Over the last week, we have been dealing with the worst business crisis Autonerdz has ever faced.

Last Thursday morning our web hosting company, Earthlink Web Hosting, gave us an 'upgrade' and moved us to a new server.  They totally botched the process and killed our forums.  That was only the beginning.  We could have fixed that.  But..they screwed it all up so bad that it was impossible to edit or move any files to the new server. 

So, they destroy the site and then make it impossible to fix.  I don't think that could have been executed any better had it been a deliberate plan to sabotage.   

So, we had no choice but to find a new host for the site.  I had never done anything like this before having been with Earthlink since day one fifteen years ago.

Once we set up a new host, we had to transfer data.  To give you an idea of what that involved....Just the folder the the attachments on this board was over 5 billion Bytes and took seven hours to move.

Then the repairing of the site could begin.  I was lucky to locate a YaBB forums support member and server geek to help reinstall and restore the boards.  I hired him to do in a few hours what it would have taken me several days to do.

Great thanks to Jon Baker for his diligence and working into the wee hours of this morning to get the boards functional.   

There may still be a few rough spots as we iron out any bugs, but we are back.  And better than ever, this sever seems way faster huh.   

Tom Roberts wrote on Jun 15^th, 2011 at 8:51am:


Yes this server is much faster.

I mainly use Opera as my browser and the pop-up progress bar is now showing the pages are loading in 1 to 2 seconds and the old one would take around 11 seconds on a good day to load.

dave

Great to see the site back up.

Sam

Glad to see  that its fixed.
I was sick without it

Thanks for all your work and effort in getting it going again. 

Woohoo. We're back.

Last Thursday my wife said "Well look on the bright side, all around the world nerdz will start communicating with their partners again". 
"Shoot, where did you come from?."

But now I can get my LSD shot again. Well done Jon. And thankyou Tom. Great stuff.
"Mmm..Yes dear."

Tom, Brian, Jon Baker, and anyone else in on the fix not mentioned:
Thank You, Thank You, and Thank You again! I think it's fair to say
that if it was possible to PayPal beer the lot of you would be too
drunk to type on this forum! Thanks again, a nerd at hunched over his keyboard is a happy nerd!

Great work guys!!!!!!!

Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Being happily unemployed and no autonerdz to troll brought me down a notch.  So glad it's back up!!!!  And on a side note, the new host seems to be much more friendly torwards me blackberry using this site too!!!

Yeah its definitely good to see it back up - you dont know how much you miss something till its gone! I agree this server is much better.
I dont understand why they couldnt have transferred us to a different server(node) and avoided all the catastrophe. What a mess it must have been.
Did you lose any hair Tom?

Hi Tom,

Great news, glad  it's all up and running and in such little time too.

Great job guys..

Regards,
Nige

YES! we are back thanks for the hard work getting it going again   I emailed earthlink to tell them how unhappy i was
Didnt know what to do when I couldnt browse autonerdz.
Now where is mick with his misfire posts

Good job.

Tom Roberts wrote on Jun 20^th, 2011 at 4:06pm:


I didn't get a phone call/email following my feedback.
Not that I expected one,had my grumpy face on