Dealing With ARF Being Temporarily Down

If I may add a comment or two . . .

Indeed Alan uses his forum possibly as much as any of us. Although the site is presently down, I can be safe in assuming he's doing his best. If there is somebody else out there who has knowledge/experience that can be used to expedite the process, I can be safe in assuming he's already consulted him/them. I have no complaints about downtime other then my own selfish desires, and when it returns I hope everyone out there will appreciate the service more than ever.

Also, don't overlook THIS forum! Thanks to the moderator here, and to a number of dedicated people who continue to do their best to forward the hobby and historic preservation, the interruption certainly appears minimal. We've got a lot to be thankful for!

I can't understand what is taking so long. I'm a member of another forum that moved to a new server last year, and that forum was down about one day. I see no reason it takes over a week to move a website, no matter what it is.

I'll echo Don's comments...and add a couple of my own for the more impatient folks out there. First, ARF is free, if we were paying for the service, thats a different story. Also, Alan probably has other responsibilities such as family, a job, etc...he probably does not devote himself 24/7 to the board, thus, things may take some time. I'd much rather have the conversion done correctly, than have it done hastily, with more issues down the road.

Quite possibly Alan has run into a problem and since the site is down, he has no method of informing us. We must be patient in his endeavours. Sure, we all miss it but how good will it be to have it back up and better?

New note posted by Alan Vorhees
Hope you don't mind my posting Alan:

Alan Voorhees
Site Admin


Joined: 31 Dec 1969
Posts: 3906
Location: Oakland, CA
Posted: Feb Mon 09, 2009 11:29 am

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Well, we're back ... but will be going away again this weekend.

Once the site was shut down, backing up the database in order to transfer everything to the new server wouldn't work. Turned out to be an issue with the server itself. After trying three different methods to export the data, it was determined that was corrupted somewhere on the server.

Some things were reinstalled, but the issue persists.This weekend the forums will be shut down again and a major reinstallation and configuration of software will be done in order to extract the data. I've got a guy who works for Dreamworks animation (before that Industrial Light and Magic) who is going to take care of whatever is needed, so it should take a couple days at most, but then, like this time, one never knows.