We had a server problem yesterday and were only able to retrieve the topics through 8/18. I'm still working on getting the rest back, but have been working on it for about 18 hours straight and haven't figured it out yet. I decided to go ahead and get the forums back up so that we have a place to go I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and I realize that a lot of good threads are currently missing, but I'm working to get them back up. The posts are there, but the threads that they go into is the problem. It looks grim that we'll be able to get those posts back up, but let's try to move on and continue making PriusChat such a great place to visit. I know I'll step up my effort to keep secure backups in place in case of such an outage in the future. Also, if you know of a good host that I can put about 10 or so domains on and about 150 GB of transfer per month, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Thanks for all of your understanding. Danny
Thanks, Danny, for a lot more than 18 hours. Software is a house of cards, ready to crash at any moment. Thanks for the effort.
I'm new here and don't quite follow, when you say the "Posts" are there do you mean the individule messages within a thread, or are those other PM's and such? Anyway, best of luck, hope you can get the threads back! I'll try to look into some hosting and mirroring options for ya. L8r Ryan
Yeah, Danny, thanks, man. Some folk found out how much they'd miss it if it weren't here. Glitches aside, you can be proud. Unusually good company!
I'm a very new member, but I'm amongst the many who discovered how much they missed it when it was gone =) thanks for working so hard for us!
Danny, I noticed that the board appears to use MySQL as its database engine. Something that might help data recovery (in the future, not now) is to switch all the tables over to the InnoDB engine instead of MyISAM (assuming they aren't already). The default MyISAM engine "assumes" that operation is never interrupted and can become corrupt if there's a power blip, etc. The InnoDB engine is much more robust at preventing data loss. Some simple ALTER TABLE commands should be able to switch them over. Something to consider.
Perhaps those of us with PHP and/or mySQL experience can volunteer to help. We'd have to be granted some sort of higher level of permissions on the hosting and/or database servers, so Danny may not be too keen on this idea. The danger could be mitigated by just giving a group of people willing to help read-only access to mySQL with no access to the users/passwords table(s). That ought to be enough to at least investigate the problem more. I am hoping that maybe the fact that I've supported PC monetarily will belay any fears that I would abuse the privilege. I've never administrated Invision before, but I've got a couple years of professional PHP development experience, and I'm a pretty decent mySQL 4.x admin. I'm definitely willing to throw in a few hours this weekend toward the data recovery effort. Let me know if you'd like to pursue this. Seems like I'm not the only one here with this skill set, too.
That's actually not a whole lot - hosting plans for this amount of transfer usually run $20-$40/month (for shared hosting plans).
Ryan, I think what this means is that the individual messages, like this one, or yours (number 138191), are still sitting on the disks, but getting to PriusChat > Forum Home > Toyota Prius Forums > Prius Main Forum > (this message) can't happen since part of the path (the thread) is missing. It might be similar to having a directory problem on your PC.
I'm running a site for work, and I pay $5/mo for 100GB of transfer with SiteGround. They have insanely fast tech support. They answer within 15 minutes, usually less than 10. They are very proud of thier response time. Also, they have a lot of stuff pre-configured to just plug in and turn on (don't know what you need). They also have cheaper prices if buy multipla accounts, and they get cheaper if you pay a few years at a time. Monthly is $9/mo every 3yrs is $4. It looks like 10 domains will cost a little extra, but I have been very happy with what they provide. They also do dedicated servers or windows servers as well. Danny, thanks for all your hard work on the site!
As someone new to this site, I also want to say thank you for all your work on this site. I have found it very useful and was having withdrawals yesterday. If all the posts can not be restored, I hope whoever posted all the 2006 pictures posts them again. They were higher resolution than the ones on the toyota site that are available to regular folks not press etc. Thanks again.
Thank you for working hard to get the forum back up and running, and for providing it in the first place. I certainly missed it.
I guess compared to sites I work with, 150GB seems really high to me. In fact, the ISP that I co-lo at has a domain that averages 35,000 visits (1.1 million hits) per month and only takes 14 GB bandwidth. Another site I'm familiar with averages over 68,000 visits (over 2.5 million hits) and only averages 12.6 GB bandwidth. Maybe those sites are much less graphics intensive than what is required for those 10 domains that need a new home. Wish I could help.
I just started a new topic that has all 17 photos, along with the standard features, available packages, and color options: http://priuschat.com/index.php?act=ST&f=26&t=11210&st=
I see some red flags with the hosting company you mention ... I'm no expert, but I've been bit in the rear more than my share of times with cheap hosting companies in years past. No reliable hosting company that plans on being around very long can offer 5GB disk space and 100GB monthy bandwidth for only $5/month - it's only a matter of time before a couple of their accounts actually utilize the promised bandwidth, then suddenly the company's costs skyrocket, with no skyrocketing income to match. I hate to step on any toes, so please forgive me - this is just friendly advice: I highly recommend you keep daily backups of your data (on your own computer) whenever dealing with any of the really cheap hosting companies, and have a plan-B ready to go at a moment's notice.