And we are back… version 2.0

July 13th, 2008 by lenina | Posted in Site Update |

Hello Arkadians, welcome back! The Arks have missed you.

No new files right now, but we’re gathering what we’ve missed these past few months… so why not give us a hand? Our boys have been busy, we’ll love to share what they’ve done for all to see!

Long story short: we got hacked, moved twice off sinking servers, had to rebuild the site and system from the ground up, but we’re alright now! All that’s left is fix the formatting in the news and add the lyrics, we hope to be done very soon A new Zip download engine is coming and same goes for The List… but now we offer unrestricted downloads to all fans without registration!

We are now running with custom and alternative software that is less prone to be hacked (since nobody knows it, heh), and Wordpress with security patches and backups… the great thing about these is that we can get back up and running within minutes should it be necessary. The downloads are now available to everyone who visits and I have finally been able to figure out a system that will allow to more people to be behind the scenes, since due to lack of knowledge, the previous system relied entirely on me being available, this is The Albion Arks v2.0 so to speak…

We need your help in the following areas:

• Lyrics Managers - someone who knows and loves Lyrics, editing the lyrics will now be as simple as editing Livejournal Posts, so everyone interested is welcome to apply.
• Picture Managers - now it’s just a matter of uploading folders with the right name and give credit using a text file if you can use FTP, have good organization skills and love pictures… we’d love to have you on board!

As well as all the files you have found lying on your harddrive and we don’t have! You will be glad to know that our File Submission Engine finally works… so you can try it out

During the 2.5 server moves, we lost the videos for Killamangiro, Sedative and Pipe Down when Pete trashed the stage Live @ Transmission 18.08.06, any help will be greatly appreciated.

I want to thank every single one of you who showed support in any way during these difficult times, and apologies to anyone and everyone if I didn’t reply. Please feel free to contact us again, we will do our best to respond ASAP.

Our third Anniversary is coming! And we want it to be memorable! Keep your eyes open.

Up the Albion! Up the Arks! Welcome home Arkadians!

PS: In case you were wondering about all the time off, here is the full story, these are just explanations since some of you might be wondering, they’re not an attempt at excuses, and I hope you understand:

At the beginning of April, as you know, we had a lot of trouble getting the monthly fee together, so getting a better option was a main concern of mine, on April 18th, I found an ideal server, read reviews on the internet about this company and everything indicated that this was the best choice. The server was big enough to allocate the Arks, and give space to some projects that I handle as part of my job and for family, friends and partners. It was the only server we’d need and although indeed a bit more expensive than the current one, being able to share it was going to cut the costs dramatically, so I came over to tell everyone and do a slow gradual move throughout the days… however, on April 17th a security hole was found in Coppermine gallery, which we used to run, it said it only worked to hack if public uploads were enabled, which we weren’t, but due to server settings, the worm still got in, and hacked our news engine, our media engine, our extra downloads engine, and the menu for the admin section in the forum. I had no way to let you know what was going on, and in hopes of being able to fix everything, I just went on with the move. However, things got worse afterwards.

With some help, I managed to move the site to the new server and everything seemed to be going well. However, the domain name wouldn’t resolve, and the server kept going down once and again… it took our domain registrar 2 weeks to respond to my support request regarding the domain name problems and by the middle of the third week, the host said that we were probably going to have a harddrive failure soon… I was desperate, had been offline not only with the Arks but with some business emails, my father’s school website and the like… so I talked to Surpass and they accepted me back and created a hosting plan that was fitting for our needs and possibilities. We moved back again… but the move, from the bad new server kept failing and the hosts were inflexible: I would have to pay another month and they would change the harddrive.

Fortunately enough, we managed to save an older backup, the one we used to get there, a few files were lost, but we had backups. I had to ask for help from family and friends to be sure that nothing would be lost in the 2 day timeframe that we had to backup and move 50 GB.

Finally, the site was in a good server by the third week of May, all these weeks were tricky for me with real life commitments besides the server problems, and then, had to fix dozens of backlogged projects for work during June, besides my family obligations. I literally worked every single day from morning ’til night.

The first free day I had,  I got working on fixing the Arks. Tez Mann gave me great motivation and for that I want to thank him for it

Thanks to all of you who kept your hopes up for The Arks, we do hope to live up to expectations once again.