Back in Business. Finally.
After nearly two weeks of blackout, What Do I Know is finally back. The downtime was far, far longer than I ever could have imagined. Thanks to the vital, brilliant support of Benjamin Trott, who put the pieces back together, and Dan Benjamin, who rooted out the domain issues that preceded this whole mess, the dawn has come and the nightmare is finally over.
So what in the hell happened?
The problem started two weeks ago when the site became mysteriously inaccessible for some readers. I could pull it up fine, as could others I knew. Thinking it was a blip, I ignored it. A couple of days later however, the problem grew worse. First went the web site, then email, then my FTP access. I contacted my web host, Aletia Hosting and asked they look into it. They accepted responsibility, and told me it would be resolved.
Days later, still nothing. Aletia wasn't responding anymore. Total blackout. On a hunch, I checked out my domain registration, and sure enough, it had recently expired. Why did the domain lapse? I found out that my contact email for the account was old (thanks to my ISP yanking it and forcing a new address on all its customers). So when the domain was up for renewal, I never received a notice.
But that wasn't a big deal. I renewed the domain, the account was updated within a few hours, and the site should have come right back. But it didn't.
Fed up with Aletia, I contacted support at JaguarPC, the company that recently acquired Aletia, to see if they knew what was going on. When their response came, I knew I was in trouble. They assumed I was a new customer. After more digging, JaguarPC reported that my entire online presence, from my registration in their domain name server to my static web files and even my MySQL database were all wiped out - dust - not a trace of my domain or content on any of their servers.
Perhaps it was a slip of the wrist. Or, perhaps it was malicious (which I doubt, but theoretically possible). However it happened, the fact is every byte of What Do I Know was gone.
The saving grace in this adventure was the fact that I downloaded backups from my web server every week - just in case something like this happened. I hoped re-uploading everything "as it was" would work, but it didn't. There were all kinds of problems relating to MySQL that only Benjamin Trott could fix. And fix it he did.
To be fair, JaguarPC inherited the problem from Aletia, and they tried their best to fix it. I have heard numerous positive things about JaguarPC, and that their acquisition of Aletia is probably the best thing that could have happened to Aletia's customers. But there is only so much you can do with empty space, and so much patience and understanding to offer in bizarre circumstances like mine.
So in the coming weeks the site will move web hosts. Not sure where yet, but it will happen. With enough planning, further blackouts won't be a problem.
Thanks to everyone who sent messages of encouragement and offers for support. Moments like this make you realize how many kind, giving people there are out there. And fortunately for me, a number of them read this site. Thank you.
Comments
Welcome back, Todd! You've been missed.
Posted by: Bob at September 21, 2002 5:30 PM
And to think i though my crappy ISP was to blame. It's good to see you back up, Todd!
Posted by: Neil at September 21, 2002 5:33 PM
Todd, I have had problems like this before with Aletia. One problem I had with Texasflashers.org, when they did this EXACT same thing. Also a friends domain granato.org wouldnt come up, but they didnt delete the content. From what I have heard they are a bad bad host :) But that is just what I have heard, so I will give em the benefit of the doubt :) Welcome back, we are glad to have ya.
Posted by: Josh Dura at September 21, 2002 5:54 PM
Glad everything worked out in the end, welcome back.
Posted by: billy at September 21, 2002 5:57 PM
Glad to have you back online. I noticed my own occasional difficulty getting your site before it went totally black. Having recently changed hosts to Uplinkearth (great price but don't know enough to recommend them yet. They have been pretty helpful getting me settled, although strict with their file permissions and a so-so web stat package) I know what a pain it is to change over. Let's hope this move will be the last for a long while! Hope you paid for a 10 year lease on your domain!
Posted by: Lauri Mueller at September 21, 2002 6:21 PM
Very much a case of not realising until it's gone. Good to click and find you back and fighting fit.
Posted by: Kev at September 21, 2002 6:41 PM
Welcome back Todd, you've been missed.
Posted by: Jonas at September 21, 2002 6:44 PM
Pleased to see you back :)
In terms of a host, allow me to plug PHPWebhosting, the bes' damn host I've come across. Everything from SQL to PHP to Python to SSI to such esoterica as C and fun tidbits like Crontab. Dead, dead cheap, flat rate. Sort of the quintessential hidden jewel of the 'net. Check 'em out.
Posted by: Brandon at September 21, 2002 9:23 PM
I was visiting your site on a daily basis for months without ever commenting, and that blackout was a wake up to how great your site is and that I should really comment to tell you that. So, please keep it up, I love it. Amazing work!
Posted by: Russ at September 21, 2002 10:21 PM
glad to see your back. i'm a bit worried since i'm on aletia/jaguarpc. maybe i should jump ship. let me know where you decide to hang your hat.
Posted by: alba at September 21, 2002 11:55 PM
At least someone didn't try to jack your web address.
Posted by: Greg at September 22, 2002 12:02 AM
Hi Todd,
Welcome back. I'm sure you'll get quite a few recommedations for hosts. I'd look at Pair Networks (www.pair.com). I've hosted there since 1997 with the only downtime ever being when they moved facilities, and then only for a few hours. In that time the price of my account has stayed the same while they've actually added features, disk space and quotas. They are very well regarded in the industry, and are as solid as can be.
The only complaint anybody ever raises about them is that you will get no phone support, but I've never had a problem go unattended to by email (response almost always within 2 hours), and they do have an emergency email that will reach someone 24/7.
In any case, best of luck on the move. Glad to see you back!
Posted by: Martin at September 22, 2002 12:08 AM
I had an annoying hosting issue recently also, it was like the exact same time as your's.
Anyway, my old hosting company, iPowerWeb failed on me trying to move me to "new servers" which turned out to be servers without any of the features they advertised and stuff that I depended on (mod_rewrite, PHP).
I attempted to switch to a new host, but iPowerWeb still had full control over my domain name, and they weren't responding to calls or emails. Eventually, I was able to transfer my domain name to GANDI.net, where I have full control over everything.
I switched to the best hosting in the world, Segment Publishing. I highly reccomend it. Excellent customer service and speed.
Glad you're back!
Posted by: zeke at September 22, 2002 12:32 AM
Welcome back! Glad to see you got things worked out. Good luck with searching for a new host... I've really been enjoying your site.
Posted by: mtg1255 at September 22, 2002 12:46 AM
Good to have you back. (And for the record, I've been pretty happy with Pair.com for hosting - and they do have phone support for higher level accounts.)
Posted by: jca at September 22, 2002 12:54 AM
It's great to have you back, Todd.. I've missed reading your comments over the past couple of weeks.
And as another Aletia/Jaguar owner, I'd also be interested in where WDIK nests. Good luck with the move.
Posted by: Si at September 22, 2002 2:15 AM
Divorce sometimes seems a necessary passage into modern adulthood. Losing control of your site due to third-party bungling likewise seems unfortunately to be part of the "coming of age" process for independent web publishers. Regaining your domain after such strife is like regaining your health after an illness. Glad you're back.
Posted by: Jeffrey at September 22, 2002 9:04 AM
Aletia.com does not want to come up for me this morning. Hmm. All my sites are hosted with them. Hope all will work out.
Glad to have you back.
Ben truly rocks.
Posted by: Witold at September 22, 2002 9:13 AM
What a nightmare. I have to say I'm not terribly surprised, because my brief experience with Aletia (one month) included multiple lock-ups.
Let me just urge you and anyone else reading to very seriously consider a separate DNS host. I use easyDNS(.com), and I very highly recommend them. They have redundant DNS servers (on different backbones) in Toronto, San Antonio, and London.
Using the service, when I made the decision to disconnect Aletia, I did it myself by re-directing the domain -- a change that took 9 minutes to go live (their servers reboot constantly.)
Using the DNS-Plus service, if I had a similar outage, I could redirect the domain to any other site *or* static page. easyDNS also runs backup (MX) mailservers. They can register domains very quickly, and they even have something called "myprivacy.ca" which is a challenge/response system to prevent spammers from harvesting your e-mail address.
I've used their tech support once and they were extremely helpful and quick. Though I have no financial interest in the company whatsoever, I strongly, strongly recommend this additional layer of reliability for mission-critical domains.
Posted by: jsp at September 22, 2002 4:05 PM
Welcome back man. I really missed you while you were gone - glad to see you got things worked out.
Posted by: dkr at September 22, 2002 9:12 PM
Yup good to see the site back online even though you had to go through all that trouble. In the future, you might want to try backing up the mySQL database using phpMyAdmin from SourceForge or even by Shell (usually SSH) access. Then you will have a perfect copy of the database and that should be restored easily. Thankfully Ben is a programming wizard.
Posted by: webspiffy at September 23, 2002 3:08 AM
Hey! Its good to have you back, seriously! I, like everyone else here, really appreciate what you do with your site. It's really a big help to those of us who are *new* or pending apple users :)
Posted by: Dot at September 23, 2002 7:34 AM
Glad you're back! And props to Ben Trott!!
Posted by: James at September 23, 2002 9:15 AM
Aletia is an evil name in my house. Constant downtime. I got out of there quick. I'd also like to plug phpwebhosting.com. They give you unlimited disk space and data transfer, and I've never had uptime interruption in several months. Not once. Their servers are in FL and I always get blazing fast speeds way up here in Seatle.
Posted by: Manuel at September 23, 2002 11:16 AM
Glad to see you back. I have been a big fan of Cedant webhosting (www.cedant.com). Best customer service I have ever seen.
Posted by: Josh at September 23, 2002 12:01 PM
It's really great to see you are back, I love the site and read daily...
I just hope I have better luck with aletia than you have. So far I have noticed that the support there is poor and downtime is not so great. I can only hope that they move us all over to jaguarpc for I just joined aletia a month ago.
Posted by: Paul Mayne at September 23, 2002 1:47 PM
Good to see you back. I'll be very interested to see where you wind up.
I've been happy with Webcore Labs but the price they charge for MySQL ($25USD per month) has kept me from upgrading to Moveable Type.
Posted by: timeistight at September 24, 2002 6:26 PM
Not that anyone cares, but I made a typo in my URL in the comment above. Should be http://www.timeistight.com.
Posted by: timeistight at September 25, 2002 10:50 AM
two words: hurricane electric. he.net has consistently been perfect, and i mean perfect. i've had all of my sites there for years and recommend anyone with hosting needs go there as well. keep up the good work.
Posted by: evan at September 26, 2002 9:21 AM
