TWB, October 4th:

I wonder how much it would cost to setup load balancing or failover through cloudflare, with a few different hosts available if your main ISP ever goes down again.

Kaz Redclaw

ITTT'SSSSS AAAAALLLLIIIVVVEEEE!!! Website is back on when I checked around 8:30PM PST>

Brian Kim

Glad to see your alive Doc was kinda worried when the site biffed and i spent a week trying to figure out what happened. Well wishes and prayer from the lower 48 for a quick resolution to the BS that seems to be heaping up on ya.

We could always... ahem, convince them with something. Maybe a cube of 'dew autta do it?

Ash The Kitsune

Sure, if they have any such backups available to them. A "hosting" company that can't get a basic static html site back on the Internet, nor even a simple redirect or announcement page, in over a week, though? On balance they probably do have some backups somewhere, but I wouldn't treat that as a certainty. Even if they have them, they might not be able to access them right now. I just really hope that Doc has his own backups independent of this shower.

Pete

If I was the ISP, I'd be far more concerned with what will Rodger/Doc do to me than anything else at this moment!!

Bob Savery

As I said, if one offered them a letter of I-won't-sue-you if they provide a backup within 24hrs and at the same time threatened to sue for punitive damages if they refuse, one could probably get them to cough up a backup

drdeath

From what I've heard so far, it might be a domino effect where fixing one problem reveals another that needs to be addressed immediately. But a hosting company / ISP that doesn't plan for quickly fixing outages is -- not that good.

McClaw

Even in Alaska you can go to the local Costco, Walmart Best Buy, ... and buy a couple of working PC, load Linux, and get web sites up in a couple of hours. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE RESPONSE FROM A HOSTING COMPANY! (And I know, I've been working with hosting companies for years and uspporting 1000's of users world wide on hosted servers!)

Studley Destiny

I don't think there's any server-side cleverness in Doc's site (at least the output side, not sure about the automatic updater) so the whole lot could be thrown into an S3 bucket and put online in little more than the raw data upload time. Just hope he has a backup somewhere outside of MoronsTemptingAnarchy to do that with.

Pete

A free-tier AWS server would also be worth considering.

Phil Stracchino

I did. And Tugrik for that matter. Since the scheduled date for the resumption of the service is still "undecided, but probably soon" after a week, I would strongly counsel Doc to take action and bring a backup server on line. DNS registration can be updated over their heads if they cause any trouble (which I doubt) and a little carrot-and-stick routine should get them to cough up a backup -or reveal that the reason its taking so long is that their backups were in as sorry a state as the rest of their operations apparently are

drdeath

AND well even Lex does.

Karmakat

Likely issue is the server died and site hosting is not an offered product anymore so no one on staff knows how to put the pieces back together.

orion hax

would mean that Roger is paralysed and DOC BATMAN?! HECK THE PULL ON THAT GRAPLIN TO GET HIM OFF THE FLOOR!

Karmakat

A better example would be Oracle from the Justice League of America and Batman. (Does this mean Doc is Batbear?)

Welsh Rat

VERY bad even.

Karmakat

Why host a server in Alaska if it takes so long to repair? Anyways, by now, I’d have found a replacement service. Doc DOES have daily offline backups, right? Right?

Doc, I hate to say this, but your "hosting" provider, by the sound of it, couldn't organize a beer piss-up in a brewery. You might really want to consider switching to some outfit that's actually competent. Someone mentioned an offer from Tugrik...?

Phil Stracchino

Not making excuses, but if they have to ship parts for the lower 48, or worse, overseas, that could be a major problem.

JasonAW3

Hey! So does Elon Musk! ... Ok, maybe a bad example.

JasonAW3

The "Weirdness that shows up this time of Year" is turning out to be a crashed server, and the techies that are fixing it were the same brainchildren that worked on the Obama Care Website. Doc's World is truly in danger! What is Roger going to do?

My thoughts as well. Any half competent host would have a redirect page for traffic to assure each customer's site visitors that the issue is known and actions to rectify are in progress. Still, this lack of competence seems to equate with their inability to manage simple backup recoveries. I am honestly in awe of Doc considering that he has not gone complete, over-the-top, batshit bonkers at them yet when you realise that not just TWB but his actual money earning business website is also off the air.

It's more than "a bit poor", it's completely fucking nuts. Even the time my previous employer's Ops guys had a mixup of asset numbers and accidentally asked the host to de-rack, physically disassemble, and shred the hard drives of our one-instance-only, no-redundancy, no-failover, broker server covering all non-US customers, the service was back in full operation in a matter of hours. (The US customers /nearly/ suffered the same fate, but apparently Houston datacenter staff are a little more leisurely than London ones. They caught the tech there just as he was walking out onto the server floor to execute our request to destroy that server too :-) )

Pete

that they haven't even been able to put up a redirect to a page with an explanation seems a bit poor to be fair.

Sim Gray

VERY TRUE, but also most super vilains have THAT MANY SCREENS TOO...so miss jumping to conclusion might ONCE AGAIN lol

Karmakat

for the record, I'd like to mention that super villains rarely man their own security centers. That's what minions are for.

drdeath

Well I live in Germany and I have no clue about US laws in that respect. If you have any SLA, you could wave that under their collective noses. If you haven't got any of that, it's probably time to mention cancellation and the fact that their bumblefuckery is causing damage to your in lost ad revenue.

drdeath

if Niky sees Roger like that she will scream 'SUPER VILAIN!" LOUD ENOUGH that even China will hear her.

Karmakat

That's my guess

Duncan Gibbs

Maybe set the Fridgemonster on them? perhaps that will light a fire under them

Redtail Foxaroo

Imagine if there is no actual threat due to bad writing or artistic license and instead they all just drive eachother crazy with their fear.

Kiono Hiemalis

Is Chase the Firedog?

Welsh Rat

Well, I know it's not going to do any good, and likely they've had plenty of people yelling at them already, but if it's not back up by midday, I *really* want to call them up and vent. And to keep venting 'til I get a goddam good explanation why it's taken nine frigging days.

Doc Nickel

Maybe if we threaten to bite them?

Lord Chaos