In the name of complete transparency and openness about what went down over the last few days, here's a time-line starting at the very beginning:

12/7/2010 : RFO established. Forum "backups" are implemented using simple backup routine running on web-host server that performs daily backups of the forum mySQL database to files stored on the webhost server (the forum software is vBulletin, but is just a front-end to a mySQL database that contains all of our posts). Administrators manually download these backup files to local storage (a semi-daily to weekly basis).

1/17/2011 : Admins start discussion/implementation of automating daily backups to additional remote location(s) for more dependable backup redundancy.

1/19/2011 : Munkholm starts forum discussion/poll about site performance.

1/25/2011 : It is determined that the "current" (at that time) gigahost.dk web host is not up to the task of meeting RFO's requirements (backups, site growth, etc.). Admins start discussion/implementation of finding a new web host.

1/26/2011 : RFO settles on GlobalGold webhosting. RFO expects to start migration in 7-10 days (giving us plenty of time to notify the forum of the upcoming switch).

1/26/2011 : Just a couple hours later, by complete coincidence, but maybe also a foreshadowing, gigahost.dk web host mySQL server melts down. Forum data is safe, but forum down for 16 hours (and with no way to communicate with membership).

1/27/2011 : RFO facebook page is established (revitforumorg) as a way to communicate with membership in the event that the forum site is down. Please keep this in mind for future reference (or look it up on facebook and simply click the "Like" button). There's no plan to update it often, so don't worry about being flooded with posts. And you can click the "Unlike" button at any time.

1/27-28/2011 : Maybe with a touch of panic setting in after the gigahost.dk meltdown, RFO starts immediately implementation of switch to new web-host (GlobalGold). Forum is down for a couple of hours depending on your location (DNS servers take time to populate).

RFO did not provide the amount of notice before this took place that we would have liked to have seen, so we do apologize for the inconvenience. It was decided that the immediate reliability of the forum took priorty over the notification window. However, personally, I was extremely pleased to see an email from RFO in my inbox with an explanation of what was taking place.

The future : Admins hope to complete automated remote daily backup system on new web-host in the next week or two. More details of how that works will be posted once implementation is complete. Hopefully, there won't be any more web-host "excitement" or forum downtime for the foreseeable future.

The admins at RFO appreciate that this kind of forum disturbance over the last couple days is a bit unsettling - while we all know that every web site goes down from time to time, we hope that the steps we're taking now will help mitigate potential issues in the future.

I (and I think it's safe to say that I can speak on behalf of the other Administrators on this point) want to greatly thank Munkholm, who is the one who really did all the work. He's got an actual business and life to run outside of these forums, and he's volunteered a tremendous amount of time and a fair amount of money to getting this all worked out over the last week. Thank you Munkholm!

Please feel free to post comments or questions.