As you can see, we’re back up and running. Things went pretty stagnant for awhile and are likely to again. In all honesty, this site has become more of a hobby project for me and considering I do this kind of work for a living, Im less likely to want to come home and mess around with it. There is some backstory as to why the site is back up and running and actually functional again.
This time of the year, our web hosting and domains come due for renewal. We were with GoDaddy for a lot of years (since 2006) and had a fairly decent relationship with them. As things went stagnant, we discovered some data loss and some malware issues. You may or may not notice that some of our newest posts are dated 2011. Thats the newest data backup I had. I’ve written before about data backups and data loss before and I understand the importance rather well. Unfortunately, this one slipped between my fingers and we lost some data (a sore point for Greg and I both). Since the backup and malware were such an issue and GoDaddy wasnt really willing to cut us a deal on a more updated hosting package for a reasonable price, we decided to switch hosts. I’ve been eyeballing hosts for awhile anyway and wanted to switch last year, but wasnt prepared to do so. This year, we were in a much better position to do so, and frankly, Im glad we did. Im WAY happier with the package we now. The domain transfer went very smoothly and it actually gave me a change to evaluate what needed to be done in regards to moving the domains and data. A ton of cleanup was done.
One of the biggest features on this site has always been the forum. In 2006, when we started the site back up, we started out with just a forum implemented with SMF. Then we converted to a product called Simple:Press, which was the most integrated into WordPress at the time. Their business model changed and they started charging for their software, which made conversion/upgrades a little unreasonable for us. When we transferred the site recently, I discovered bbPress and its capability to import data from other forum formats. While things arent perfect, one thing that I can say is that we have something that is functional again.
One feature with this hosting package that Im really happy with so far is the data backup through Codeguard. Since we lost data with the last host, moving to this host, I wasnt taking any chances in data loss. As of now, we have a decent configuration with Codeguard backing up our files and databases every night. The cost really wasnt out of the realm of possibility. $60/year for 10GB of backup, which is more than we should require for now. There may or may not be a post about this later on (depending on my motivation).
My main focus on this site right now is to keep things simple and easy to maintain. That basically means no customization of the themes and keeping the plugins to a minimum so that the site updates easily without breaking anything. I think most of the activity will start happening in the forum now that its back up and running. Visit the forums. Come talk with us. If you were an existing member of the forum years ago, your account will need to be reset. This is only for about 10 accounts, including mine. I trashed about 3000 spam accounts.
Come visit us in the forums. Looking forward to the discussion.