I am sure most of you had a chance to see this message when you log on to idforums.net in the last 24 hours. What was the deal ? This topic will go in detail on what happened in the last 36 hours.
3:00 AM (Pacific Time), Sunday October 8th, 2006, I was just turning off my computer and about to go to sleep. The forums was loading perfectly and without any problems. The next morning when I wake up, as usual I log on to the forums, only to find that my hosting account has been suspended. The first thing I did was to check https://go2id.net and https://initiald-arcade.com. Those two domains were also suspended. I knew what was up. To confirm my belief, I checked http://initialsource.com and http://initialservers.com. As expected, the same message was displayed on there.
By this time, I knew it was my host's fault instead of my own wrongdoing. (I actually pay the server fee annually, and it's not due until March, 2007 for those of you who are curious.) So I contacted Initial Source and inquire them regarding this. Turned out that they didn't pay for the bill of the whole server. Or more specifically, the payment didn't go through. The explanation I got from them was, they pay in advanced for five (5) years through PayPal. They set it up so that every year, the recurring fee will automatically send to the network company, which hosts our host Initial Source. To put it simply, somehow the recurring fund did not go through, and the network company thought Initial Source didn't pay, so they suspend the entire server. As a result, 30 other websites that are hosted by Initial Source, were also suspended, we were one of them. Note that during the suspension, I had absolutely no access to the server. The whole server was entirely "blocked."
So why do our host has to pay someone else, aren't they the host ? Not exactly, here is how it works. Our host Initial Source rent out a dedicated server from a big network company (ThePlanet), then Initial Source rent part of the server space to smaller websites like our forums to make a profit. This is called shared hosting. Initial Source is a reseller host, not "the host."
So that's why we were suspended. How long was the suspension ? Upon inspecting the access log, the suspension message was first displayed around 4:20 AM on Sunday morning. The suspension was lifted around 2:20 PM today. (Monday) The total downtime was 34 hours !! I have to thank everyone who was concerned enough to ask me over AIM and MSN. Whew, there must've been at least 30 of you.
I am really flattered that some of you do care about these forums. Once again, I would like to apologize for the inconvenience and thanks for all of your patience.Estimated Potential Loss: 30 new members, 800 new posts, $xx advertising revenue.