As to backups, there are nightly backups and weekly backups. The daily backups are retained until the next weekly, then are overwritten. The weeklys are not overwritten, and are retained in case there is some drastic loss of data.

This has NOT always been the case, and we have lost large chunks of operational data before, because in the past the backups were overwritten in a very short time frame, and the servermonkeys didn't get to the backups before they were lost.

Since THAT time, the weekly backups are not overwritten, but quite obviously rolling the entire site back to when a problem occurred demands that EVERYTHING that has happened since the error is lost.

In this instance they looked at the rollback option, but the time delay between IB making the error, us calling them on it, and them looking at the problem (after a weekend) would have completely lost over a week of posts for EVERYONE.

When it was obvious that loosing everything done that week was NOT a viable option, they tried to "merge" the old and new database information so that the old member information was brought back into the database while retaining all new posts - that was unmitigated disaster, and could not be done.

The only thing that could be done was for them to apologize and to promise to never, ever, do such a thing again.

(Sadly, the person who made the error retains the power to do it again.)
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Gabe, the correct contact for you is actually Amelia, rather than Adrian, but he should still respond.

I'll ask him about that...

Tom

 

Thus the cost of selling out.

Sorry to read about this, but atleast he has his OG name back.

 

^^ agreed

 

this bothers me!

 

At least the ads are still being served up...

 

It bothers me too, Scott.

Above I said I'd ask Adrian about that. I sent an e-mail to him, cc'd to Amelia. I got a response from Amelia...

Tom