Downtime

That was an extended downtime. Some of you already know this because it was discussed on Facebook, and others I had contacts with, but I'll tell you what occurred, although I didn't know what it was about until someone finally contacted me. I'll just go through it here.

When I started the forum in 2015, I chose a hosting company called WASD Hosting because they specialized in hosting forums. That worked fine for a while. Then I received a notice that they were being acquired by another company called Vortex Servers, which specialized in hosting gaming sites. That wasn't a problem because my login stayed the same. By that, I don't mean my login here, but my login to the server site. Although I was logging into the Vortex Servers site rather than WASD Hosting, my client name and password worked. It even seemed that it was maybe a little bit faster, and I thought that might be because gaming sites needed a lot of speed.

A few years ago, Vortex posted a notice on their site announcing that they were "partnering" with ChicagoVPS, and, when I tried to log in, I was redirected to the ChicagoVPS site, only my login and password didn't work. When I tried the "retrieve password" option, it said that no such account existed. When I tried it again, my ISP was banned for thirty days for "suspicious activity."

I had been able to find the email for sales at ChicagoVPS but multiple emails, asking them to forward my request to someone who could help me, were ignored completely. Since the Vortex Servers site hadn't been shut down yet, I wrote to tech support at Vortex asking what to do, and I received a reply saying that someone from ChicagoVPS would be contacting me. They did, telling me that someone else would work on setting the account up for me at ChicagoVPS. No one did, and not long after that, the Vortex Servers site went down. There was another Vortex gaming server site, but that wasn't the one that hosted our site.

After my ISP ban at ChicagoVPS ran out, I was able to find a telephone number but the person who answered the phone couldn't find an account for us, although they could see that our site was still being hosted on the Vortex servers, which was now owned by ChicagoVPS. Again, someone would get back to me but no one did.

When it came time for the annual autopayment, I could see that it went through, and the site was still up, so I wasn't panicked, but, without access to my server login, I couldn't add a Secure certificate so that we could use https rather than http. Since we didn't maintain any sensitive information, that wasn't a huge concern, but some of you were bugging me, probably because your browsers were bugging you.

However, I also couldn't upgrade the software and Xenforo had added some good stuff. I don't upgrade to every new version of the software they come up with because upgrades are always a time when something could go very wrong, but I didn't want to be years behind.

I don't remember the timelines, but, at some point, the site went down one day. Trying to find someone to help with it at ChicagoVPS, my ISP was banned for another thirty days. I posted on their Facebook page and received a quick answer from someone with ChicagoVPS promising me that it would be back up soon, and it was. He also promised that someone would be contacting me about an account with ChicagoVPS, but no one ever did.

In between, I wrote to the ChicagoVPS sales and tech support email from time to time asking for a resolution. When we had periodic problems, they were fixed very soon after writing to tech support so it seemed that they were receiving my email but, as I imagine, tech support couldn't set up an account for me.

Then we come to Friday when the site went down again. I didn't know what the problem was until it was fixed because my last annual payment was made less than a month ago. Emails were no help. I tried the virtual chat thing on ChicagoVPS a couple of times, but that didn't seem to be going anywhere. Going to their Facebook page, I found that there was nothing new there since 2019, which seemed odd since I swear it wasn't that long ago that I had posted there. I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, which was sent to them yesterday. At that time, I noticed that there was at least one other similar complaint that had gone unresolved.

Digging around, my wife found that ColoCrossing had acquired ChicagoVPS. She's way better at navigating that stuff than I am. ColoCrossing seemed more accessible, so I wrote to ColoCrossing, and called them yesterday. I received promises but no assurances.

Although Yvonne managed to open a trouble ticket there, when I tried, it would prompt me to login into my client account, which would just get my ISP banned again. Anyhow, she managed to do that, and I think Faye said she had also called someone there. Women are better at that sort of thing, as I have observed that when my wife calls to complain about something, she gets refunds and free stuff, but, when I call to complain about something, they threaten to call the police and hang up on me.

In the end, although we're not there yet, I don't know what did it, but I received an email from someone at ColoCrossing telling me that the problem was that, when ColoCrossing acquired ChicagoVPS, they had discontinued support for the WASD nameservers. In my one contact with someone from ChicagoVPS prior to this shutdown, I had specifically asked about nameservers, thinking that might have been the problem with the prior (much shorter) shutdown, but he said there was no need to worry about the nameservers, and indeed, that time we were put right back online.

I do have control over the domain because I've learned not to host my domains on the same server that hosts the site. Although domains can be reclaimed, it's kind of a hassle. Changing the nameservers is a simple task but no one sent me the new nameservers until the guy from ColoCrossing did, and it was the new nameservers that got things back working again. But it was probably the combination of contacts that prompted an actual response, so thank you.

At the moment, we're back where we were. The site is working but I still don't have a client login at ChicagoVPS, and the promise of a fix in the future is eerily similar to the one I received a couple of years ago. I am hoping they follow through, and the guy from ColoCrossing did include a telephone and fax number, so I have somewhere to write.

Unlike WASD and Vortex, which shut down after being acquired, it seems that ColoCrossing intends to run ChicagoVPS as a separate company, or subsidiary, or whatever they want to call it, so I hope to be hearing from someone at ChicagoVPS soon.

If that occurs, and I get a client login, I don't want to make an immediate change, but I will be looking for a more stable host unless they are able to prove themselves to be a stable host. Otherwise, with access to the database, all of our stuff can be transferred intact to another hosting company, something I can't do without access to the database. I'm not looking for anything from anyone here, just letting you know what's going on.

I am anxious to get this done, though, because I want to upgrade to the latest version of Xenforo, since there is a lot of new stuff that you'll like, and it wouldn't hurt to be able to add the stupid "s" to our http, either.

That's where we are. Welcome back.

 

Okay, it's looking more promising. I still don't have a login but I did hear from an account executive from ChicagoVPN. Hopefully, we'll be squared away soon.

 

I wouldn't just do that without notice. In fact, I would give it to someone to run before I'd just shut it down.

 

Understood.

 

It shouldn't be that way. The way it should be is that I pay the annual fee, and the site stays up. This was the result of multiple acquisitions, leaving us with a hosting company that I didn't choose, and the resulting miscommunication, or lack of communication. The fix was a simple copy and paste of a nameserver, but no one communicated that nameserver to me.