April 4, 2012: Guestbook down
Moderator: Spectrum Strike Force
Actually, Lycos took down ALL of the HTML Gear features they held on their space. That included my guestbook, and, I suspect, many other guestbooks as well.
For those of you who don't know this fact, Lycos was owned Tripod, Angelfire, and the now defunct HTML Gear. Spectrum HQ was once hosted at Tripod, when it started out as a free website (a little more than 10 years ago) and in these few following years, at it grows into a bigger site. I had bought a paid account from them, but as time went buy, their services declined, to the point that I moved everything to a new host.
Everything, that is, but the Guestbook, which was working fine where it was. I saw no reason to move it.
Although the Tripod website claims they warned their customers around February, I can say, with no risk of making any mistake, that I wasn't warned at all, as I would more than certainly have taken steps to save the messages people took such great care to leave on my guestbook.
Some of these messages are absolutely irreplaceable. I remember, in the first couple of years, when I received there a very surprising message from Ed Bishop himself, who was enquiring if we were somehow acquainted, and who congratulated me on my site. I was incredulous at first, but a few checks confirmed to me that the email address the message was coming from was indeed Ed Bishop's. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. Not that it went further than that, as he never made contact after that, but it was nice of him to have taken the time to leave that message.
Now it's gone. Lost forever.
You can be sure I wrote Tripod to tell them of my dissatisfaction of what they had done. Not that I think it would change anything at all - after all, my Guestbook was on a FREE account, and I'm probably just one of many other customers who lost their guestbooks that way!
But at least it did me some good.
Now, what should I do? Should I start a new Guestbook? Or should I turn my attention to something else?
Your comments are appreciated.
Chris
Webmaster and administrator of http://www.spectrum-headquarters.com
"This is an operational base, not a rest centre!"
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chrisbishop
- Colonel
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Do you start a new guest book? I'd say no. There are Guest Threads on the forum. Perhaps start one called "Guestbook" although I think there are plenty of place where people can just say "Hi!" in passing.
Somebody else's beta reader
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hazel
- Cloudbase Captain
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It is worrying that so much information on websites can be at the mercy of the hosts if they decide to pull the plug.
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Carrie
- Cloudbase Captain
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- Location: Wet Wales
A techie over at Tripod contacted me... and sent me the CSV backup of the guestbook! With that I should be able to do something.
What exactly and how, I still don't know. But at least, I can use it as archive for ALL those wonderful messages people took the time to write the website!
I'll let you know how things go.
Yippee!!!!
Thank you, Tripod. You're not so bad after all!
Webmaster and administrator of http://www.spectrum-headquarters.com
"This is an operational base, not a rest centre!"
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chrisbishop
- Colonel
- Posts: 1773
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 1:00 am
- Location: Canada
Somebody else's beta reader
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hazel
- Cloudbase Captain
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- Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2004 10:15 pm
- Location: London, UK
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Scarlet Lady
I'm presently checking how exactly I should be using the data. There is a guestbook available with Ipower - my present host. It's a third-party guestbook, easy to install, and supposedly easy to use, which doesn't call for the use of a databank... So, if there's no databank, it might make it difficult to keep a copy for safekeeping? I have to explore the idea.
On the other hand, there is more security on this new guestbook, so I might be able to control it more easily. I shall also see if there is any way to modify the data within. If I enter each of the message I have by hand (that could take some time...) I'd like to know if I can change the date I'll be filing the information to the original date the messages were received. Failing that, I might be going towards an Archives kind of solution. It might be easier, anyway.
I'm still working on another project (a rating system for the fanfiction stored on the website) so this will have to wait a little bit.
Keep an eye on this space for more information soon!
Webmaster and administrator of http://www.spectrum-headquarters.com
"This is an operational base, not a rest centre!"
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chrisbishop
- Colonel
- Posts: 1773
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 1:00 am
- Location: Canada
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Scarlet Lady
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