About that downtime over New Year :(

Updates on forum status, bug fixes, etc. If there's something new in here its probably a good idea that you read it.
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Quiff Boy
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As some of you may have noticed Heartland was unavailable from new years' eve until earlier today (2nd Jan).

Basically, the hosting company (Strato) claim that the very first invoice I paid when I moved to them back in August 2009 didn't actually go through, and that they have only just realised that I had an outstanding payment of £58 for the first month's hosting fees. For some reason, despite only just spotting it, they concluded that my account was therefore in arrears and suspended it and blocked the server, making all the sites I host unavailable and my HL email inaccessible :urff: :evil:

They totally disregarded the 2+ years of regular monthly direct debits I've been making ever since :roll:

To make things worse, they blocked the account sometime after 3pm on NYE, sending me an automated SMS message to inform me of this. They advised that to resolve the issue I should ring their customer support, which unfortunately was closed as of 11am that morning and would not be open until today (2nd Jan).

Thus I rang Strato this morning and they have now unblocked the server, and assured me that service will be unaffected while we resolve this so-called outstanding invoice.

In the meantime, if service does go down, please check the HL Twitter feed for service updates & announcements - that will always be the best place to look.

It's free and you don't need a Twitter account or to be logged in to view it:

http://twitter.com/heartlandforum

I repeat: Twitter will always be the best place to check if HL ever goes down :)

Thanks fort your patience, sorry for the unfortunate interruption, and a happy new year (finally!)

Cheers
QB :von:

Heartland on Twitter: http://twitter.com/heartlandforum
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Izzy HaveMercy
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My previous hosting for FGG did the very same. He claimed there was a problem with his computer database and we had a free year hosting because the program did not send an automatic invoice to customers, after an update.

Simple as that, he billed us double the next year, withou saying anything. We had to call him for that and the he told us the reason for the double bill. I told him that this was his fault and we were not responsible for that, on which he said "well you HAD hosting for that year, so you still have to pay for it". We threatened to leave and he jovially said "no problem, but I won't free your domain name until all open bills are paid".

We had to pay the double bill first before he freed our domain name, the we got the feck out there.

UNIX SOLUTIONS. Never ever take them in.

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Debaser
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Quiff Boy wrote:As some of you may have noticed Heartland was unavailable from new years' eve until earlier today (2nd Jan).
Here's me thinking it was just the age-old - 'hide in the toilet to avoid being hugged and kissed at midnight' scenario :lol: :lol:
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Debaser wrote:
Quiff Boy wrote:As some of you may have noticed Heartland was unavailable from new years' eve until earlier today (2nd Jan).
Here's me thinking it was just the age-old - 'hide in the toilet to avoid being hugged and kissed at midnight' scenario :lol: :lol:
:lol: ... well, I thought the "automated spamming" had eventually flooded the whole land ... :lol: ...
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MadameButterfly
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i do not do twitter and it was a bit of a bummer that we were lost for a few days...

but happy new year HL! may 2012 bring good things to everyone & loads of love & peace.
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MadameButterfly wrote:i do not do twitter and it was a bit of a bummer that we were lost for a few days...

but happy new year HL! may 2012 bring good things to everyone & loads of love & peace.
What the "bat" said (but I do do twitter)

Happy, jolly and just plain brilliant 2012 everyone.

Give 'em hell Quiffy.

:notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:
Cheers.
Steve
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Ozpat
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MadameButterfly wrote:i do not do twitter and it was a bit of a bummer that we were lost for a few days...
2nded! :)
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Quiff Boy
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Tbh, I'd forget the fact that "it's a twitter page and you don't do twitter" just bookmark it anyway because if HL does ever go down, that's the only I'm going to be able to let you all know what's happening ;)

http://twitter.com/heartlandforum

You don't need to sign up to view the HL tweets, so if the forum does ever go down, forget your prejudice or mistrust over social networking and JUST LOOK AT IT :lol:

If HL does ever go down for an extended period, chances are that the problem is with the whole webserver, and thus it will probably have taken out all my other sites as well (:urff:) so I need to use a separate, independent, 3rd party website to let everyone know what's going on. Twitter is a perfet too for that :)

You don't have to tweet back. You don't have to follow @heartlandforum. You just need to see what is being written on that page.

All I can do is tell you where I'll be posting service & status updates. If you choose not to look, then I can't help it if you don't know what's happening :?

It's your choice.

http://twitter.com/heartlandforum
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MadameButterfly
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oh cheers boss! thanks for the heads up for future reference. will definately just look at it! :lol:

if you say that's where updates will be if HL is down, we all believe you.

of course it's our choice, just saying that some of us don't twitter, but now know where to look, now we all know. :wink:

thanks for that.
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stufarq
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Quiff Boy wrote:Tbh, I'd forget the fact that "it's a twitter page and you don't do twitter" just bookmark it anyway because if HL does ever go down, that's the only I'm going to be able to let you all know what's happening ;)

http://twitter.com/heartlandforum

You don't need to sign up to view the HL tweets, so if the forum does ever go down, forget your prejudice or mistrust over social networking and JUST LOOK AT IT :lol:

If HL does ever go down for an extended period, chances are that the problem is with the whole webserver, and thus it will probably have taken out all my other sites as well (:urff:) so I need to use a separate, independent, 3rd party website to let everyone know what's going on. Twitter is a perfet too for that :)

You don't have to tweet back. You don't have to follow @heartlandforum. You just need to see what is being written on that page.

All I can do is tell you where I'll be posting service & status updates. If you choose not to look, then I can't help it if you don't know what's happening :?

It's your choice.

http://twitter.com/heartlandforum
All the other stuff's fair enough but perhaps you could replace "prejudice" and "mistrust" with "dislike". It's a valid choice made by people who can think for themselves.
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Izzy HaveMercy
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stufarq wrote:All the other stuff's fair enough but perhaps you could replace "prejudice" and "mistrust" with "dislike". It's a valid choice made by people who can think for themselves.
Of course, you have the choice to sit down and start singing about gold, until the site is up and running again.

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Quiff Boy
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just trying to make sure you all understand where announcements will be made, and that everyone realises there's nothing to stop you just looking at the goddamned thing, regardless of your own personal preference regarding whether to 'tweet' or not...

as iz says, if you'd rather not know, you can always "sit down and start singing about gold until the site is up and running again", if that's your preferred approach 8)
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There's no helping some people.... :roll:
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Quiff Boy
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Hom_Corleone wrote:There's no helping some people.... :roll:
doomed to sit in eternal ignorance, innit :lol: ;)
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Quiff Boy wrote:
Hom_Corleone wrote:There's no helping some people.... :roll:
doomed to sit in eternal ignorance, innit :lol: ;)
Singing about gold it seems

:lol:
Cheers.
Steve
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Being645
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Pista wrote:
Quiff Boy wrote:
Hom_Corleone wrote:There's no helping some people.... :roll:
doomed to sit in eternal ignorance, innit :lol: ;)
Singing about gold it seems

:lol:
Oh well, the golden days ... always good for a short dream to be abandoned the other day ... :lol: ...
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I'm not a twitter fan, too but there's really no problem if you can check the twitter page (you can easily bookmark or even find via google) without the need to register there. Besides it's a very simple and reliable thing to to for that purpose since you can't really post status/updates messages within your own webspace if it's down so you have no choice but use some external service :lol:

I think it's really poor what strato did, especially if you pay quite some amount of cash every month for your (probably managed and dedicated) server that's running "average stable" with the need to reboot it manually every once and a while to keep your service up and running. It's most likely that you can get the same hosting and support quality for less money from some discount hoster.
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stufarq
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Quiff Boy wrote:just trying to make sure you all understand where announcements will be made, and that everyone realises there's nothing to stop you just looking at the goddamned thing, regardless of your own personal preference regarding whether to 'tweet' or not...

as iz says, if you'd rather not know, you can always "sit down and start singing about gold until the site is up and running again", if that's your preferred approach 8)
That's absolutely fine and I have bookmarked the page. My issue was with your assumption that people who don't twitter etc do so out of prejudice and mistrust rather than because they just aren't interested. And iz's comment suggests that we're also being branded as luddites. All of which is rather offensive and elitist. And I know you're better than that.
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Quiff Boy
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:lol:

sorry if i sounded a little prickly :oops:

you're all correct of course :lol: :D
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Izzy HaveMercy
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stufarq wrote:And iz's comment suggests that we're also being branded as luddites. All of which is rather offensive and elitist. And I know you're better than that.
I was merely suggesting we're all Tolkien fans here. :lol:

And seriously, calling things 'offensive' and 'elitist' when one merelysuggests to wait it out instead of going to a site you don't really know and trust says more about someone's offense threshold than anything else... :|

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I'm a neo luddite and proud of it too :lol:
But that didn't stop me checking the twitter page on new years day to see what was wrong ;D
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radiojamaica wrote:I'm a neo luddite and proud of it too :lol:
But that didn't stop me checking the twitter page on new years day to see what was wrong ;D
:lol: :lol: :D
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MadameButterfly
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markfiend wrote:Everyone take a chill pill!
*takes the pill* *hides behind mark*

*whispers... sorry if this is my fault.
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I don't think it's anyone's fault, but tempers seem to be getting frayed on HL a lot recently. :|
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