Server problems wipe out some of Pint Of Ale
Ouch! Pint Of Ale is wiped out due to server problems and a non-apologetic server host.
We noticed that Pint Of Ale was not responding yesterday, so contacted our provider’s support department to ask what was going on. We were told that the server was undergoing a ‘file system check’ due to a faulty disk that would take several hours to complete.
We only pay twenty or so quid a year for our hosting, so we can’t expect wonderful 100% uptime, so we accepted it on the chin.
When the site began responding again, it was 15 (fifteen!) days out of date! It still had its old look and feel, six posts were missing, including some really good comments we’ve received from visitors, and Mike’s new Pub Counter was gone too!
We find it really hard to believe that our server providers don’t take nightly backups. We ourselves back up all files needed to make Pint Of Ale work but we only back up the database that contains the blog postings and comments monthly. We’ll be changing that! We’ll also be taking our website to another provider as soon as our year’s contract runs out.
Google came to the rescue for a couple of postings. It had a fully-cached version of our The Raven, Bath and A night in the Aviator, Yeadon pages, so we managed to re-add them this morning.
But my pub counter and our two posts about the Town Street Tavern in Horsforth are gone for good. Google has cached the home page as it was on Wednesday, so we’ve still got the introductory paragraphs. We can re-add the comments from our email records, but they would not be the same so we’ve decided not to and to take it on the chin.
We’ll be more careful in the future though!
