Our technical staff has been investigating the reasons behind the crash and it turns out that the underlying issues are much more complicated than we originally thought.
We’ve made backups of all the databases, but in the end we may have to reinstall the server’s operating system, which naturally means that we have to back up a lot more than just the wiki databases, and this means that it takes up more time.
I can realize that everyone, myself included, is extremely frustrated with the current situation, but I can assure you that our techs are doing their best; we must do this properly, and doing it properly also takes up more time than coming up with hacky solutions that may or may not work.
Once the site is back up, we’ll start hunting down the last remaining issues related to MediaWiki 1.16 upgrade (there should be only a couple left) and once we’ve fixed those, we’ll begin updating the wikis to MediaWiki 1.16. The upgrade includes a lot of new features and other cool stuff, including a few “in-house” things (that I at least find very cool)…stay tuned!
Jack Phoenix
Head of the Customer Support Team
23 replies on “Status update on recent server troubles”
Thank you for the update. Honestly I was more frustrated by the lack of dialogue from the staff than the actual server being down, so its nice to be in the loop.
That being said, I’d rather have the wiki down for a little longer than have a half-assed fix put in place, so here’s hoping it all works out :S
Thanks for the update. Hopefully everything gets fixed soon. Best of luck!
Thank you for the update and best of luck with getting things put back together. I do agree that it’s better to take extra time to ensure a reliable end result than it is to hastily slap together a kludge and cross your fingers that it keeps working.
Again, the update is much appreciated. A little communication goes a long way in smoothing things over. Hope the fixes go well!!
Thank you for keeping us posted. Like FH14, I just want to know what is going on. Good luck and good on ya for taking the time to do it right. You can do it! 🙂
Thanks for the update. It’s more frustrating not knowing what’s going on. I’m happy to wait for a fix – so long as you keep us in the loop! 🙂
Along with the other comments, thank you for updating everyone on the status of what’s going on. It helps other than to be totally clueless. Good luck as you continue to fix this, and I can not wait to see what’s in store with 1.16 afterwards. 😀
It is good to have some news. I do agree to wait more (but still not TOO LONG) to have as much as possible under control.
However you should now start doing more frequent backups.
A few months on Anti-Wikia Alliance I was detailing alternatives to wikia and warned that shoutwiki was a new wiki, and new wikis tend not to last long. Another editor reverted this comment.
I remember vividly losing all my information on ScribbleWiki and ScribbleWiki ceasing to exist after a similar breakdown.
http://wikiindex.org/ScribbleWiki
I hope my concerns about shoutwiki are unfounded! Good luck in your efforts.
Thanks for the info. I do hope this can fixed up soon. I hope what anno1404 stated doesn’t happen here! Best of luck!
Scribble Wiki didn’t have backups, that’s why everything was lost. Jack made this quote: ”We’ve made backups of all the databases, but in the end we may have to reinstall the server’s operating system, which naturally means that we have to back up a lot more than just the wiki databases”.
So all the content is backed up, but more may need to be.
I still hope they can give us at least a vague time span for this matter to be resolved. And if it will develop to look grim they should at least give us the courtesy of downloading the backups in any form. It would be so bad to lose all the data I just don’t want to think of it.
Is there any further news on the problem?
Soon two weeks, it starts to be trouble for me to hand down!
Well, It’s been two weeks. I dont mind waiting, as long as everything comes back the way it used to be, and no data is lost, but I dont imagine it would be considering they have backups.
Good day Jack,
Since it’s now been two weeks, I was wondering if you had any new information about how things are going?
I’m also curious about why it’s taking so long. Are you having to put everything back together from scratch?
Believe me I know coding can be a pain in the ass so I know how delicate a process it is. I know its difficult to guess these kinds of things, but do you guys have any idea if it will be back up before the end of April?
Still waiting……..slowly losing patience…
On another note I do believe we should get free use of Monaco for the time we were unable to access the site which as of now is like 14/15 days.
@everyone: Thank you for your patience, I certainly understand your frustration (as a matter of fact, I would’ve wanted to edit a few wikis, too, within the past couple weeks).
Our tech team is very optimistic right now and according to the latest estimate, the site should be back up maybe even before April 1st! Of course we all need to keep in mind that we’re talking about a large process — backing up all data, reinstalling the operating system and moving the backed-up data back to the “new” OS…it all is going to take a fair while because we have almost 700 wikis and we obviously need to reinstall and configure some software (such as Apache, MySQL and PHP).
That being said, I’m confident in our tech team and their ability to resolve this situation even before April. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!
Great! Actually having 2 weeks away has given me some really cool ideas for improving my wiki.
@Jack That’s wonderful news! Thanks for the update! I’m sending over positive thoughts!
This better not be an early April Fools joke. April 1st? 😛
@Solar Dragon Good one, man! Hope Shoutwiki is back up by tomorrow.
Shoutwiki is till not back up… unfortunately.