The date is misleading, what happened mostly took place yesterday, at least in my part of the world.
Since Grizzly asked what had happened, I will go through this once more. The regulars have already heard what happened, or at least hints of what might have, so I think the best way will be to just lay it all out.
Now one thing I want you to know is that I think I've been harsh enough to Inty for all of us. What still hasn't been said, if anything, is likely to come from me. I don't need anyone hating on Inty in any topic. Any vents about the loss of old topics we'll keep in this topic if anyone still needs to. It's such a downer, which is why I don't need to hear about it everywhere, even if I'm the one doing the most complaining around here. Giving Inty the benefit of the doubt, I think I could be to blame as well, in a certain way. And I apologize for calling him a "saboteur" because he has given us the current forums, even if he has broken the last two that he has given us.
Anyway, Inty, who has been the sole coder of the last two iterations of the forums, has the Easter week off. So he thought he'd fix up the boards. I wanted him to fix the EXP (which seemed to be working again, but increased every day, instead of every day with posts - a key difference) and the annoying red block beneath everyone's user info on large posts. He confessed to me that punBB (or whatever those forums were based on) confused him and that he was sure he could transfer everything (users and posts) to the GameFAQS++ code, which is what the current forums are based on. He's more comfortable with this code, meaning that if I keep him around as my forums coder, we could see more and better features if we wanted them.
Now here I am, trying to find out why my host is so slow getting back to me about a hosting plan upgrade, which is the key obstacle in my enormous maps backlog, while trying to deal with a number of other real-life issues less related to VGMaps.com, including preparations to go to E3 (you heard me, I got approved). The last thing I needed was one more thing to worry about. My gut instinct said NO. I really should've trusted it. Unfortunately, I know that Inty isn't always available to fix things, so I said yes...on ONE CONDITION...that users and posts would be kept intact. We know what happened there.
Now Inty would be the one to ask what went wrong if you want the specifics. Something about how my host's cPanel went down while he was doing some work - unfortunately (though fortunately for Inty's sake), I can confirm that it has expired, and I hope it's not related to my push for a subscription upgrade - and/or how the character set isn't recognized by something or other and so the conversion process totally messed up.
I've already kicked Inty for not having a backup. I'm also kicking myself for never having learned how to properly back up the forums. I had always assumed that all the forums were all locally stored together in the
www.vgmaps.com/forums folder, and that was what I periodically copied to my hard drive. I really don't get why it's not all there, or why I never noticed that the files were small and didn't change (except for the avatars which I did salvage) but nonetheless, Inty is going to teach me where the actual user data and posts of the forums are, so that I can make periodic and proper backups myself, i.e., as long as I am around to maintain VGMaps.com itself, the forums should also be intact.
All that I could say to Inty has been said...if it was totally his fault, I'd wished that he was actually a paid employee so that I could sue him for damages. That he was no different from a saboteur (again, I'm sorry for calling him that). That he was making a fool out of myself and my site. That it was unprofessional, especially frustrating coming from Inty, one of my largest critics of professionalism.
I don't like how this had to happen during the month of the April Fools' joke (no one really responded to Mega Man Solid X: Guns Of The Mavericks, but this doesn't help matters), or that it is during other VGMaps.com issues. I really miss certain topics, such as Revned's/TerraEsperZ's team effort on the Zelda Oracle games or Grizzly's/Geminiman's Wily Wars teamwork - and especially saddening is the loss of the SMB3 and MMSX:GOTM topics. These all captured the essence and usefulness of the forums...while me and TerraEsperZ and bustin98 could bicker about Transformers until the end of time, topics from something specific to that time that actually resulted in an accomplishment can never be restored.
Oh, I'm sure I may edit this post. Yeah, I was once told I like to be tragic, so this is my last big "dwelling on the past". But essentially, that's the situation, drama and whines and finger-pointing and hair-pulling and all. Good intentions failed, that's really what it is.
What we have now are new forums, that our coder is more comfortable with. If not for the inconvenience of the loss of the posts, we'd be absolutely elated right now. But looking forward, things can only get better. Sounds preachy, but hey, it's not going to get worse.
Regardless of how much it may have seemed to be Inty's fault, he is still our coder, so you will treat him with enough respect. Please limit your negative feelings. If you have to vent, that's what this topic is for - nowhere else, so that we can move forward more positively.
