Now I’ve got a spare five minutes I thought I’d explain exactly what’s been going on with this site (GuyWeb.co.uk) since the dying ebbs of August.<\/p>\n
It all started when GuyWeb’s<\/a> host, Hostzone<\/a> lost Luckily, to their credit, Hostzone take daily tape backups of sites on their servers in the event that something like this happens. Top marks on that one. <\/p>\n Well, so you’d think. Not so easy. The restoration of the site seems ok. Everything’s The next critical problem with the site is that the majority of the files Weirdly, the server trashing happened at the exact same point that they launched their newly face-lifted site. Now Hostzone looks as good as befits a professional and decently priced web hosting organisation. I will take issue with the ‘little red box’ that lies at the bottom of their site that reads – “We are aware of network problems”. Just not enough information there, folks. The extent of the problem remains unknown to the customer. In the days of the old, less attractive site at least we were offered a little more information. And it was in text and not a tiny little gif with no alt-text. So marks lost there. <\/p>\n I can’t otherwise find fault with the service. I pay two quid shy of a hundred The web-based Ensim administration<\/a> whilst claiming to be ‘award winning’ is
\n a server. I say ‘lost’ but I actually mean: The hard drive was completely and
\n utterly destroyed. It crashed, burned and generally did nasty things. The inevitable
\n consequence of this was that GuyWeb<\/a>, Shay
\n Speaks<\/a> and Hughgraf<\/a> were completely
\n destroyed.<\/p>\n
\n intact. But what the hell happened to the MySQL database? Looks like it wasn’t
\n backed up since January – 8 months ago! So rebuilding the site(s) using Movable
\n Type<\/a> is totally out of the question. I’m still hoping and praying that somewhere
\n in the nuclear war proof building that Hostzone reside in, a dusty backup of
\n the database exists. If not, what next? I’m not completely sure to be honest.
\n Shay<\/a> and Hugh<\/a> are both eager to update their sites. If Shay updates, his old
\n posts and archives will be totally buggered up, overwritten or worse. Hugh
\n has a worse deal as his site hadn’t even been conceived in January! Not only
\n is post data missing but all the templates etc are gone too. So if any of us
\n update we’ll be back using the standard Movable Type templates again. All branding
\n and site identity will be lost. Bugger. I really hope that that database can
\n be found.<\/p>\n
\n have become ‘read-only’. This means that I can’t edit, overwrite or delete
\n a hell of a lot of stuff. Also, you can’t comment on things or add messages
\n to the message board<\/a> (of which I actually found a
\n solution<\/a> which they are yet
\n to administrate!)or any of that clever interactive stuff you used to be able
\n to do. The ’email me’ form doesn’t work either. Life’s just peachy round
\n here at the mo, isn’t it? Luckily I can write to the home page. Well, parts
\n of it. This part. This page is built up from server-side includes so bits can
\n repeat in other areas of the site. This includes are – the menus, the footer
\n and the right-hand column (at the bottom if you’re blind or use an ancient
\n browser). Yes, the right hand column! No more updating of links or removing
\n old ones – we’re stuck with it as it is. The footer suffers to as Mark
\n Pilgrim<\/a> has recently moved the RSS validator and I can’t change the link. Not that
\n we’re generating any RSS at the moment anyway! Anything functionality related
\n to the amazing Movable Type Content Management System went out of the window
\n on that bleak day when the server died.<\/p>\n
\n pounds a year for unlimited space (and bandwidth) on a Windows IIS server,
\n MySQL database, asp, php and pearl scripting ability and plenty
\nof other goodies<\/a>. Yes I miss out on all the cool features to be found on
\na unix box such as CHMODing, altering the permissions of individual files and
\nthe added tank-like SECURITY found on such a beast.<\/p>\n
\n thoroughly hackable and I bet often is. I can’t log in at work due to a dodgy
\n security certificate on the admin. Mozilla
\n Firebird<\/a> tells me that ‘somebody
\n else can easily get at your password and probably is’ before saying ‘are you
\n really really really sure you wanna access this admin site? Ok, don’t say i
\n didn’t warn ya!’. Bad news and scary. Stephen’s site was hacked not so long
\n ago and somebody put a link on his site to ‘dickcam.com’. Not good news.<\/p>\n