The ultimate update

[Justin]

I will try and be as brief as possible here so this doesn't drag on, this is where we are at now.
A month ago our hosts www.hosting-unlimited.net (http://www.hosting-unlimited.net) sent me an invoice for one of my domains, it needed the hosting renewing. (volvod5.co.uk) I emailed them back and said that I no longer wanted the domain and could they remove it from my account. On Monday morning they did, however they somehow misunderstood my simple request to remove a single domain and deleted my whole account. (5 domains and 2 packages)
I found this out on Monday at 8am.

I contacted them immediately and requested action to be taken to recover that data and or for them to use one of thier server backups to reinstate the data, I finally heard back from a human on Wednesday am. I was told they were mining the drive for data and this would take another 2 hours or so, he would call me back then, Yesterday after 3 emails and several calls I got an email to say that they had not retrieved any data, they had no backups for some reason my account and several others hadn't been backed up. The site you see before you now is from the last backup taken on the server, a few days before Kevin (my best mate and previous owner of hosting-unlimited) had sold the company on. This is dated November 2006. The MD did say that he would be crediting my account with a years free hosting though ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!

So, as it stands now this is all that remains of the vpcuk, 2000+ users lost, thousands of hours of data and posts. Many of the current members hadn't even registered which is why some cannot log in at this time. Myself and the admin team are gutted at this, I have put thousands of hours into vpcuk to get it to where it was last week as have many of you, before these idiots forgot how to read an email in India. (Thats where H-U's support is based, the servers are in the USA)

This leaves me alone really with a dilema, moreover, several options:
1) Ditch it, 6 years has been fun but enough is enough.
2) Rebuild the site bigger and better than it was before.
3) Sell whats left now as a growing concern to someone who has the time and knowledge to develop it further.

While to some people within the Volvo community this will be great news, I'm sure to some its not, because of this I would like your input please. Either way, good or bad let me know what you think we should do. All emails to thoughts@vpcuk.org please, I may not reply to them all but will post any updates on the header page here for all to see. I will also post this in the site announcments section for those that are logged in. You will not however be able to reply to that thread hence the email above :)

I would also like any input of a legal/liability kind re this as I am not 100% sure where I stand.

Floors yours

Justin

[Justin]

As many of you read on this message previously, with the issues that had affected us we were unsure of which ddirection to go in. This has been decided by sheer mass. In an hour after posting the message I had over 100 emails of support from members requesting we rebuild the site and get it back online, (that was 8am Saturday) Since then I have recieved over 300 messages of the same ilk, so as you have asked for it......its coming back!

Kevin and I have been busy over the last 48 hours doing major upgrades to the 2006 backup that your reading from. This has now been fully updated and despite the loss of 18 months data I'm sure we can rise and grow as before, only bigger and better.

The site is almost finished, just some final add ons to be installed, however it will be as before a working progress, in that things will be added as time goes on. The weekend hack message you saw was due to the fact that the backup and all of its security features were 18 months old, this made it very easy for the mindless to play. All trace has now been removed, the site security is now 100% up to date and extra security has been added.

I would like to thank all of you that emailed, your support was well recieved and greatly appreciated, some of the more colourful ones may even get posted anonymously as they are well worth the read.
Lastly, the site will be back up within the next 48 hours. It may be this evening (Tuesday 1st July) but until we get started on the installs i cant be 100%.

Some of you may need to update your old bookmarks to http://www.vpcuk.org/forums/index.php as this will be the direct url to the forums.

Keep checking back see you all soon :)

Justin

[mexybhouy]

It's great to be back! Missed it big time!!!!!!! had to re apply for want of a better word. must be a pisser for those who dedicated so much of their precious time to the site go up in flames, but boy how bad did we miss it!!!!!!!! i have personally lost all my posts for what it was worth but they meant so much to me and anyway,better to have taken part than taken apart! Anyway, back bigger & stronger and big thanks to the moderators & the hangers ons!!!! any ideas how i can retrieve my old boring but personal data?????

[splatt]

J. Glad you got it sorted out.

Had trouble remembering my password from 06 though!!