12 replies to this topic

[rookie1ja]

Hi there,

this is rookie1ja, admin of BrainDen Brain Teasers Forums. Note that the forums were not available since January 2012 up till now (April 27) due to severe physical disk damage. Since then I was trying to retrieve as much info as possible.

Hosting provider, external data recovery firm and forum helpdesk were all trying to help, however, the process was long and only small steps were being made. After months of chasing, refusing insufficient data, insisting on giving it second/third and many other tries we have started to get more and more. To cut the long story short, external data recovery firm (and hosting provider) got more data out of the disk after I did not accept what they delivered the first time and forum helpdesk were real magicians to get that minimum to work somehow.

Good News:
The forum is more or less working.

Bad News:
Not all could have been rescued. You may notice several issues:
1. all forum titles are lost (fortunately posts in them should be OK)
2. all threads are in single forum section "New Logic/Math Puzzles"
3. all members who have not posted might be lost
4. all other members are probably existing but their email is lost and there might be issues with log in

Old members that would like to continue with their old username, pls send me (admin@brainden.com) the following data and I will manually restore your old account.
1. username
2. password
3. email

What to do next?
1. There are many more issues and you can report them along with your comments/suggestions in this thread.
2. If you could notify other former members, we could slowly start to rebuild the community.

Thanks a lot for your patience and I hope we can make the site work again.
-rookie1ja

[ShadowAngel7]

Do you want us to offer up the titles/locations of threads to move them around? Or just leave them where they are?

[ShadowAngel7]

Do you want us to offer up the titles/locations of threads to move them around? Or just leave them where they are?

Because I'll offer to start going through and doing that, though help would of course be appreciated, particularly as I don't know all the titles and mostly lurked in the Games section before...

[rookie1ja]

Going through thousands of threads manually, creating titles for them and assigning them into proper section is, unfortunately, not manageable.

That's why let me suggest to focus only on live threads (eg. solution not yet given, game still not finished etc.) - anybody can point out such topics including their title and proper section. I will then handle those threads.

Thanks.

[Hidden G]

Thank you Rookie for bring my account back to life xD
i'll help with the title in my spare time

[EDM]

Rookie, would the members get an automatic notification in their respective emails if we PM them here on BD? I was thinking, if that works, i can handle notifying all the members about BD working again...coz they would get the notification in their email inboxes...I've already informed some of the members & am trying to find others, so if their notifications work, then it'll be much much easier to get them back...I'll handle notifying them then, no problem...

[rookie1ja]

Rookie, would the members get an automatic notification in their respective emails if we PM them here on BD? I was thinking, if that works, i can handle notifying all the members about BD working again...coz they would get the notification in their email inboxes...I've already informed some of the members & am trying to find others, so if their notifications work, then it'll be much much easier to get them back...I'll handle notifying them then, no problem...

No - email addresses of forum members are lost so PM here would not trigger any email notification.

Thanks for your help.

[Thalia]

I've been having a lot of trouble getting here lately. I keep getting some sort of message about a bad gateway. Any idea what that is?

[rookie1ja]

Yes - I have been chasing hosting provider for days already.

Either they resolve it soon enough or I will move the site to another host.

Thanks for understanding.

[akaslickster]

Only a suggestion. There used to be a link on the index page like this, "FORUMS". It helps people get in here quickly if they land on that page. I, myself won't need it but, I think it would be handy to have it there for others/members. Up to you.