dinotoyblog.com and animaltoyforum.com sites down

[gwangi]

I feel foolish for not having backed things up manually more often myself. I know better. Don't worry, I'm confident the blog database auto-backups exist, at least up until 1 Sept 2025. If that's the worst case scenario, I'll take it.

This ordeal is made so much more stressful by my host not communicating properly.

Yes, thankfully for the more recent reviews I still have the reviews themselves and the pictures. I'll have to re-edit, re-label, and re-size the pictures of about 8 or so reviews but if that's the worst that comes from this, I'll take it.

[Dilopho]

Losing a few weeks of conversation will certainly be annoying, but I think making up for a month of lost time is far easier to stomach than losing everything. So I'm glad you have backups from the start of the month at all ^^

[bmathison1972]

I luckily have my Blog reviews (both ATB and one for DTB) since 9/1. And I have all the images of every Blogpost I have ever done (I only delete the text files periodically).

And for the Museum of Natural History, everything is on STS so I can easily copy content over. For things where I have multiple figures of the same species (primarily just arthropods), I have templates, but for all unique figures most of the text files have been deleted. Luckily they are all on STS.

And for all the images I post on the 'New For...' threads, I have all those images saved, too!

[bmathison1972]

...and I have to add while I probably won't be on this forum much once things are back to normal (I like monsters and sci-fi, just not as figures) I am happy to have a place to chat with my forum friends again 

[MonsterToyForum]

...and I have to add while I probably won't be on this forum much once things are back to normal (I like monsters and sci-fi, just not as figures) I am happy to have a place to chat with my forum friends again 

Yes, I really missed our friendly sanctuaries. I only realised how important they were for my wellbeing when they were gone.

[Over9K]

Not gonna lie... I posted like mere seconds before the DTF went down, and totally had a Steve Earkel Moment when I refreshed to make an edit, and it was gone!

"Did I do thaaaaaat??"

Hope y'alls are well.

[MonsterToyForum]

I've disable Maintenance Mode on the DinoToyForum, but the restore is still not complete, so I have disabled posting. Otherwise, it could get messy. But it means the forum, or what's been uploaded so far, is at least browsable. I'd request members on the DTF not to send PMs or update your profiles or do anything else that sends data to the database. I've added this message to the top of the forum:

"Our web hosts accidentally deleted all our site files, so the Dino Toy Forum and Blog are being restored from backups. While we're working to get the Dino Toy Forum fully functional again, you can browse the parts of the forum that have been restored, but I have disabled posting. You can also visit the newly activated Monster Toy Forum for updates: https://monstertoyblog.com/forum"

[MonsterToyForum]

Not gonna lie... I posted like mere seconds before the DTF went down, and totally had a Steve Earkel Moment when I refreshed to make an edit, and it was gone!

"Did I do thaaaaaat??"

Hope y'alls are well.

Hehe, it was YOU!?

I admit, I was quite calm when I first saw the sites were down, how bad could it be... but when I logged into the server to find all the files missing, my heart skipped a beat. It felt like I was in a fast car driving over a humped bridge.

[Over9K]

Not gonna lie... I posted like mere seconds before the DTF went down, and totally had a Steve Earkel Moment when I refreshed to make an edit, and it was gone!

"Did I do thaaaaaat??"

Hope y'alls are well.

Hehe, it was YOU!?

I admit, I was quite calm when I first saw the sites were down, how bad could it be... but when I logged into the server to find all the files missing, my heart skipped a beat. It felt like I was in a fast car driving over a humped bridge.

Oh, I bet your whole day is a big bag of cats right now. I am not envious at all.

Having the forum down was probably good for me... I got a bunch of Honey Dew list things done and the wife is super pleased.

[bmathison1972]

I've disable Maintenance Mode on the DinoToyForum, but the restore is still not complete, so I have disabled posting. Otherwise, it could get messy. But it means the forum, or what's been uploaded so far, is at least browsable. I'd request members on the DTF not to send PMs or update your profiles or do anything else that sends data to the database. I've added this message to the top of the forum:

"Our web hosts accidentally deleted all our site files, so the Dino Toy Forum and Blog are being restored from backups. While we're working to get the Dino Toy Forum fully functional again, you can browse the parts of the forum that have been restored, but I have disabled posting. You can also visit the newly activated Monster Toy Forum for updates: https://monstertoyblog.com/forum"

How far behind is the ATF? 

I see the DTF is not updated past 9/1 and images for my collection thread are not showing (but my images are hosted in the ATB, could explain why?).

I spent this morning building text files for all the daily 'Museum' posts starting 9/1. Assuming everything after that won't be recovered, I will do one post per week once we are back up.

I should probably build a text thread for all the Schleich 2026 figures, which I spent two hours working on the night before everything went down. D'oh! Luckily what took so long was the coping and editing in Photoshop. Now that I have JPEGs of everything, restoring won't take long.

[ceratopsian]

I'm slightly surprised how much I've missed the DTF and the community feeling there. Such a relief it's not completely erased! 

[MonsterToyForum]

I've disable Maintenance Mode on the DinoToyForum, but the restore is still not complete, so I have disabled posting. Otherwise, it could get messy. But it means the forum, or what's been uploaded so far, is at least browsable. I'd request members on the DTF not to send PMs or update your profiles or do anything else that sends data to the database. I've added this message to the top of the forum:

"Our web hosts accidentally deleted all our site files, so the Dino Toy Forum and Blog are being restored from backups. While we're working to get the Dino Toy Forum fully functional again, you can browse the parts of the forum that have been restored, but I have disabled posting. You can also visit the newly activated Monster Toy Forum for updates: https://monstertoyblog.com/forum"

How far behind is the ATF? 

I see the DTF is not updated past 9/1 and images for my collection thread are not showing (but my images are hosted in the ATB, could explain why?).

I spent this morning building text files for all the daily 'Museum' posts starting 9/1. Assuming everything after that won't be recovered, I will do one post per week once we are back up.

I should probably build a text thread for all the Schleich 2026 figures, which I spent two hours working on the night before everything went down. D'oh! Luckily what took so long was the coping and editing in Photoshop. Now that I have JPEGs of everything, restoring won't take long.

In principle, it's at the same stage as the DTF - the files are restored and the database is restored up to 1 September. But for some reason the files aren't connecting to the database, hence the white screen. I'm trying to work out what's wrong.

[MonsterToyForum]

The ATF is throwing up errors leading to the white screen of death. These are PHP errors, so I'm not convinced the restored php files are exactly the same as they were before, maybe some things are missing. I'll ask my host about that.

If the ATF database is in working order, and it does seem to be intact, then I could install vanilla forum files (like I did here for the MTF). It would mean having to manually add all the mods and logos and other customisations from scratch, which would be fiddly and time consuming...but it is possible. But, I don't want to go down that route if it isn't necessary. And since the DTF *is* working without having to do that, it shouldn't be necessary.

Edit: In fact, the files are incomplete, because the /blog and /faunafigures directories are missing. So, I wonder if they've restored an old version of the files from before the ATB and Fauna Figures were added, and if so, that could be why the forum files are incompatible.

[MonsterToyForum]

I've dug into the restored ATF files and I'm convinced they are very old, like years old. This would explain why the site isn't working despite the files and database being restored. So I have asked my host to check they uploaded the correct, most up to date files.

In semi-good news, I found a backup of the ATF files I made manually in November 2024 and stored locally on my computer. That is probably recent enough to be compatible with the database, so that's an option for the forum. Then I could bring that up to date. Unfortunately, it is only the ATF files, not the ATB files, so I'm still relying on my host for those.

Hoping for more progress tomorrow.

[bmathison1972]

I'll be honest. I am thoroughly confused at this point on the status of the ATF/ATB.

Does this mean that likely we won't have anything post November 2024? Or is that just a starting point and the host can bring everything else up to date?