There is good news and bad news. Good News is we are now back online, but unfortunately the long-term prognosis is bad news, in that our ageing server hardware isn't looking too healthy and has required some serious intervention today to get it back up and limping along.
Not considerably bad considering its getting on for more than 6 years old with practically 24/7 usage over that time.
Sadly due to the fact we have always been a hand to mouth community that is not swimming in mountains of cash, we chose to co-locate our own bought and supplied server, which has successfully over the past 6 years or so helped us to vastly reduce the overall costs of keeping the forum online and keeping it fast and free for its user base.
As a direct result of our financial constraints this also means our support options have become very limited as we are essentially supporting our own equipment, that is expensive to repair and replace.
We all knew at some point a serious hardware issue would bite us, and we are currently looking at options to move the forum back to a managed hosting solution in the short-term, but this is likely to come at a vastly increased financial penalty that I know long-term the site will be unable to sustain on a permanent basis.
The overbearing fact is that SEATCupra.net is around 70% privately funded in its current state with the rest coming from occasional advertising support, which has been not only harder to secure but harder to manage for myself, my work role changed a few years ago and I have a lot less free time than I did in SCN's early days to chase funding and keep things running on a more even keel in working hours.
However as I type this the system is back and running today and seems at the moment to be ok, our priority is to ensure we update our most recent backup files and then once we have selected a new managed solution we will start moving the forum and site in due course.
We are actively looking at solutions to instigate a more solid finance stream for the forum, but that is very dependent on personal time factors, and willing sponsors.
There maybe additional downtime during the moving process, and there is likely to be speed issues, so apologies in advance.
Facebook and Twitter are of course always available for updates should the worst happen and it falls over in the interim.
Thanks
ZBOYD
Not considerably bad considering its getting on for more than 6 years old with practically 24/7 usage over that time.
Sadly due to the fact we have always been a hand to mouth community that is not swimming in mountains of cash, we chose to co-locate our own bought and supplied server, which has successfully over the past 6 years or so helped us to vastly reduce the overall costs of keeping the forum online and keeping it fast and free for its user base.
As a direct result of our financial constraints this also means our support options have become very limited as we are essentially supporting our own equipment, that is expensive to repair and replace.
We all knew at some point a serious hardware issue would bite us, and we are currently looking at options to move the forum back to a managed hosting solution in the short-term, but this is likely to come at a vastly increased financial penalty that I know long-term the site will be unable to sustain on a permanent basis.
The overbearing fact is that SEATCupra.net is around 70% privately funded in its current state with the rest coming from occasional advertising support, which has been not only harder to secure but harder to manage for myself, my work role changed a few years ago and I have a lot less free time than I did in SCN's early days to chase funding and keep things running on a more even keel in working hours.
However as I type this the system is back and running today and seems at the moment to be ok, our priority is to ensure we update our most recent backup files and then once we have selected a new managed solution we will start moving the forum and site in due course.
We are actively looking at solutions to instigate a more solid finance stream for the forum, but that is very dependent on personal time factors, and willing sponsors.
There maybe additional downtime during the moving process, and there is likely to be speed issues, so apologies in advance.
Facebook and Twitter are of course always available for updates should the worst happen and it falls over in the interim.
Thanks
ZBOYD
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