Ed Note: This article was written right after our site came back up around April 8, but it still applies.

After a week of being in a “bricked” state, we’re on our way to coming back to normal. You may be wondering why we were down for a week, let me tell you why.

On Monday, March 31, we noticed that the site was running a bit slow, in true fashion on our server. I thought it would be a good idea to let our host know that the site was running slow, and as such I sent a ticket to our host asking them to look into it, as we have in the past. Well, I thought everything would go just like it has in the past… boy, was I wrong.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008. A high holy day on RF Generation. We’re a big fan of the day, and we tend to go over the top. Well, we did our thing, and I went to sleep. I went to class in the morning, only to get a message from Tynstar letting me know that “the site was down.” Now, we do our jokes on April 1, but we generally don’t brick our site (we learned better… thanks Pretty Generation). So, imagine my surprise when I find out, via my close personal friend who you may know as The Black Perl or Database Director that our host has said that we’ve exceeded our resources, and as such bricked our forum database. To get that database back, we had to pretty much disable the site while we “found a solution”.

See, the thing is… we were on a bona-fide overseller… someone who promises the world for a low price. We were aware of this fact, but we stayed on the site because the ride has for the while been a smooth sailing. Well, that ended Tuesday, when our host realized that we were using the server to its fullest ability. Never mind the fact that for weeks it “was not our problem” when the site was unresponsive as heck. But, our host either had some pariah or just wanted a scapegoat to blame for the issues… that happened to be us. After fighting with our host for over a day, we got our databases back, and we came to a decision.

We decided to move hosts. The time of risking it on a shared host needed to end, and we made the choice to move to a virtual private server (VPS). A VPS is the solution in between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. It takes a while to set these servers up, so we were down for the time that we’ve seen. But, we’re back, and we’re pleased as punch that you’re still here.

Some of you have asked about how they could help. Our server costs have officially quadrupled. So yeah, donations are probably going to be accepted. We’re not going to run donations year round, but at strategic points during the year. More info on that later, but for now, just know that our focus is getting the site back to 100% operation and continuing to serve you, our community.

We want to thank you all for your patience during our downtime. At this time, the future looks bright, and we certainly hope that you continue to keep it tuned to channel 3.

Sincerely,

David Murnan
Site Director, RF Generation   

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