Sorry about the downtime for a few days. It seems the domain name managed to expire without anybody noticing.

 

Everything seems to be working now, so go ahead and post away. If you find any lingering problems, go ahead and post a comment.

Okay, sorry about the brief outage again. We had to upgrade the forums to the latest version of vBulletin.

Welcome Back Everybody!!!

It seems the domain name managed to expire without anybody noticing.

 

I noticed but didn't know how to get a hold of anyone that could do something about it...

Neither did we, actually

Well hurrah and huzzah, the cold sweats and shakes have finally ceased

Neither did we, actually

 

not Strictly true, I sent Phi the email with the backdoor key, hence the call to Blike

we`de even got an SFN mirror site set up in case that failed.

 

all in all, it was bloody good, well coordinated team work!

maybe there should be a SFN emergency response team?

We're working on ways to make problems like these never happen again. Depending on one very busy person to pay the bills can be risky.

maybe there should be a SFN emergency response team?

 

good idea, having something already in place would be a good call, I sure as hell don`t wanna go through all that again!

Dave and I already discussed having a Contact List for staff, that would be made sticky just in case there`s any future problems.

 

we`re not about to let 5 years and 300,000+ posts vanish without a fight!

I think we`ve proved this anyway, Dave made a mirror site last night to get up and running again, so where Humanly possible, these thing`s will never Keep us down!

I had been gone, and decided to have a look at the forums again. To my horror they were gone! I thought SFN had closed down completely.

Nevermore, then it is very good that you later checked again. During the down-time that was one of our big concerns. If the down-time was long enough, then people would not check out anymore, but fortunately things seem to normalize again and I already have seen many active users again

Yes, I think our activity might even be a bit higher due to the mass e-mails we sent out.

Indeed, which is a good thing.

 

Incidentally the Staff List would need to be saved offline by some members, because if the site went down then relying on a list on the non-working site for help isn't really ideal!

 

Also how actually has admin rights here? The kind that can fix issues like this? I assume Blike, Dave and Sayo do, but does anyone else?

The problem was not who has admin rights, but who had the ability to renew the domain name. Blike's the one with the money and the access to the domain control panel (which is totally separate from the forums), so he was the only one who could fix the problem.

 

We're working on ways to let more than one person have access to these things.

To be totally honest, I don't think this is something that's going to crop up very often - after all, it's not happened in the past 5 years. The problem this time is that we didn't get any renewal notices from the company that registered the domain. Me, blike and Sayo all have access to the most essential stuff to solve the vast, vast majority of problems.

I do recall one instance when the domain expired without anybody noticing, although I believe I only know about it from a thread I saw from a few years ago.

Yes, I think our activity might even be a bit higher due to the mass e-mails we sent out.

 

I didn't get any so I wonder how many more didn't get any. I check in here 2 or 3 times a day though. I emailed blike at the address on record with the registrar the day the site went down but never got a response. I wasn't able to contact anyone else though since I didn't have their addresses and it sounds like it wouldn't have mattered anyhow. At any rate, the site's back so that's all that matters for now.

You didn't get any mass emails if you have the "Allow emails from administrators" option disabled in your control panel.

 

The address listed with the registrar is incorrect. That's also why we had so much trouble getting him

Woohoo. I can contunue my reign of annoyance terror!

The problem was not who has admin rights, but who had the ability to renew the domain name.

Appologies, I was not clear, that is what I meant. Reminds me of the difference between Admin and Super Admin on some software, where an 'admin' is a normal admin and a 'super admin' is someone who could, for example, renew the domain name.

The problem this time is that we didn't get any renewal notices from the company that registered the domain.

 

The address listed with the registrar is incorrect. That's also why we had so much trouble getting him

 

Ahh, that explains why blike didn't get any renewal notices....