Server Woes and Forum Status

You may have noticed that my site went down for a few hours yesterday and that forum.papervision3d.org is still down. Here’s what happened:

1. When I created the forum a couple months ago, I used ssh to move a bunch of files between domains
2. Yesterday, I updated to wordpress 2.71 and thought it would be a good time to reboot the server for kicks
3. httpd wouldn’t come back on (meaning you couldn’t browse to any of my sites) after the reboot because Plesk screwed up some conf files either when Plesk updated to a newer version or due to the ssh madness I played around with
4. I cleaned up some stuff in plesk, including removing the old forum.pv3d.org domain
5. I found out that when you delete a domain in Plesk, Plesk also deletes all related databases (without warning). I had forgotten I created the original forum database under the forum.pv3d.org domain (not forum.papervision3d.org)
6. My buddy Beto from rojored.com helped get my blog back up by doing some server voodoo (thanks Beto)
7. I thought I set up automatic backups in phpbb3, but I must have missed a step because I can’t find them anywhere
8. The forum is down and as far as I can tell I don’t have a backup of the database (mediatemple doesn’t do automatic backups on dv servers)

So, bottom line, I screwed up royally on this. I should’ve confirmed I had database backups before doing anything with Plesk. I’m upset that Plesk thinks it’s a good idea to delete databases when you delete a domain (especially without a warning), but I have to take most of the blame myself.

I’ll try to get the forums reinstalled next week when I get a spare moment. I’ve already wasted way too many hours trying to resurrect them from the dead. Everyone will have to create a new account and all the content will be gone (I guess you can use google’s cache for individual pages while it’s still available) so we’ll have to start fresh. I’m open to suggestions on how to improve from the first install if you have any.

Oh, and my wife sprained her ankle playing basketball this morning so I’m going to be a bit of a Mr. Mom for the next few days

Tags: off-topic