Lately I’ve downgraded the server to a more affordable plan given that on average, the number of visitors never really went above 70 at any given day. I think with the weight of the users, the vbulletin software has a bit of a problem handling that amount in relation to our server.

Just an FYI.

MKF is currently up and running, but of course, not like how it used to be. Of this, I am deeply sorry.

There are still some images that are missing which many of you will notice, but I think Heather has them, so I will wait until she returns from vacation to restore those images. I took the opportunity to upgrade to the latest vbulletin, so there are several new additions to the forums - such as tags, which you will see. The MKF blog, for those who check in on it once in a while will also be uploaded in the next few days.

I noticed that google has archived some of our old pages into cache - if anyone is utterly bored, and can grab some of those archived pages and send them to me, that would be nice to create an archive file of all of the posts lost since then.

You guys are free to complain in this thread. I know that much precious data has been lost. The one thing I am happy about is that none of Michelle’s posts have been lost. Knowing now that our web host does not back up plans that use VPS, I will be backing up much more consistently. Also, if any of you know of alternative, good affordable web hosts, please let me know. Also, if there is anything that is missing that you think MKF used to have (besides our data of course).. like missing images, plugins, strange behaviour, please let me know.

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This is what I had posted on the front page yesterday, for those who may have missed it:

I apologize deeply for the problems that all of you are encountering today. It’s been quite frustrating having to deal with this while at work, but our web host, A Small Orange had some major issues yesterday evening.
I woke up this morning, as I’m sure all of you did, to find that mkforum.net was inaccessible.

I sent off an e-mail to ask them what was wrong. They told me they would run some scripts to get it up and running. I thought that meant it was a minor issue with the system. When it completed, they sent me an e-mail to tell me that it was complete and that I’d have to go through these steps to reconfigure it and have to re-upload the web site.

As some of you might have seen, for some time the front page read “Apache and Control Panel has been successfully configured.” I also had a heart attack when I saw this, because it means that nothing that was there exists anymore.

Anyway, long story short. This is what happened to the server that mkforum.net is on: http://forums.asmallorange.com/index…howtopic=11957
and when I flipped out, they responded with this:

“Hi Grace, I apologize for the inconvenience with this. The disk partition where all the VPSes were configured had to be reformatted. Since we don’t maintain individual backups of the VPSes, we don’t have any customer data to restore. The VPS itself is back online, so I can help you with any reconfiguration needed on the server However, if you have any backups of data that you’ve downloaded to your computer at home, I can help you restore that information.”

The good news is that I DO have a backup. The bad news is that it’s from February. I HAD made other backups, but they were on all onto the server itself. This means that a lot of data has been lost, from between February to now. I am very sorry that this has happened. I was not aware that our service did not back up the servers, and now that I do, I will be extremely diligent about backing up regularly. I am NOT at all happy with the current situation - half of it being my own fault, half of it our web hosts.
I will try my hardest to get some semblance of our forum working again, as soon as possible. This may take a while because I have to reconfigure the server, re-install vbulletin, and get it up to speed. But I will try to get all the basics down so members can at least post again.

Just so you may have an idea what data is gone, the following will be gone:
New posts made since February 6
New threads made since February 6
Forum changes or additions made since February 6
Private messages since February 6
If you signed up for a user account since February 6, you will have to sign up again.

I will try to recover some of the old blog posts.

Regards, ~Grace

Not sure why. I’m trying to look into the webhost right now, but it seems like everything from FTP-ing, accessing the Webhost Manager is just really slow. It’s odd that the main page has no issues.

I am wondering if there might be an MySQL error. I apologize for all the inconvenience.

Michelle appeared on a fluff piece with Caroline Zhang, where she was sitting next to Caroline, helping her skate. She looked beautiful, was smiling and laughing with Caroline. You can read and discuss more on the forum here.

Be sure to take a part of the continuation of the Trivia Challenge that started last year. Here are the rules, and you can take the questions that appear bi-weekly in the Join in the fun at MKF! section of the forum.

Thanks!

MKF has started to act funny again. The “quick” fix is to always perform a reboot, which I just performed. Will take a while for board to run properly again.

I’m not sure why the board keeps on having such weird problems. We didn’t have any problems when we were on a dedicated server. Ever since I downgraded (due to their not being as much activity when Michelle was skating) to a virtual private server, we’ve had these intermittent problems which are frustrating to all of us, I know.

The visibility into the problems are hard to debug, but I will certainly try. Thanks for everyone’s patience

Update: All is well now in MKF land : ) Sorry about the board being down. I think things are running more smoothly too.

As I was trying to upgrade to 3.6.4, the latest version of vbulletin, it looks like the code in the latest s/w is disliked even more by what is installed by default with ASO. A program called Eaccelerator is making all the pages crash. Just letting all of you know that I’m aware of the problem. Please be patient.

Come join.. you know want to come join in the fun!

Join in the fun at MKF!

You can see it under MK Chat titled “Join in the fun at MKF!”. I’ve set it so only moderators can start threads but anyone can respond to them; this is mainly just to keep it organized and uncluttered. So report us if we start spamming that forum =P

If you have any other ideas for what other uses that this section could be (like what other activities) we’d be happy to hear them! Right now there is two polls going on, and Bonnie just started with her first assignment of discussing “Romanza”. The idea was thanks to a wonderful member here, and we decided to call this “Trip Down Memory Lane”. If you have any questions or comments, please comment to this post or in Forum Feedback.

VOTE!
Right now we’re having a poll at the forum to decide whether or not we should have a Skaters Subforum. Make sure you make your input here:
Would you like to see a Skaters Subforum?

Other Changes to the Forum
We’ve added a spoiler tag! Learn how to use it:
New Spoiler Tag!

More small changes will be coming in the future, so be sure to look for them

We’re downgrading from a dedicated server to a VPS tonight. I may close it starting 15 min before 5PM EST. One might experience a few problems later, which might be due to this server, but it should normalize itself within a couple of days. The move shouldn’t take long, you may or may not observe the change. Thanks so much for everyone’s patience.

Due to Michelle’s announcement of not competing in the coming year, in addition to the lower number of people visiting the forum in the past few months, we have decided to save costs by moving from a dedicated server to a VPS (what we started off with). I am positive this will be able to accommodate the users, and should hopefully be able to cope when Michelle skates at some of the exhibitions. We will be doing this move in the next couple of weeks.

This will also free up some reserves to renew our vbulletin license to upgrade to 3.6.1 (which includes bug fixes for 3.6.0). I have yet to put in our google ads again.

If anyone has suggestions what the forum could do to liven up the atmosphere, comments would be greatly welcomed.