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Post by Les1964 on Jul 10, 2024 7:04:25 GMT
An updated list of affected companies . www.karwansaraypublishers.com/en-gb/blogs/wss-blog/server-down-websites-out?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR06LGkz1VaK5atsKcNCLTWAupub4bcS0oWOEm5W5_7eiW0iRcoL5Ycc59k_aem_lHWwE2FzG0-G5HUhYQrBvwSERVER DOWN - WEBSITES OUT JULY 2024 Due to a server failure, several wargaming companies' websites have gone down, and due to personal circumstances, likely will stay down until the middle of the month. As far as we know, the following websites are affected. 1st Corps / Facebook / alternative contact: firstcorpsuk@aol.com Army Bits / Facebook / alternative contact: use Facebook Messaging Blotz Terrain / Facebook / alternative contact: scbd@btopenworld.com / 01285 650646 Bridge Miniatures - no Facebook presence Conqueror Models / Facebook Crann Tara Miniatures / not on Facebook / Caliverbooks.com Defence in Depth Gaming - no Facebook presence Early War Miniatures / Facebook / alternative contact: Paul.Thompson11@virgin.net or 01983 854214 Mo-Fri 10.00-17.00 UK Fighting 15s / Facebook / alternative contact: news blog, Etsy shop Fizzer Johnson's Men of Metal / Facebook GMB Designs / no social media / alternative contact: +44 114 2217872 / gmbdesigns@blueyonder.co.uk Hasslefree Miniatures / Facebook / alternative contact: BWARTEMIS at GMAIL dot COM Hinchliffe Models / No social media presence / alternative contact: sandascenics@gmail.com Ironclad Miniatures / Facebook / alternative contact: miniironclad@yahoo.com / +441446 790451 Lance and Longbow Society Lancer Miniatures / Facebook / alternative contact: kievenday@yahoo.com / +44 7914 153531 M&C Model Painting Service / Facebook / alternative contact: mcmodelpainting@gmail.com Miniature Heroes / Facebook / Ebay / Etsy Newline Designs / Facebook / alternative contact: seanpereira30@gmail.com Products for Wargamers / Facebook / alternative contact: productsforwargamers@gmail.com Quick Reaction Force - no FB presence S&A Scenics / no social media / alternative contact: sandascenics@gmail.com S&S Models / Facebook / alternative contact: +44 1278 780193 Scarab Miniatures / Facebook / alternative contact: rob_broom@btinternet.com / +44 7852 561456 Space Vixens from Mars / Facebook Shellhole Scenics / Facebook / alternative contact: shellholescenics@hotmail.com The Scene / Facebook TooFatLardies / Facebook / Placeholder page with contact form Total System Scenic / Facebook Tradestands / Facebook / Vanguard miniatures / Facebook Victorious Miniatures / Facebook / alternative contact: victoriousminiatures@outlook.com
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Post by martin on Jul 10, 2024 7:27:43 GMT
This is a nasty one….must be tough for the small businesses affected 😶
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Post by Ken Gordon on Jul 10, 2024 18:38:17 GMT
As an ex director of a web software company that serviced 100s of nhs trusts this is what used to keep me awake at night and funnily enough not the chances of a Bd killing my KnG!
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Post by martin on Jul 11, 2024 6:58:24 GMT
……..the chances of a Bd killing my KnG! Nine times out of ten (ignore any suggestion that the numbers say otherwise, this IS the reality 🙃).
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Post by Les1964 on Jul 11, 2024 14:48:27 GMT
WFT , peoples should be more worried about others livelyhoods , than having to wait a few extra weeks for their orders to show up , SIMPLES !!!!!!! www.facebook.com/Fighting15s/posts/pfbid02RLVVFciSed5T7Ugb6EqS9oZ9i4rfH9anNyYBRQzC4BuSmtryJyrvpPyBhUWCLdYclVultures are circling. A reminder that I am not making any decisions about Fighting 15s' current ecommerce arrangements until Andy from Tradestands is back and I can assess what needs to be done to get the site back up and running. I certainly don't plan on switching the software away from Woocommerce, nor moving to an unknown company for hosting. But thanks for the concern. I repeat that I have current backups of the site. If I really fancied it I could get the shop up and running on oozlumgames.com all by myself, but as Andy also looks after the Fighting 15s and Gladiator Miniatures domain names, I can't point them at oozlumgames anyway. I've sent quite a bit of ageism on social media on the grounds that Andy at Tradestands is 60. A reminder that I am 63, and that a fair number of the affected businesses are run by people in their 60s. We use Woocommerce to run the sites, which is a modern piece of software highly customisable to a business's needs, not a creaking heap of ancient code.
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Post by snowcat on Jul 12, 2024 1:38:27 GMT
You mean to say that the Cloud is not really in the clouds...? ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png)
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Post by martin on Jul 12, 2024 7:46:33 GMT
Latest from Fighting 15s….(fb post)
“ Server update: Andy of Tradestands is back from his holiday and is at work on the new server - he messaged after midnight last night. Fighting 15s expects to be back up and running within a few days at worst.
Depending on how quickly the server is restored, the Stripe payment gateway may need reconfiguring to work because the current webhooks link is reporting as unavailable (durrrrr, no server!)”
So, signs of life, and a glimmer of hope on the horizon…
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Post by claudermilk on Jul 12, 2024 13:35:14 GMT
(As we all know) even "cloud" stuff somewhere lives on a physical server, just someone else's server that you aren't having to maintain. ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) Good news that restoration is in progress. Hopefully everyone was maintaining good backups and is back running quickly.
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Post by Les1964 on Jul 12, 2024 16:11:19 GMT
www.facebook.com/Toofatlardies/posts/pfbid0ueuRbEMRWdDrHTCNCNA7KFD5k63Up9gjbb8ZPdS3aemcECsW4vsmpP8xpqQLMJGKl Good afternoon all. So, it's July the 12th and we are back in contact with our website managing company and, sadly, it isn't good news. Unfortunately all of our old site is irretrievably lost, as is the forum and all of our old emails. This presents me with a difficult decision, not one I was unprepared for, but difficult nonetheless. Unfortunately, I have taken the decision to end our business relationship with our web provider and we are in the process of having a new web site built which will be hosted by a different company. This has not been an easy decision as, for the past ten years, we have had an excellent working relationship with the provider, a chap who is a wargamer and played a big part in bringing us into modernity with the integrated website, blog and forum. We wish Andy well for the future. This is clearly a difficult time for TFL. I am heading for the US on Monday which means that I am not around to assist with the website build. It also means that we are unlikely to be up and running for two or three weeks. As I am sure many of you will be aware, wargaming is not a sector of business that creates millionaires, and this situation is a double whammy in that we will have no income for a month and also have the added expense of having a new website, forum, blog and email system built. Whilst we are not going to disappear (I signed the lease on a new storage unit today - poor timing to say the least) we are certainly seeing the financial reserves that we rely on for investment in the business and new products, disappear just to pay everyday costs. A wise man once told me that whilst being your own boss removes the ceiling of your potential earnings, it also removes the floor! We are certainly discovering that now. In this situation, I can only thank our customers for their patience. As someone once said, "Things can only get better", at the moment we're just not sure when.
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Post by skb777 on Jul 12, 2024 16:45:54 GMT
Good luck - though I'm not surprised they decided to part company, I'd have done the same thing.
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Post by claudermilk on Jul 12, 2024 17:10:19 GMT
Ouch. Hopefully it all goes as smoothly as it can. As a customer, I'm not going anywhere, you guys are my short list of places to look when I want a new army.
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Post by snowcat on Jul 13, 2024 2:02:39 GMT
Wow. No backups? No contingency system? What could possibly go wrong?! Really feeling for the companies affected by this. Horrified.
Do we know what actually happened? Did the host's hardware crash catastrophically resulting in varying degrees of loss to random clients? Or was the host hacked, and certain clients' data targeted specifically? e.g. Too Fat Lardies have lost EVERYTHING, while some others may apparently escape mostly or completely unscathed.
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Post by Les1964 on Jul 13, 2024 8:20:12 GMT
From the Toofatlardies a few hours ago . www.facebook.com/Toofatlardies/posts/pfbid0rSNfCJuThMiZTdNb3cMnJEKegnM75RB76nAhDuT1V8Nd66ko4CsiogH7ry39o3BGlMorning. I didn't expect to be providing an other update so soon, but an issue is coming up where I feel that it is important to manage expectations going forwards. I am starting to get a number of emails and messages asking what will happen about downloadable products previously purchased. There are two answers to that, one probably more welcome than the other. Firstly, we have lost the web site in its entirety. That includes emails. As a result we have no record of who has bought what product. However, we do want to work with our customers to try to restore some access to previous purchases where we can. But, sadly, it isn't that simple. Firstly, we don't know what the new web site will look like in terms of what we can do. But let's work with some assumptions about what we can and cannot do once that is live. However, please bear in mind that we are a small business and if we want to continue to exist, we cannot spend the next year restoring all old purchases to the system it is not possible and, legally, we have no obligation to do it. So, let's deal with the tough stuff first before we try to find a solution. When downloadable products were purchased from the old web site, the purchaser was send a link for an immediate download. At that point the contract was complete. You made the purchase, we provided the access. However, when we set up the site we had the option to limit the period that the download was accessible for. We decided, for your convenience, that we would set that as unlimited. That meant that if you had an account you could return to the account and redownload the files. It is important to stress that the products were not advertised as "perpetually downloadable" and it was not a feature that we marketed as part of our service. It was simply a service we left there for your convenience. Having had to replace one web site nine years ago and losing all sales records then, we have always been aware that "nothing is forever". The reason I mention this is that overnight I have received an rather abusive email from a customer threatening to take legal action against us as he cannot access two files that cost him a sum total of £12. I have made it clear to him that when he downloaded the files the goods were then his and it was his responsibility to decide what he did with those files. We have no legal obligation to replace files that he has purchased and, through his own negligence, not saved. So, that is the legal position. Of course, we are also very proud of our customer service and over the past twenty odd years have always worked with customers who have had problems with downloads to resolve those issues for them. In this situation, what I want to do is set aside a window of time once the new site is up and running (and this will be after it has bedded in for a couple of weeks to ensure that all is working properly) where, if you have proof of purchase, we can restore some files to you. How that works will be dependent on what the new web site can and cannot do. For example, you'll probably need to create an account, as you had on the old site. However, those are details that will become clearer nearer the time. We are going to be doing all we can to help. But please be aware that if people are going to be throwing around insults and threats of legal action, that will not get the best from our natural inclination to provide good customer service. Not the nicest announcement to have to post but sadly it is important to state clearly what our legal position is as well as how we intend to go above and beyond that in order to help.
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Post by Les1964 on Jul 13, 2024 8:46:20 GMT
www.facebook.com/Fighting15s/posts/pfbid0ZsepfSW4q2XDY3p63cJm5KtWSWYcHARraqZz8VuGhV8dCKhg5nxARTrrk1KLkzZ2lSigns of life: the Fighting 15s site is back in maintenance mode. I gave Andy at Tradestands the links to my backups this morning. He is looking at the files now, but he will be swamped with recovery work. I expect to be able to reopen Fighting 15s again shortly, assuming my backup files are good. I've seen a lot of comments on why there are no server backups. When Andy set up my site, he added the Updraft Plus backup plugin to Woocommerce and told me to keep backups as my responsibility. I listened. Tradestands is an extraordinarily good value option for a small business, so keeping my own backup is not a hassle. I've backed up every time before a major software update for Woocommerce or Wordpress, and after a major product update. I occasionally do a complete product export so that I can make lists and as a backup way of recovering or moving the site. None the less some of the site won't be as it was on the day of the crash. I expect to have to check over the site before going live again. Shop emails are not yet working: please continue to message me via Facebook or via the contact links on the Facebook page.
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Post by snowcat on Jul 13, 2024 11:41:20 GMT
Threatening legal action over £12.
Wow. First World problems. Meanwhile, in Ukraine...among other places...!
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