What happened

[Wooster]

The old boards database got corrupted at some point in the last year or so, possibly leading to the site slow downs and outages.
When we attempted to repair it, we lost it completely.
(The backups only contained a memberlist of a few regulars and about 50 old spam accounts)

[[PCF]Falcs]

Trying to think what the other threads were to strt them again but cant remember i know there was a funny websites one a tv one a film one food books virgin media......

[SpaceNut]

Isn’t there some kind of cross-injection protection script in place, getting slightly miffed of all these resets

[Wooster]

I think the problem had been there since the last full reset from the older Vanilla forum, or from the drive issue it suffered from a couple of years ago.
Every database backup in the last year or two is about 6MB (too small for the amount of data it should hold), but the old Vanilla database was 60MB (more like it).

As Loughor pointed out, Cruel Coppinger (Boomsling) secured 1GB of server space from Inception Hosting for Free, so it's a gift horse and we don't pay for support.

I don't deal with databases on regular basis, but I know how they work and how to make backups, so not sure if the corrupt database was running off a cache somewhere to compensate for the corruption (which might explain the mad slowdowns and outages).

Upshot is, I could have gone back a few months and we'd get the same problems, gone back a few years, to when no-one would have remembered their usernames or passwords on a platform that was seriously out of date....or bite the bullet and start afresh, which turned out to be the only option due to the necessity of deleting the old database to try and do a recovery/upgrade.

[Glamdring]

What happened this evening?

[Wooster]

I happened.

I was sending CC all the server and forum login details for future reference and had to regenerate a new pass for the database.
When you do that, the forum can't access it unless you modify one of the .php files...and I forgot to do it.

This isn't my day job you know...

[Splinter]

Looks like SSL has expired. Are you using Zero SSL, which is free?

[Wooster]

I can't apply certs because I'm not the site owner mate. Only thing I can think of is that Boomy sorted it. 

[Wooster]

There was something wrong with the server (again), but since it was down and there was nothing we could do about it, I decided I might as well upgrade.

I'll add some themes later, but for now we'll just have to use the default one.

[Wooster]

I've added some themes you can try (Profile>Look&Layout) but there isn't a great selection at the moment.

Wide_RC4 isn't bad when you collapse the menu on the left.

[[PCF]Falcs]

yay we are back up at last i was getting worried!
Even messaged Wooster on steam!

[Wooster]

Steam gets fired up about twice a year on my machine. 😂

[Splinter]

There was something wrong with the server (again), but since it was down and there was nothing we could do about it, I decided I might as well upgrade.

I'll add some themes later, but for now we'll just have to use the default one.

Glad you got it sorted mate!
I see SMF 2.1.2 is the very latest version and it's very smooth.

[SpaceNut]

I don't like the login expiry timer 

[Wooster]

Then turn it off.

[SpaceNut]

How?

Oh I didn't see the "Forever" option