What Has Happened to the Papa Panui and Whakapapa Club
Background
Websites run off what is called a web server - a computer dedicated to serving pages on the web, which is why they are called web servers.
Most websites are small and are on what are called shared servers, where many sites share a single server. However, because of the size of maori.org.nz
we have a dedicated server - one web server just for maori.org.nz
March last year the server crashed due to a CPU failure - that is a physical part of the server. This was replaced and we realised that that was a tohu that things were not going to go too well on the server, so we ordered a new one and then our bill was changed to reflect the new server.
In December 2010 the site started to go down a lot and then we found out that although we were paying for a new server the site was still being run from the old one.
At the beginning of January 2011 the old server died - both hard drives packed up - the main drive with the website on it as well as the backup drive.
We managed after a few weeks to get the bulk of maori.org.nz online - we are with a new provider - then we went to restore the Papa Panui and the Whakapapa Club. Both of these run off a database and although our backup hard drive had failed we also had manual backups of the database. Imagine our shock and horror when we went to restore the Papa Panui with our own manual backup done 27th November 2010 only to find that the backup only went as far as August 2008! You would not have wanted to be around at that point in time ....
We contemplated restoring that as an archive only but when we ran the codes to do that we THEN found out that we did not have all of the code files for our Papa Panui and Whakapapa Club and it was spitting errors. Not to be daunted we went off to the site that is the backend of the Papa Panui and Whakapapa Club only to find that site does no longer support the code as it is obsolete and that (programming) language is being phased out. That also means that eventually all of the code for maori.org.nz will have to be re-written - but that is another issue.
What We Are Doing Now We have found an archive site on the net and are at this exact moment extracting their backups - they go until July 2010. This is a very slow process - we have been running the extraction code for 72 hours now and have recovered 807 pages so far and there are 7326 pages to still to go unless they find more then that number will increase. This does not mean that the Papa Panui and Whakapapa Club will be restored - this only means that we will have all of the posts for a historical, archival record.
Where to From Here We recognise the benefits of the Papa Panui and Whakapapa Club and will be creating another one. Currently we are reseaching which programming language to use then which code to use. This phase will be completed by the end of next week, then we will install our new Papa Panui. This will be up by the end of March 2011
He Mihi Aroha To those of you who have taken time out to contact us and offer encouragement, we truely appreciate it. Your emails helped to keep us going and looking for solutions and when we finally get back, you can honestly say that you have helped maori.org.nz
March last year the server crashed due to a CPU failure - that is a physical part of the server. This was replaced and we realised that that was a tohu that things were not going to go too well on the server, so we ordered a new one and then our bill was changed to reflect the new server.
In December 2010 the site started to go down a lot and then we found out that although we were paying for a new server the site was still being run from the old one.
At the beginning of January 2011 the old server died - both hard drives packed up - the main drive with the website on it as well as the backup drive.
We managed after a few weeks to get the bulk of maori.org.nz online - we are with a new provider - then we went to restore the Papa Panui and the Whakapapa Club. Both of these run off a database and although our backup hard drive had failed we also had manual backups of the database. Imagine our shock and horror when we went to restore the Papa Panui with our own manual backup done 27th November 2010 only to find that the backup only went as far as August 2008! You would not have wanted to be around at that point in time ....
We contemplated restoring that as an archive only but when we ran the codes to do that we THEN found out that we did not have all of the code files for our Papa Panui and Whakapapa Club and it was spitting errors. Not to be daunted we went off to the site that is the backend of the Papa Panui and Whakapapa Club only to find that site does no longer support the code as it is obsolete and that (programming) language is being phased out. That also means that eventually all of the code for maori.org.nz will have to be re-written - but that is another issue.
What We Are Doing Now We have found an archive site on the net and are at this exact moment extracting their backups - they go until July 2010. This is a very slow process - we have been running the extraction code for 72 hours now and have recovered 807 pages so far and there are 7326 pages to still to go unless they find more then that number will increase. This does not mean that the Papa Panui and Whakapapa Club will be restored - this only means that we will have all of the posts for a historical, archival record.
Where to From Here We recognise the benefits of the Papa Panui and Whakapapa Club and will be creating another one. Currently we are reseaching which programming language to use then which code to use. This phase will be completed by the end of next week, then we will install our new Papa Panui. This will be up by the end of March 2011
He Mihi Aroha To those of you who have taken time out to contact us and offer encouragement, we truely appreciate it. Your emails helped to keep us going and looking for solutions and when we finally get back, you can honestly say that you have helped maori.org.nz