We're back.

IUG

Everytime that MacEmu/Emuscene/MacScene goes down, take a drink...

Alright, so something cracked in the SQL server on the old host. First it was the posts table (you know, the table that would store every written word on this site), then a few hours later the users table cracked. We could recover that one, but the posts table didn't come back.

I filed a ticket with our old host, and marked it as urgent. It took them about 24 hours to respond the first time, and I don't think I ever heard back from them again.

So rather than keeping the site down and doing nothing, I contacted Ryan. He's been wanting to do a new project for a while, and I was hitting him up with ideas unrelated to this site. However, this was a chance for him to shine.

Let me tell you how great he is. He's newly married (which is why he wasn't around a lot), and he still had time to crank out this new design and code in about 3 days. He just troubleshot some of the login problems, and kept all the accounts from the old database in working order. He's a champ and I'm glad he could help us pull the fat out of the fire.

Let me just note that if you're having troubles logging in, to use the link on the front page to reset your password. It's above the news post in bold font. If you have a problem, I use AIM (The IUG 13) and I have a gmail account (the.iug.13) that you can contact me on. I am busy, but I will fix stuff as soon as feasibly possible for me to do so.

I apologize that the site went down yet again, but now that we're transfering over to his server with his own backups that we'll control, we shouldn't run into something this significant again.

At least not until it's been a year, of course.

Niemann

Once I feel this site is stable and fully-operational I'm going to start investigating the best pieces of the old site to reintegrate. I anticipate the old forum posts will be priority, although bringing the wiki back should be relatively easy (I don't think any of that database was corrupted). I'm noticing a lot of small things that need to be fixed around the site, and hope to hammer these out over the next couple days.

Squirrel

Any chance at getting a backup from the old host?

I wouldn't mind weeding through it helping to get old stuff back online. Let me know if I can help in any way (who knows what I'm good for though).

erise

Squirrel wrote:

Any chance at getting a backup from the old host?

I wouldn't mind weeding through it helping to get old stuff back online. Let me know if I can help in any way (who knows what I'm good for though).

It would be nice if some of the forum topics could be salvaged. There has been a lot of good info on the forums, but they have gotten erased multiple times. :(

Niemann

We are working on it, but it's in the hands of our former hosts. If we can salvage the old posts, I plan on creating a 'Historical' forum for people to browse.

Lord Crosis

Glad to see that the site is back. I didn't realize how many times a day I check this site until every time I checked it I was greeted with a message telling me the site was down. :)

-=(Lord Crosis)=-

ReddestDream

Awesome! B)

I'm so glad the site's back up!

I've been a sad panda since it went down . . . :( . . . busy too . . . Finals . . . :blink:

And, hello, higher-resolution avatar! How are you doing today? ;)

Quick question, is there any way to save the old wiki?

Drake5016

this is pretty cool but forums are definitely a tad awkward.

Niemann

The forums are probably the place that needs the most work; if you have any suggestions (or links to sites that have well-designed forums) I'd love to take a crack at getting these ones working much better.

jack59splat59

You should put up one of those donate things like Wikipedia has, but smaller and less annoying. I thought it would be helpful, since you said you paid for some stuff. I think you'd get enough money to cover some stuff.

HeroOfTime

Woo-hoo! Glad the MacScene is back on the ol' block again. I really wasn't sure what was going on for a little bit, but I'm glad to see it back in swing. Agreed as an earlier post said--the forums are a little funky. But, hey maybe it's just me and I need to just get used to them.

As far as any suggestions go, I haven't really fully looked around the new site yet but one thing I noticed missing was the "front page news" section. Just a thought if anybody else didn't think about it. But other than that, many thanks those at work at getting her up on her feet again. Looking forward to not just a new site/forum, but a better one! :laugh:

yoshinatsu

I'm still wondering how this social networking this is gonna work for a community like MacScene.
So far, I like old one better. Maybe the new one will grow on me, but currently, the site doesn't even have the emulator directory it used to have.
There's not even a place for me to see the emulators, and I can't even see the updates for the emulators, like the old homepage.

I know, it's really early for all that, but I hope all those features are slowly and steadily solved and implemented.

mossy_11

Yay! :cheer: Good work Niemann

I think the "member map" should definitely be expanded to worldwide - I'm pretty sure we have a large international contingent.

How will the new emulation section work?

The new look is very clean and new features sound interesting, but I fear this could further damage our small community - for now I'll stay optimistic.

Hopefully this will be the last forced reboot. I can't believe it's been less than a year since the last one. Here's to a brighter future for the site, free from data corruption and hosting problems.

edgar_flesk

Yes, the site is a tad US-centric ;-)

When you are done with the really important stuff, please expand the "member map" and fix "DST Offset" to include timezones outside the US.

WatchSmart

The new site looks really nice. I'm sure that some of the old content can be shoe-horned into this more modern "social networking" sort of design.

Glad to see you back.

M.I.K.e

Good to see this site back up! I'm sure you guys put in a lot of overtime to make this possible.
Special kudos to Ryan for helping out when he was most needed.

BTW, at the end of a posting I see a button named "Quick Replay". I somewhat suspect there is an "a" too much in it ;-)
But definitely nice work for the time you had.

A new start is always an opportunity to make things better. Let's hope that these unfortunate events can be turned into something good.

blueman56

I think the new look will grow, i do quite like it. The only thing that is missing is the emulator update section, i hope thats coming back?

Niemann

mossy_11 wrote:

I think the "member map" should definitely be expanded to worldwide - I'm pretty sure we have a large international contingent.

Jani Gröndahl wrote:

When you are done with the really important stuff, please expand the "member map" and fix "DST Offset" to include timezones outside the US.

The reason everything is built for U.S.-centric sites is that all of the sites I've done have been based in the U.S. and cater to predominantly Americans. I'll make the Member Map international (or toggleable) as soon as I have a chance and expand the timeshift to include everyone.

jack59splat59 wrote:

You should put up one of those donate things like Wikipedia has, but smaller and less annoying. I thought it would be helpful, since you said you paid for some stuff. I think you'd get enough money to cover some stuff.

At the moment I don't have an interest in monetizing the site or accepting donations (I'm just happy to see it back up; it was surprisingly devastating to see MacScene down despite having not participated in so long). Jon, let me know if you want to be reimbursed for your many years of hosting costs. The only situation in which I would be interested is if we can use the money to produce professional and significant how-tos, editorials, news, reviews, previews, interviews, etc.

mossy_11 wrote:

How will the new emulation section work?

This is one of the remaining hurdles for the site. I think I'm most tempted to write an article every week or so showcasing the current status of different systems. Starting with some of the basics (like the NES, SNES, Genesis, Ataris, etc.) and then progressing through the more modern ones (PSX, N64, PS2, etc.) and round up at the end with some of the cutting edge stuff. Then we can collect the articles into a directory where people can get not only links to the emulators they want, but also how-tos specific to each system. It can be searchable and easily indexed. Let me know if you have any suggestions or if you're interested in helping.

mossy_11 wrote:

Hopefully this will be the last forced reboot. I can't believe it's been less than a year since the last one. Here's to a brighter future for the site, free from data corruption and hosting problems.

ReddestDream wrote:

I've been a sad panda since it went down

I'm sorry. This is the first time in Emuscene / MacScene (possibly MacEmu as well) history that we now control all aspects of the site. We lost the Emuscene.com domain a couple years ago relying on someone else for the control, and we've been using a shared hosting solution for hosting (which was the source of our latest downtime). Now I control the domain as well as the servers the site is hosted on. I take ferocious backups of the data and assure that (excepting the prophecies of 2012) the site will not need a forced reboot for many many years.

I am still looking for some news posters. I know iBatman was dominating prior to the downtime, but haven't seen him on. Anyone interested in posting how-tos, editorials, news, reviews, previews, interviews, etc. let me know.

IUG

I think the forums lack a bit of usability right now. They don't seem to track new/old posts, just if a topic has something new in it. Really, we need a way to jump to the newest post from the topic listings.

Niemann

I just noticed that too...annoying. The weird thing is it looks like there's code to do it; it's just not happening. Another bug on the list.