The board is back online!

[Daffy]

Hi everyone,

After a three week unintended absence, the discussion forums at WATD are back online!

The board has been reinstalled from a backup made on 28 June 2006. Mike and I cannot remember when the board went down, but we think it was on or within a day or so of that date. If you made any posts or sent any private messages on or after 28 June, they may have been lost. We have no way of recovering these - sorry.

Certain features the board previously used or displayed, such as emoticons, have not yet been reinstalled. The appearance of the board may therefore be slightly different for a while, but you should be able to make posts and send private messages as normal.

IMPORTANT: if you find you cannot log in, please go into your web browser’s options and delete all cookies. If you use Internet Explorer, you can do this by going into Tools > Internet Options > Delete Cookies.

[For Firefox go to Tools > Clear Private Data and tick the cookies box -- Mike]

What went wrong and how did we fix it?

Mike's hosting provider suspended his account when his credit card expired, without warning or explanation. His emails to them went unanswered for days. He only discovered the reason after transferring to a new hosting provider.

After transferring, Mike found that the board software had been upgraded by the authors and was no longer compatible with the database that stores all the posts, user details, PMs etc.

I asked Mike to send me the database so that I could try and set up a mirror of it on my own hosting provider. With their help, and after a weekend of fiddling, I managed to upgrade the database to the current version. Mike then restored it on his provider's server.

I would like to thank publicly my own hosting provider www.icdsoft.com for all their help during what was a long weekend of tinkering. They helped me import the database onto my site and changed all kinds of settings for me to get it to work. They responded to all my queries within a few minutes each time, regardless of the time of day or night. The restoration of this board would not have been possible without their expert assistance.

Daffy

[mgormez]

And I like to thank Daffy. He did a marvelous job and without him I probably would not have gotten it to work.

Thanks!

[Goblinboy]

Well done guys. Thanks for all your work.

[Tom Grubb]

Great to see the board back. Thanks, Mike and Daffy!

[Free Thinker]

Thanks a lot! I like how I can see all the emoticons except for one, which reads:

Evil or
Very
Mad

[bonsai]

I have to add my own thanks for the efforts of Daffy and Mike to get the board back.

I must also commend their efforts to keep the users informed whilst they were working on restoring it.

Thanks guys, your efforts are much appreciated

Bonsai

[mgormez]

Thanks a lot! I like how I can see all the emoticons except for one, which reads:

Evil or
Very
Mad

Mmm. More are missing I see when I open the emoticons windown. t could be a long search as I have so many copies of this board on my HD. Anyways I'll try to find those back.

[ET]

Yes, I'd like to say thanks too, and lovely to see it all back up and running - I've missed it!

Well done to you both.

[bella]

Thanks guys, for keeping us updated while the board was down. A couple of notices ended up in my spam folder, but that shouldn't happen again.