Have just experienced a whole week of formating and re-formatting my PC after succumbing to a nasty little virus that disabled my video card. After getting halfway through reloading all the software, the PC received yet another Malware virus that, it seemed, no one knew how to get rid of. A really frustrating week where nothing was accomplished on Comics UK. And the worst thing about all this was that a load of the database table that I created for version 2 also got lost in the process. Ho Hum!!!

Al - 20th May 2008

If it's not one thing going wrong at the moment, it's something else. On Friday 21st the database that controls the Forum went down. After placing a Support Ticket with my hosts, they simply stated that some people may be experiencing some problems!!!! It's on similar lines to London Underground stating that there's an 'incident' on the line.

The fact is, it's Easter weekend, and it's one of two things, either the hosts are enjoying this rare weekend break, or there is a major problem here. Either way, they're not revealing anything. The latest reply I've received from them, after me asking if all the data is still safe, was, "Our engineers are looking at the problem". That reply just filled me with confidence!!

Hopefully, things will get resolved after the Easter break.

Al - 24th March 2008

Both myself and AndyB have been trying to recover the forums over the wekend, and I'm afraid it was all to no avail. By reading the figure at the bottom of the index (home) screen, it looks like we've recovered all 13,487 posts. But in reality, we're almost 1,500 short. And all seem to be from January.

There are links to missing posts at the moment, but I will be working on a way to try and recover these throughout the next couple of weeks. At the moment the Forum Boards are very basic, but amendments will be made quickly. This forum will only be here for a short period of time, and then we'll move over to the PHPBB3 boards. Hopefully seamless (mmmmm).

It appears that whenever I've been creating a backup, using the Forum backup software, it wasn't actually saving a lot of data tables. Closer investigation revealed that some of these non-backed up tables are needed when displaying the posts.

Of course, that's just one of many theories, and to say I 'm completely hacked off with it all is a gross understatment. The backup procedure was flawed. I'm now looking to upgrade to PHPBB3.

There is a CONVERSION routine within PHPBB3 that should convert from PHPBB2 to PHPBB3. During this desperate period, I've ensured that I've got full control over the database now. Something which I didn't have previously, so I can now scheduled automatic daily backups, amongst other things.

Apologies once again to one and all. And now that I'm with a new ISP where I have a lot of control over the databases and the fact that the new ISP is my son, should hopefully bode well for the future. And, of course, there's Comics UK version 2 to look forward to as well, before this Christmas.

Al - 17th March 2008

Have been a bit busy on the home front this weekend. The forums will be up for Monday 17th March, with or witout those near 1000 missing posts.

Al - 16th March 2008

I knew it was too good to be true. 12,540 of the 13,487 post were successfully transferred which means that 947 didn't survive the conversion process. Unfortunately, the final posts date from the 10th February 2008.

It looks like these missing posts are still in the database, because I can still read them, but obviously, some of the indexing appears to have gone awry. They ALL seem to be from the British Comic Title section.

The other thing I noticed that needs to be reapplied by all members are the Avatar images, because these were not restored.

I will be working on the Forum over the weekend and will make it live by Sunday (the latest) with or without these missing posts. The only reason that I am not making the Forums live now is because the Sub-Forums and Security features we had on the old version do not appear to have made it to the new version of PHPBB3.

Again, I offer my apologies.

Al -14th March 2008

Finally some very GOOD NEWS! Not only is it my actual birthday today, but the Forum posts, all 13,487 of them, have been restored.

Below is a screenshot of what the Forum actually looks like at the moment. As you may be able to tell, it's a really basic version and it doesn't include any security features, or any sub-forums and it doesn't allow you to insert images or URL's. As I say, it's really basic. But all the posts are there.

So what I intend to do tonight is make an attempt to upgrade the whole Forum to PHPBB3 from PHPBB2. Apparantly it's got everything we had before as standard, plus the blinking PM's and Emails might work on this one.

I've still got about 100,000 lines of 'house-keeping' data to upload, which is taking an age to do and will be completed later this evening upon my return from work.

I'm really pleased that I've managed to save all the posts, except those that were entered last Friday (8th March 2008). I'm afraid those 10-20 are lost forever, but over 13,000 have been saved.

Having these back is a wonderful birthday present, and if you know of anyone who needs a hand with a manual restore of a PHPBB database, I'm your man.

Al - 13th March 2008.

There appears to be no magical program out there that will assist me with the restore problem. So I've decided to tackle the problem on my own.

It was very late last night that I decided to do a manual restore. And just before I went to bed (because I'm still shattered after only 6 hours kip over the weekend), I had build 7 database tables, including the all-important POSTS table.

As I write this through 75% shut eyes, I've felt as though there is light at the end of the tunnel, BUT, until the ruddy posts are all up there for everyone to see, that's about as hopeful as I am going to get.

This evening, my lovely wife is taking me out for a birthday meal (yum-yum), so it may not be matrimonially advisable to work on the Forum problem tonight.

Fingers-crossed for Wednesday then.

Al - 11th March 2008

I will be working on the Forum situation this evening after my work. The re-setting of the permissions has been resolved, but the restoring of the database keeps failing. The actual data is not corrupt ('cos I can read it all), but it is not restoring. You may have heard of a film entitled "The Lost Weekend", well I've just had one!!

Al - 10th March 2008

FORUM UPDATE: I am currently waiting for a reply from my ISP regarding the re-setting of permissions on some of the PHPBB (Forum) files. As it's the weekend now, it looks like this will have to wait until Monday 10th March 2008 before anything can be done.

Then I'm really hoping that I will be able to restore the database to the way it was. I'm always pessimistic about things like this and I really don't want to start the Forums from scratch. Good lord, what a b*mmer that would be eh? Anyway, let's hope that technology will prevail.

Al - 9th March 2008

Am still having trouble trying to upload the Forums. Why can't everything in computers be simple? Grrrrrrr.........

Al - 8th March 2008 @ 19:40

EMAIL is now working. Just the Forum to go

Al - 8th March 2008 @ 09:30

There's been a bit of disarray in the Comics UK camp recently. A random check by myself on the whois.net website revealed that the Comics UK domain name had expired and was up for renewal. It had been that way since 24th February 2008!!

If I hadn't noticed this, the domain name would have been gobbled up by one of those businesses that sell them back at an overly inflated price.

Of course, this all means that things are a little mixed up at the moment, especially the Forum. Obviously this is currently the most widely used section within the site and I hope to get it reinstated ASAP.

Luckily, I downloaded a backup of the forum at 19.15 on Thursday 6th March 2008, so in a worse case scenario, there will be one days worth of posts missing. Maybe this is not a good time to mention that I've never had to restore the forum database before.

I'm also toying with the idea of trying to convert to PHPBB3, which is the next release of the current forum.

As an aside, I'm currently working on the Admin section of Comics UK v2. I'm hoping to get the new version in by Christmas (this year).

BTW. You may have noticed that there are no Eagle or Dan Dare images or references on the site anymore. This includes the Annuals, Specials, Galleries and the actual Eagle section. This was due to me receiving a high-handed solicitors letter from Colin Frewin's solicitors. Frewin is the guy that spent £500,000 on securing the rights to Dan Dare and Eagle. Oh happy days eh??

EMAIL IS ALSO NOT WORKING

I WILL COMMENCE WORK ON THE FORUMS TODAY

Al - 8th March 2008

Comics UK v2 update: Work has finally started on the new database structure and I have built 25 new tables that will hold all the information that will make Version 2 a lot more enjoyable for one and all. Obviously, still a very long way to go yet, but a start has been made.

And now that I have started it will be ongoing because of all the extra time I've now got thanks to my new job. The next step is to transfer over all the information from the current Access database to the new MySQL one. That should be fun.

I hope you're enjoying the new POW! Daily Page. That first Spider Man story runs for 9 pages.

Al - 27th January 2008