JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
Friends,
You know me to be a straight shooter, so here is the straight stuff with the technical issues HawkeyeNation.com has had today and will have to deal with.
Simple Helix has been our hosting company.
I had made some posts on the site early this morning, as I typically do…in the 5am central time hour, the 12-15 Daily Hawkeye Links, posts to the Big Ten Expansion posts, etc.
During a commercial break during my radio program on KXNO, I clicked to visit the site, and noticed that it was not loading. So I submitted a trouble ticket to Simple Helix, and they said they were not getting any ping, or feedback from the server we are hosted on, and they would send someone down to reset it.
To make a long, and very painful story short, a server that was above mine in the rack was scheduled to be ‘formatted’, which means to be wiped clean and the operating system reinstalled.
Simple Helix reformatted the wrong server, and the sever that hosts all of HawkeyeNation.com’s data and information was accidentally reformatted.
Thus, any content that was produced, any posts that were made, any new registered users that signed up since November 3rd, the date we moved off of a shared server to a dedicated server with Simple Helix, all of that is lost.
It was no fault of HawkeyeNation or any staff member, yet, here we are to pick up the pieces. This is obviously disappointing on many levels, and I feel as though a significant piece of my life’s work has been wiped out.
Of course, the heart of HawkeyeNation.com is not lost, as that is you, the Iowa fans. We will continue to provide opinion and content, and we hope that you help us get things back rolling as they were when we made the switch from Scout to going on our own. That was a painful transition, and this seems even more painful because we were starting from scratch there, and everything was new and adding to the new site. This situation feels like a bit of a violation, to be frank.
I understand that some of you will be upset that you have lost posts to your post counts; regrettably those will not return. I apologize for that, and I wish I could change it. I know that will be a bummer loss for some of you and I wish my loss in all this were only at that level.
We have lost in excess of 200 content items that were published between November 3rd and today, in addition to opinion pieces that were posted directly to the forums, and over 40 days of posting history…that’s hundreds and hundreds of hours of work that have been lost by the HN Staff, and it literally makes me sick to my stomach thinking about that.
At any rate, all we can do now is move forward and keep working, on our end, and put things in place to make sure this never happens again and always plan for human error to rear its ugly head.
I hope that you continue to make HawkeyeNation.com a part of your daily Iowa Hawkeye online experience and I once again apologize for any inconvenience this creates for you.
You helped make the launch of this site something that blew away my expectations and touched me personally. I am asking for you to yet again give HN.com a pick me up, and to just wade onto the boards and get after it the way you were as if this didn't happen.
If you are reading this and you signed up for a registered user account after November 3rd, I hope that you consider signing up again, as you will need to do that.
Best Regards,
Jon Miller
PS: I am sure some of you will have technical related questions or comments or suggestions. Please email those to me if you feel the need to do so. We can't go back in time, things we could have done to avoid the risk of human error are understood and will be in place going forward, etc.
You know me to be a straight shooter, so here is the straight stuff with the technical issues HawkeyeNation.com has had today and will have to deal with.
Simple Helix has been our hosting company.
I had made some posts on the site early this morning, as I typically do…in the 5am central time hour, the 12-15 Daily Hawkeye Links, posts to the Big Ten Expansion posts, etc.
During a commercial break during my radio program on KXNO, I clicked to visit the site, and noticed that it was not loading. So I submitted a trouble ticket to Simple Helix, and they said they were not getting any ping, or feedback from the server we are hosted on, and they would send someone down to reset it.
To make a long, and very painful story short, a server that was above mine in the rack was scheduled to be ‘formatted’, which means to be wiped clean and the operating system reinstalled.
Simple Helix reformatted the wrong server, and the sever that hosts all of HawkeyeNation.com’s data and information was accidentally reformatted.
Thus, any content that was produced, any posts that were made, any new registered users that signed up since November 3rd, the date we moved off of a shared server to a dedicated server with Simple Helix, all of that is lost.
It was no fault of HawkeyeNation or any staff member, yet, here we are to pick up the pieces. This is obviously disappointing on many levels, and I feel as though a significant piece of my life’s work has been wiped out.
Of course, the heart of HawkeyeNation.com is not lost, as that is you, the Iowa fans. We will continue to provide opinion and content, and we hope that you help us get things back rolling as they were when we made the switch from Scout to going on our own. That was a painful transition, and this seems even more painful because we were starting from scratch there, and everything was new and adding to the new site. This situation feels like a bit of a violation, to be frank.
I understand that some of you will be upset that you have lost posts to your post counts; regrettably those will not return. I apologize for that, and I wish I could change it. I know that will be a bummer loss for some of you and I wish my loss in all this were only at that level.
We have lost in excess of 200 content items that were published between November 3rd and today, in addition to opinion pieces that were posted directly to the forums, and over 40 days of posting history…that’s hundreds and hundreds of hours of work that have been lost by the HN Staff, and it literally makes me sick to my stomach thinking about that.
At any rate, all we can do now is move forward and keep working, on our end, and put things in place to make sure this never happens again and always plan for human error to rear its ugly head.
I hope that you continue to make HawkeyeNation.com a part of your daily Iowa Hawkeye online experience and I once again apologize for any inconvenience this creates for you.
You helped make the launch of this site something that blew away my expectations and touched me personally. I am asking for you to yet again give HN.com a pick me up, and to just wade onto the boards and get after it the way you were as if this didn't happen.
If you are reading this and you signed up for a registered user account after November 3rd, I hope that you consider signing up again, as you will need to do that.
Best Regards,
Jon Miller
PS: I am sure some of you will have technical related questions or comments or suggestions. Please email those to me if you feel the need to do so. We can't go back in time, things we could have done to avoid the risk of human error are understood and will be in place going forward, etc.
