I have one complaint about this whole boru server situation.

[poh$ger]

I'm a long time user, long time supporter. About a week ago, some accounts on the boru server didn't transfer when it was being upgraded. Everyone who was affected lost all their files, and the admin recently mentioned that there's no way to get those files back.

Now for my side of the story. I was in the process of building my own forums from top to bottom, kind of like the forums you're using right now. I'm not talking about PhpBB or Invision Power Board, I'm talking from scratch. I built everything, including the registration system, the ability to login to your account, the ability to post threads, everything. This project was a month in the making and I was almost done. All I had left was a few admin configurations, and the ability to delete your own messages.

I was one of the few people who were effected by this server problem, I lost all my months of work, I have to start all over. I didn't backup anything, I was going to wait until I was finished with my forums first. Try to understand my situation, all this work, all this devotion, all this effort, for nothing. Not only did I lose everything but now I have to make a new x10hosting account. Should I even bother? How do I know this isn't going to happen again?

For the record, I'm aware, mistakes happen. We're just humans, I'm not complaining about the fact that it happened, I'm complaining that there was no announcement about this issue, no support about this issue, nothing. 9 out of 10 of the threads on the Free Hosting forum regarding people's files being erased were ignored, while all the other threads about unrelated issues got attention. I thought the whole point of having a successful hosting provider was to keep customers happy. It's almost as if no one cares that we lost all our files.

I understand that time is limited; the mods and admins here at x10hosting have lives, but they all volunteered for the position willingly. If not provide support about this situation, at least make a thread about the boru issue.

I think all users who were effected by this situation should get something in return to make dealing with our losses slightly better, then I would have more respect. Like I said, I know the issue was an accident, but there should have been better support and news regarding it.

Smith6612 and Zubair get an honorable mention, because they were one of the few people who did try to help us out.

Anyway, thanks for reading. If your files disappeared too, respond to this thread with your story.

[Smith6612]

Wish I could have helped out a bit more. I happened to be on vacation for the past week using a capped 3G connection (why does it have to have a 3GB cap? Resort's Wi-Fi was hosed the whole time) and just returned home. So obviously, I was out of the loop as to what was going on in regards to updates. Sorry about the loss though. I've had that happen before back in the days of me running a server from home. Memory corruption on that box kept taking out my forum every six months by messing up the database, which resulted in having to restart everything from scratch (the backups I took were not wanting to be imported at all). If you haven't noticed the most recent announcement, I strongly suggest reading it. It'll put you in a better position in regards to this sort of thing happening again if cPanel decides to mess up again. So, you've got something nice in return for the loss, I'd have to say.

[poh$ger]

After getting some sleep, I was harsh yesterday. I'm sorry about the awful complaint I filed.

I still stick with the fact that there should have a little more support on this issue beforehand, but I'm also aware that not even the admins knew what was going on. I was mainly speaking out of anger as a response to my forums disappearing. Mistakes happen all the time, and I should have backed up. I wish I had handled this better.

[Corey]

Your frustration is understandable. Do note that all databases are intact meaning if your site ran on a database the data is not completely lost and should be fixable without too much effort as all posts\threads\members are stored in the database. Once your account is back up you can use the database and just re-upload the base files for your script, you may need to re-install any themes or plugins, besides that all your posts and such should be there. This goes for blogs, forums, CMS, etc...

[poh$ger]

Do note that all databases are intact meaning if your site ran on a database the data is not completely lost and should be fixable without too much effort as all posts\threads\members are stored in the database.

Yep, you're right, all the database contents are still intact, but the problem is that the forum software I coded from scratch that utilized the database contents is no longer intact, I didn't save a single PHP script from the software, so I'm at a large loss.

Thanks for the info anyway. I can use the database as a guide for my new software.

[webgeo9988]

Sorry to hear about your lose. However, being a programmer myself, one of the first things
that was stressed upon us is, Back up, Back up, Back up, Back up!

Even if it's one single line of code, "Back it up!"

[darthp]

Three words.










BACKUP.










BACKUP











BACKUP.

[essellar]

"Back up. Back up. Back up." It sounds a little bit glib, always pops right to the top of the list after you needed to hear it, and is almost completely wrong anyway, at least from a developer's perspective.

Wrong? That's right, wrong. Backing up is something you do in a production environment (or at the system level). I realise that you were working in a developmestuction environment (development, testing and production all rolled into one), which has its own particular unpleasant odor, but that doesn't entirely excuse you from using the best practices others have learned from a long history of similar disasters.

The very first thing that should be mentioned in any "Developing for N00bz" book -- even before "Hello, World" -- is that nobody should ever engage in developing code (or writing literature, for that matter) without a version control system in place. Something like Mercurial or Git isn't just for teams. Think of it, if you need to, as a sort of "infinite Undo" -- one that keeps on working even after you've saved the file and closed your development client (text editor, IDE, grahics editor, etc.). There is a much greater chance that you (and not some system failure) are going to be the source of your biggest problems. It can be incredibly difficult to recover working code from the mess you made of things while "improving" things, or to get back to Point A when you figure out at Point G that the decisions you made at Point B were wrong. Version control can really save your butt in a lot of instances -- and yes, backing up your repository will save you from things like hard drive failures, but backup is not a substitute for a VCS.

It's a good idea, too, to keep at least your development/testing and production environments separate. There's much to be said for developing locally -- and if you're doing PHP/MySQL development, there's really no good reason for not doing your preliminary testing locally as well. There isn't a single platform that provides the facilities needed for development (like a decent hardware keyboard) that doesn't have an XAMP stack available for it (where X is the OS, A is Apache, M is MySQL and P is PHP). If you need to change machines from time to time (that is, you don't have or can't always use your own computer), you'll find that many of the XAMP stacks run as portable, so you can carry around your entire dev environment (IDE, VCS and XAMP stack) on a USB key.

I know, this advice comes a day late and a dollar short, but it's worth keeping in mind for the future. Paranoia is one of those things that's virtually useless in the "real world" but almost essential in the computer world. (And if it helps at all, I learned all of this by losing a major -- and almost complete -- line-of-business corporate application nearly a decade ago after a hard drive failure on a dev server I learned wasn't being backed up. A then-excellent memory, copious paper notes and illustrations and a "heroic" 400-hour month meant that I was only two weeks late delivering for acceptance testing. It's a lesson one only needs to learn once.)