Massive Data Loss Prompts RAF Restore

Call it RAFpocalypse, or call it the Massive RAF Restore, but today May 26, 2011 marks the first time in our history that the forum had to be restored using a five day old backup.

So here is what happened: in the evening of May 26, I begin going through the forum, making incremental changes; one of these changes was an option to prune the forum. I often prune the forum every month or so, or whenever I have the time. By pruning, I mean removing "moved topic notices". But one of the options was to remove "all posts" prior to 7 days that are deemed inactive. This latter option was the one I inadvertently selected versus deleting "moved topic notices" made prior to 7 days.

By doing this pruning, all posts were removed that were not posted in 7 days.

This left RAF with a total of 200,000+ posts and a 200+ topics.

Having noticed what had taken place, and knowing there was no "undo" to this action (deleting posts actually deletes them, forever) I immediately contacted our host (HostGator) in an attempt to get a server copy of the forum's database.

HostGator makes a backup of all files and databases on their servers every Saturday. Unfortunately for us, Saturday last was 5 days ago. They restored the database in 10 minutes.

So in the blink of an eye, RAF lost thousands of posts, hundreds of personal messages, countless profile edits, karma updates; everything made since May 21, 2011. Even members who registered after May 21, 2011 will have to do so again.

This massive time travel will make RPGs awkward, conversations in Personal Messages weird, and certainly will make history recording spotty. It's a crippling blow, but I hope we can move past it.

Again, I would like to apologize to EVERYONE who is affected by this.

Regards,

Richard