What Happened on May 26, 2011?

[Richard]

Short version:

Everything that happened after May 21, 2011 is lost in time. The forum went through a restore on May 26, 2011.

This means that if you made a post after May 21, 2011, joined after May 21, 2011 or even updated your profile after May 21, 2011 none of it reflects on the forum.

A small concession to our loyal members:

Board board posts will count toward post counts for a week, beginning today, ending June 2, 2011.


Blog Version:

Call it RAFpocalypse, or call it the Massive RAF Restore, but today May 26, 2011 marks the first time in our history that the forum had to be restored using a five day old backup.

So here is what happened: in the evening of May 26, I begin going through the forum, making incremental changes; one of these changes was an option to prune the forum. I often prune the forum every month or so, or whenever I have the time. By pruning, I mean removing "moved topic notices". But one of the options was to remove "all posts" prior to 7 days that are deemed inactive. This latter option was the one I inadvertently selected versus deleting "moved topic notices" made prior to 7 days.

By doing this pruning, all posts were removed that were not posted in 7 days.

This left RAF with a total of 200,000+ posts and a 200+ topics.

Having noticed what had taken place, and knowing there was no "undo" to this action (deleting posts actually deletes them, forever) I immediately contacted our host (HostGator) in an attempt to get a server copy of the forum's database.



HostGator makes a backup of all files and databases on their servers every Saturday. Unfortunately for us, Saturday last was 5 days ago. They restored the database in 10 minutes.


So in the blink of an eye, RAF lost thousands of posts, hundreds of personal messages, countless profile edits, karma updates; everything made since May 21, 2011. Even members who registered after May 21, 2011 will have to do so again.


This massive time travel will make RPGs awkward, conversations in Personal Messages weird, and certainly will make history recording spotty. It's a crippling blow, but I hope we can move past it.


Again, I would like to apologize to EVERYONE who is affected by this.

Regards,

Richard

[Phoenix004]

For a second there I was convinced I'd gone through some kind of time warp, lol.

Crap, my PMs for the past week are gone too. Anyone who already sent me a PM regarding my world trip will have to resend it. Just noticed that even stuff like karma and activity levels have decreased. It's literally like time has rewinded... Richard, were you messing around with my time machine?

[Stephquiem]

Is there a way to get it back?

'Cause... seriously. I lost 337 posts.

[Richard]

Is there a way to get it back?

'Cause... seriously. I lost 337 posts.

Sorry, May 21 is the best I can do.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Has anyone tried googling Richard's Animorphs Forum and then using the cached page?

[Phoenix004]

Just tried that Dino, didn't work.

[Stephquiem]

Fantastic. -_-

[Aluminator (Kit)]

Thanks for keeping us abreast of what's going on here, Richard. At least now I know I'm not losing it

[SuperBlue]

My activity bar....*eye twitches* my precious activity bar.....and my post count...........exc use me while I go cry.

[Richard]

My activity bar....*eye twitches* my precious activity bar.....and my post count...........exc use me while I go cry

Sorry Blue

[SuperBlue]

 I demand reparation! And by that I mean the spilling of somebody's blood! Doesn't matter who! Somebody must be sacrificed so RAF will give me my posts back!

*pulls out meat cleaver*

Any volunteers!?

[Stephquiem]

My activity bar....*eye twitches* my precious activity bar.....and my post count...........exc use me while I go cry.

Your post count? MY post count! I lost more than anybody.

I demand reparation! And by that I mean the spilling of somebody's blood! Doesn't matter who! Somebody must be sacrificed so RAF will give me my posts back!

*pulls out meat cleaver*

Any volunteers!?

I vote a random lurker.

[Terenia]

I would have much preferred a real time warp. I wouldn't mind it being last Saturday again...

Oh well, it could've been a lot worse!

[SuperBlue]

The fact that we ended up back on the prophesied end of the world frightens me a little

[Richard]

Here's a concession (a horrible attempt at one, really).

Board board posts will count toward post counts for a week, beginning today.