We're back!

[babywag]

It's kind of a story, but it had to do with how much space the forum attachments were using and where they were stored. The hosting company has a 1Gb limit for the database that stores forum info. The attachments were being stored in the database which had grown to 1.9 Gb. The fix should have been easy but the company hosting the site wouldn't even allow temporary access to make the change. Unfortunately we might have lost some attachments from the week or two before the forum stopped working.



Not happening. I dedicated this entire weekend to solving this issue, and already had a backup plan in place if it didn't work. This stuff isn't part of my day job so when the site stopped working I had to do a bunch of learning, fast. Sorry it took so long. Didn't mean to scare anyone.

Thx for efforts in restoring the site. I know how much pain it can be. If you need any help feel free to ask. I did the IT thing for ~10yrs...lots of exciting issues requiring crash courses on obsolete/outdated systems that of course everyone needed back immediately.

[steveo]

It's kind of a story, but it had to do with how much space the forum attachments were using and where they were stored. The hosting company has a 1Gb limit for the database that stores forum info. The attachments were being stored in the database which had grown to 1.9 Gb. The fix should have been easy but the company hosting the site wouldn't even allow temporary access to make the change. Unfortunately we might have lost some attachments from the week or two before the forum stopped working.

sounds familiar! i've taken over quite a few forums where we didn't even realize that forum software stored all the binaries in the database until it was way too late. the size of your database just doesn't seem like something you should check on periodically, since the whole time you're assuming it's just a bunch o' strings.

Not happening. I dedicated this entire weekend to solving this issue, and already had a backup plan in place if it didn't work. This stuff isn't part of my day job so when the site stopped working I had to do a bunch of learning, fast. Sorry it took so long. Didn't mean to scare anyone.

not at all, i was just joking around. you did great work. even simple operations with databases can be really bitchy if you don't work with them often.