Forum was down today

[Mike]

The forum was down today with database issues. Still workin on getting the other items that use the db up and running. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Mike

[Lucy]

Thanks for letting us know and for all the work you do to keep us up and running!

[Time]

Yeah that gave me a scare. Finally it works again.

[aquarist48]

Nice to be back! Thanks Mike!
Ken

[SCUGrad]

I haven't been able to get into the site for several days. I just got in now. Has the site been down for more than one day?

[mathas]

Originally Posted by SCUGrad

I haven't been able to get into the site for several days. I just got in now. Has the site been down for more than one day?

Yes.

[SCUGrad]

Oh whew! I thought you guys were just trying to keep me out.

[djbrist]

Yipeee! TY Mike!

[emanluke]

Thanks Mike for all the work you put into this. Glad to be back and hearing about all the fish!

[peacemaker92]

Wow! Thank you so much Mike! I nearly died when I couldn't enter Fishlore for several days. Worst of all, my tank broke down on me while Fishlore was down, so I couldn't post anything about my tank...

[jwokmuba2]

thanks mike wooooooooo! so glad tobe back

[Psychlist1972]

Any idea what happened?

[Martha]

Mike; So glad to get back on the Forum.....what a lot of work you put in!!! Thank you....

[Mike]

Wow - what an ordeal... turns out the db problems were not the real "cause" of the problems at all. I was getting tons of automated db error emails and tried everything I could to get the db back up. Doing table repairs, reading log files, calling tech support, etc. In my research into the issues I found out that our previous host has a sister company called fastdomains and they are the registrar for the domain name and when they closed down the hosting account they turned off the domain name too! Unbelievable. So, when they turned off the domain name it started resolving across the globe and then the site simply vanished since none of the registration servers knew the ip addy for the site.

Sorry for the downtime but there was literally nothing I could do other than get them to reinstate the domain and that took several help tickets, phone calls, live chats and it is still not totally resolved. But, hopefully tomorrow the issues of our previous host will be no more and smooth sailing from here.


Mike

[peacemaker92]

Such a big problem because of the host? That's terrible. I hope everything will be smooth sailing from here too. It'd be such a hassle again for Fishlore to go down again because of this problem. Thanks Mike!

[Ekrindul]

Glad you're back up. Hadn't realized how much I have come to enjoy this site until it vanished.

[SCUGrad]

I thought it was strange that the site disappeared and you were saying earlier that it was a db problem.

Anyways, all is well that ends well

[pamd]

I just now got back online with Fish Lore, and have checked frequently including a few hours ago when it was still down for me. I guess it took a while to populate the newly fixed domain across the Internet, but it's up and running now! Yay Mike! You must have been sweating bullets over all this, knowing what a big community you have here.

[Neville]

I tried several times to access fish forum but failed...knew that something was wrong, may be the server was down...this has happened before...no big deal... ...

[Lifesabeach]

You certainly had a 'few' members worried. It's terrible that you were at the mercy of others, that something so simple can cause that sort of disruption. Congrats and thanks for getting the site up again. Certainly did miss the interaction.

[bolivianbaby]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU MIKE! It's so good to be back!

[lorabell]

Thanks Mike!!!!!! We REALLY do appriciate all the hard work u do on here!!!!!!!...lol...the withdrawl wasnt as bad this time!!!! but really missed everyone!!!!!

[lorabell]

quick note.....I just spoke with Aquarist48...he is still unable to sign on in here. ANY SUGGESTIONS?

[Psychlist1972]

If he's still getting the error saying the site doesn't exist, it may be one of two things: 1. wait another day or two for the DNS records to finish replicating or 2. (if using a PC with Windows) start->run->cmd then type

ipconfig /flushdns

That will flush the local cache and force it to contact the provider's dns server to get the correct address.

If that doesn't work, it may be his provider still has the old record. Only time will fix that. Usually no more than a couple days.

For grins, he can also try accessing it by IP address (not sure if the forum software will allow that): http://174.123.200.146

[Edit: The server must be set up with host headers, as the IP address just brings you to the default apache page, so that won't work]

Pete

[xero2099]

good to see that the site is back was worried for a bit

[dee34]

hey ive being trying to log on for 3 days now , thought there was something wrong with the laptop..

[pinkfloydpuffer]

Thank you so much for getting the site back up for us Mike! Lotsa people were having withdrawals

[capekate]

It certainly is fantastic news to see fishlore back up and running.
Thanks once again Mike for all the hard work you put into keeping this site going for all of us to enjoy.

Yeaaa... we are back!

[Lifesabeach]

Originally Posted by lorabell

quick note.....I just spoke with Aquarist48...he is still unable to sign on in here. ANY SUGGESTIONS?

It appears he's not alone. Lucy would have been back on by now, so there must be a few members in the same situation.

[Darko A.]

About 4 days ago I started experiencing problems with FishLore.com getting always the same message (Page could not be displayed or similar, IE8 and FireFox 3). I though that the site was down due to maintenance (but it was a bit suspicious since no email notification was received) so I was patient for a couple of days with regular checks. Since every other site are working fine, I really do not know what is the problem except that my IP address could be banned or something. Now I am accessing the forum through some proxy server located in China (it was pain to find a working one at the first place, pages were loading very slowely with lot of failures). I also tried to access it via different ISP (good old dial-up in that case) and laso got problem. Could this be an indication of a more serious problem with DNS or some techy stuff?

Anyway, it is good to be here