For those of you who even noticed, the site was down for a while recently and Martin (who created and hosts our forum) has put together this account of events.
"The website was reported as off-line (by Brian) on 12 June at about 6pm, indicating a database connection problem. On reporting to the original host they advised that the system log indicated there were many visits by one or more search engine spiders that may have resulted in there being too many hits to the database. They advised that we limit the number of visits by search bots (which I duly did). The site was still not responding at this point. Shortly after, I received an automated message from the original host to say they had disabled the site because it was causing too much activity.
By midday on 13 June, after a number of support exchanges with the host, it was becoming apparent that we were getting nowhere. Interestingly they were reporting a number of database problems on their servers, so I suspected there was something else going on. With no clear estimate of when the site would return, I suggested that we switch to an alternative host (Smart Hosting) as I have better recent experience with them of (a) performance and (b) support.
At around 3pm I transferred the site across to Smart and triggered the domain switch. By 22:30 all was functioning again on the new host.
I am not entirely clear on the root cause but feel that the original host were not helping and (probably) the fault lay in a server problem. It is possible that there was a malware hit on the SMF code of your site, but I looked closely and saw no evidence of it. During the transfer I took the opportunity to upgrade to the latest version (we were only one step away anyway), just in case. By switching to Smart Hosting, time will tell if there is a problem with the SMF forum code. So far, so good!
Martin Jones
Natty Web Development Ltd"
So, we have a shiny new Forum running the latest version of SMF and we have a new hosting service and for this we have to thank Martin enormously.
There may still be the odd glitch floating around as things settle down but otherwise all should be good. There are a few new features in the latest version of SMF so things may look slightly different.
Assuring you of our best intentions blah di blah di blah
T'management.
