looks to be back up at the moment. i just pulled a mirror of the entire site locally, in case anything happens again, so all the content is safe..
got this email last night (etree mailing list).. a bit of an explanation i guess:
[b]Subject: [bt-easytree-org] STG gone. ...Letter
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 18:12:16 -0000
From: sidcreature [email]sidman.marc@gmail.com[/email]
To: [email]bt-easytree-org@yahoogroups.com[/email][/b]
Hi all, I wanted to post here because I am really at a loss as to
what to do. In case you don\'t know, I\'m Andy, the short-lived new
server admin for the Groove.
The real reason the site went down less than a day after coming back
up was due to lack of payment of the $500+ server bill, and the
Planet pulled the network cables. This morning after giving Gray a
generous amount of time to pay, The Planet submitted a ticket to have
the server department reclaim all three STG servers, which I assume
also means they are going to completely wipe all data from the
servers. There are no backups of the forum database on any external
servers. Perhaps I should have done that, but I had no reason to
believe the financial situation was anything but OK.
I wasn\'t working for free and Gray had promised to pay for my admin
services. Of course, I\'m too trusting and failed to have him sign a
contract, so I ended up working over 30 hours on the site for
nothing. Gray won\'t return my phone calls, emails, or IMs.
I\'ve called the Planet and the final word is that unless they receive
the full amount by 4pm Central time today (9/21), all the data will
be gone. They wouldn\'t tell me exactly how much is owed though. Gray
is aware of this deadline; the account manager told me she spoke to
him this morning.
Oh also I wanted to say... I have been trying to stay out of the
politics of this community as best as I can. I\'m really just a
neutral third party here and I\'m sorry for anything that might have
pissed you off at me. I was only doing what Gray wanted.
I\'m sure the story I\'ve heard from Gray isn\'t the whole story, and
maybe no one knows the whole story, but the reason I\'m posting now is
that I feel the community deserves some explanation.
Even though I don\'t have any real vested interest in the Groove, I
think it\'s very sad to see a site die this way, especially one as
huge as the Groove. I couldn\'t believe how many people logged on
within minutes of the site coming back online. I couldn\'t believe how
hard that server was getting hammered by over 800 people logging on
to the forum. At the very least, I think the site needs to be
transferred to someone who has the time and dedication to run it, if
Gray is no longer willing to do it. I can understand if Gray wants to
let it go, but he owes it to the thousands of members not to let it
die. Pay the final bill, get the data off, and give it to someone
else. That\'s all I want to see.
