majere Posted December 29, 2010 Share Posted December 29, 2010 I have tracked down the MD via facebook and sent him a message asking whether this is a temporary glitch and if so, an indication of how long we will be out of service for. Will update as soon as I have any news. Cheers, Dal. Good, I hope that they will be online soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
callaghan Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 thew forum is still going cause i just got an email notifying me that a topic i had participated in was replied to but the thing is our north american ..or maybe canadian carriers of the site failed to serve us its pages i don't knoe what to do , i learned on the forum , helped , participated..it was a major part of my hobby what can we do? charles Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dal_1978 Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 Hi Charles - that's very odd. When I checked it all out, the host company was completely down (try pointing a browser to http://250host.com). However out of curiosity, could you forward me the email you received? I will send you my email address via a pm. Cheers, Darren Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
majere Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 i don't knoe what to do , i learned on the forum , helped , participated..it was a major part of my hobby what can we do? charles Me too! Now I do not know what to do in my spare time, this is hopeless!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dal_1978 Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 Agreed it is frustrating however until I have some idea from the host as to whether they have an outage or gone bust, then I can't make a decision. Worst case scenario is they have gone bust and we will restore a backup to a new site. We are checking a backup created on 4th December. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skeezix Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 A-F has had 'a fair number' of outages over the years (though obviously a few more recently.) Given the option, I'd look into moving (again?) to a more solid host :/ Not sure if there is an option I mean, 250host.com is known to be pretty iffy at best (search google for '250host.com sucks' and count the reviews How much bandwidth and space does it take up? (I ask, as I know a couple folks who host sites, though charity is tougher in this economy. Still, could be worth a shot.) At least there are backups (cheer!) Have to wonder what went on at the ISP though; would assume serious, since no self respecting IT company is without support even during holidays.. so either they don't care (ugh) or they're in real trouble (ugh) jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blues76 Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 Who runs the atari-forum.com site? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dal_1978 Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 (edited) From what I can make out, 250host is a very small operation (may just be the one guy with a couple of servers). In fact I have done some digging about and found a site that details company profiles - turns out 250host is apparently worth $47... http://websiteshadow.com/250host.com Sounds rather odd to me given that Silver Surfer has been paying somewhere in the region of $24 per month As you will see further up in this thread, our intention has always been to move the site. I wanted to leave it until the new year though as it was my baby's first Christmas, wife has been in hospital and to be honest I wanted a bit of time with the family rather than using it to move the forum. If there is anyone who reckons they can provide hosting for AF, then I can tell you the database in it's entirety us approximately 6GB - we'll want a bit of room to grow. Bandwidth I'm not so sure about bandwidth as I only got access to the backend when the forum came back online. However there are approximately 5000 registered users (mostly dormant accounts now I believe). I guess approximately 1GB to 1.5GB per month will be plenty of bandwidth... PM me if you can help or know of someone who can. The hosting needs to be professional with backup facilities and the ability for me to create cron jobs to sync backups with cloud storage etc... Also must be able to support FTP, php and mysql. Cheers, Darren PS. Happy New Year! Edited December 31, 2010 by Dal_1978 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dal_1978 Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 @blues76 - I am one of the site admins. There is also Silver Surfer and Brumme. However they have been otherwise commited elsewhere in their lives. I had the keys passed over to me at the beginning of December by Silver Surfer. I have been in contact with him since the 27th when this latest outage occurred... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blues76 Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 @blues76 - I am one of the site admins. There is also Silver Surfer and Brumme. However they have been otherwise commited elsewhere in their lives. I had the keys passed over to me at the beginning of December by Silver Surfer. I have been in contact with him since the 27th when this latest outage occurred... Well, this is an amazing service you do. Maybe we can all shipping to paid for a hosting. I use LunarPages.com http://www.lunarpages.com/hosting-solutions/basic-hosting/ They don't have limit in the amount of data you stored... And you can have multiple domains. At 4.95 a month, I think is a great price. Maybe we should create a new post and find a way how can we all shipping to pay for that hosting. They have everything you need (mysql, cron,ftp...) I have used them for many years and I think they were down only once for one day. Please note that I have nothing to do with them... Should we start a new post asking for donations? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blues76 Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 @blues76 - I am one of the site admins. There is also Silver Surfer and Brumme. However they have been otherwise commited elsewhere in their lives. I had the keys passed over to me at the beginning of December by Silver Surfer. I have been in contact with him since the 27th when this latest outage occurred... Well, this is an amazing service you do. Maybe we can all shipping to paid for a hosting. I use LunarPages.com http://www.lunarpages.com/hosting-solutions/basic-hosting/ They don't have limit in the amount of data you stored... And you can have multiple domains. At 4.95 a month, I think is a great price. Maybe we should create a new post and find a way how can we all shipping to pay for that hosting. They have everything you need (mysql, cron,ftp...) I have used them for many years and I think they were down only once for one day. Please note that I have nothing to do with them... Should we start a new post asking for donations? Another option (maybe it is crazy even to suggest it) is to migrate the forum to Atari-Age.com assuming that this would be allowed... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skeezix Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 Some friends of mine operate a solid hosting ISP; I mentioned the predicament and the requirements such as I know them, and got an offer to host the site gratis (as long as A-F is non-profit, which afaik it is.) Let me know if you would like me to hook you/representative up so you cna figure out requirements, how to set up the php board and licenses, and all that. Offer is on the table I'll try to keep checking in over the day/weekend, but I'm also at skeezix a t skeleton dawt org. jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ijor Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 Some of us long ago offered to contribute to AF hosting costs. Unfortunately, that's not easy to put it in practice in the long term. Even then, I am still ready to contribute if there is any need. I think that the hosting company should be a serious company, with round the clock tech support and pro customer service. A small hosting run by a couple of kids, disregarding how good they are, is not, IMHO, a good idea. I also think that the offices (not the physical hosting) should better be geographically located in the same country as the main admin (whoever he is). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dal_1978 Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 Agreed. I'll look into it a bit more over the weekend. I think Ijor has a point - UK or EU based hosting is the way forward. Anyway, I'm supposed to be setting up for my last gig of the year. Catch up with you all in the next few days or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skeezix Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 Same country hosting can be handy for sure; I'll let them know. jeff To be clear, I'm hoping that 'kids' remark just came across incorrectly; I should think most of us in the Atari community are longer in the tooth than 'kids'; when an offer of kindness comes at a time of need, I think it is nicer to be gratious than snarky. (The ISP in question is actually a top tier operation in Canada, and for my part, I've been around in many open source communities for nearly a couple decades, thanks very much Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ijor Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 To be clear, I'm hoping that 'kids' remark just came across incorrectly; I should think most of us in the Atari community are longer in the tooth than 'kids'; when an offer of kindness comes at a time of need, I think it is nicer to be gratious than snarky. (The ISP in question is actually a top tier operation in Canada, and for my part, I've been around in many open source communities for nearly a couple decades, thanks very much Sorry Jeff. I wasn't talking specifically about you or your friends, and I certainly didn't mean to offend anybody. What I meant is that in this case, a pro tech support and customer service is really important. There are some ISPs and hosting services that are run by one or two individuals, usually (but not always) young people. In some cases they might be, technically, much better than a more "established" company. But again, I think that it might be not the best in this particular case. That's what I meant, anyway. I apologize again if I offended you or anybody else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skeezix Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 Fair enough; you're probably right, since just as anyone with a word processor calls themselves a 'graphics artist', anyone with a static IP can call themselves a domain host. An established organization would be best, in light of the troubls with 250host. Keeping it local is a good idea though, really; how often would you like to just go over and say 'heres my disk, back it up _here_' Offer from the ISP in question remains, if things get into a pinch jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blues76 Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 Hi, I don't mind contributing money if needed. If we all add between 2 to 4 dollars per year (or more) would be more than enough. We could have one responsible person that we send the money via paypal. I think lunarpages has great support via email. I never had a problem. But I agree that hosting must be one that the person in charge must feel ok with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 issue with using some ISP's to host websites is that they will expect you to use their domain name...or something that ends in their domain name...i.e atari-forum@btinternet..com or whatever best using a pucka hosting company, hopefully you won't have that issue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted January 1, 2011 Share Posted January 1, 2011 I'm a subscriber here, I'd be happy to join a subscriber/contributer group to help support AtariForum and keep it going in a more stable manner. These 2 sites, AtariAge and AtariForum, are mainstays for me, and a very valuable resource. They really need to keep going. I'm sure this apply's to a lot of Atari users. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shredder11 Posted January 2, 2011 Share Posted January 2, 2011 Absolutely! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paolo Posted January 2, 2011 Share Posted January 2, 2011 (edited) DarkLord is absolutely right! (Hey, how it comes this week I am only in me-too'er threads? ) Edited January 2, 2011 by Paolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dal_1978 Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 (edited) New host has been set up. I have created a temporary landing page that details everything that has been going on and where we are with getting the forum back. Please check there for further updates. Note that the name server was updated today (thanks Brume and Silver Surfer). So depending where you are in the world, the change may not have replicated to your neck of the woods yet. Cheers. Edited January 4, 2011 by Dal_1978 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skeezix Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 DNS isn't updated at my usual haunts, so I'll check later. -- which host? -- are costs covered, or do you need a monthly donation or donation pool going on? -- how old is the backup? I found that A-F was reasonably covered back around 2008 in the wayback-machine (archive.org), which has been handy .. just archive.org is super slow jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dal_1978 Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 I went with http://www.hostpapa.co.uk superb hosting company, checked out their online support chat facility as a 'test' and got a representative within a couple of minutes... On new years day! Cost worked out at £126-ish for three years unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth with the usual cpanel interface etc. I'll have a think about how we handle costs etc. I'll start a thread about it on AF once it's up as I have a few ideas and I know others have expressed a wish to have some kind of voluntary donations mechanism. Here is not the right place to discuss though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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