anyway) and never had a good understanding of this stuff. This post is 80% my personal opinion, and 20% the memories of the guy who broke the forum.

Well, the "guy who broke the forum" would actually have to be the hackers, right?

[Steve]

Of course all of that comes with a huge DISCLAIMER - I'm not an admin anymore (I wasn't very good at it anyway) and never had a good understanding of this stuff. This post is 80% my personal opinion, and 20% the memories of the guy who broke the forum.

Well, the "guy who broke the forum" would actually have to be the hackers, right?

He's referring to our technical difficulties around Christmas of 2015 I believe.