Site Issues - Site Going Offline

As you may have noticed the site has been offline for a week. We are having issues with our host, apparently we (or they) got hacked and some phishing pages were added to the site. This happened a couple times so they permanently suspended our account.

Problem was that we needed to get the latest files and data from them and since they had denied access I couldn't get it.

So after pulling some teeth and with help from Zack and Anne (and some others who were helpful or offering help - Thanks) we have been able to get the host to be more reasonable. I have downloaded the latest files but am still waiting for them to let me get access to the database to get an SQL dump so we don't lose any data.

The site will be online for 48 hours and probably will do offline sometime Sunday. We then need to find a new host.

Zack and I are working on this. We are tired of shared hosts but dedicated servers cost more than we generate from the google ads (by about 2-3 times). So we are looking.

I may just find another shared hosting service to get the site back up asap and then we can take our time trying to get a dedicated server.

When the host took us offline it was especially a PITA cause they took our email offline as well.

Hopefully we will be back up by the end of next week.

Thanks

Jake

Thanks Jake

Hi DRJ,
Is there any risk that users of this site may have been infected with malware? If so what strain, and is there an recommended course of action.

It was just a generic web page for bank of america, 1 page that I can't imagine anyone would think was real and enter their info.

Ok we are back online. I had some problems with the attachments and avatars as they wouldn't import properly. You will need to edit your avatar to fix it.

The KB is not working properly. The articles will not load.

If there are any other issues let me know.

Hi DRJ,

The threads no longer seem to show any attachments.

I can see the attachments again

email accounts are not working.

Postings made on Saturday seem to have been lost.

kb related:

Search does not work- redirects you to the main kb landing page. Also the My Entries page doesn't work- every entry status you select takes you back to the WIP status page. Because of this, I can't check to see if any of my kb entries that are waiting on approval are still there.

On the List Entries page of the KB, you cannot use the Application or Coder comboboxes to filter the results.

There was a problem with attachments and avatars. The files are not saved as actual files on the server, the textstream of the file was saved a a blob in the database. It didn't import correctly and was also taking up a lot of space in the database. So I just purged it.

The avatar data was saved but the images are not showing up right and some look squished. So you just need to edit your avatar and save it to refresh the data.

New attachments will work fine.

I backed everything up late friday night so anything posted after the backup was lost, but that was only 24 hours or so.

Emails need to be recreated. Lucas, I setup yours already. Anyone else that had an email let me or Zack know and we can recreate it.

KB articles can be viewed properly again.

Let me know if there are any other issues.

Also the speed seems to be better with the new host.

Thanks

We have Anne to thank for all of the data being saved. As per protocols from the severely retarded Host Excellence, 3 strikes (i.e. phishing violations, a TOS violation) and you're out. Spent a few hours altogether on the phone with them, but it wasn't until Anne took a big bite out of their behinds did they move for us. We all owe Anne a great many thanks. She has saved VBAX's heritage, members and posts.

And many thanks to Lucas, who was extremely persistent in making contact with as many administrators as he possibly could and keeping everyone in the loop, and pretty much getting the ball rolling in the communications arena. VBAX also has him to deeply thank.

I don't know what this site would do without these two people. Thank you very much. :cool:

:blush

:beerchug:

Yes, thanks to everyone who got the site running again!

The issues with the kb I posted in post #10 still persist.

Another issue with the kb: the zipped attachments are empty.

Knowledge Base Issues So Far:
-Search feature would appear to be broken as well. All search strings are returning no values.
-Can't add new articles, getting bounced back to main page after clicking "save".
-When viewing KB pages in IE6 the following error appears at the top of page:

Quote:

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Warning: array_merge_recursive() [function.array-merge-recursive]: Argument #2 is not an array in /home/vbaexpr1/public_html/kb/getarticle.php on line 135

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Yea we still need to kb programmer to take a look.

Surfing on VBAX.
After a while it kicks out my wireless connection.
With other sites no problem.
Its a riddle to me.

Kind regards,
benny

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dragon

I can see the attachments again

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I can't, for sure not the old ones. Damn, have to crawl to my archive of codings ... (Don't feel the need to recreate everything.).

Charlize

benny, I have a wireless connection and am not having that problem...

Whenever I click on a link (forum, subject, ...) the page that opens always scrolls down to the bottom.

Don't know why ???

Charlize

http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/worldmap.php - the world map shows as a broken image.

is there anything wrong with the KB? I try to access it but it keep on asking me for the username and password. Tried it like 10 times.

Thanks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Charlize

Whenever I click on a link (forum, subject, ...) the page that opens always scrolls down to the bottom.

Don't know why ???

Charlize

---

I think that is just normal behavior and it jumps to the newest post for you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chungtinhlak

is there anything wrong with the KB? I try to access it but it keep on asking me for the username and password. Tried it like 10 times.

Thanks

---

We still need to kb creator to take a look and see what is going on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CreganTur

http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/worldmap.php - the world map shows as a broken image.

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The addon was giving us issues so it is no longer active.

But it was teh awsum *le sigh*

ALL the Zip files are corrupted none will open; they all give an "invalid Archive "file error. (Basically there are empty files that show the
previous file size .but do not work.)

Yah, and you can't log on to create new things either.... They're working on it:)

thank you for all your hard work

KB entries still don't open (zip files are corrupted). When it will back to normal again?

Hi there,

We're still working on it. The few of us who are working on it have jobs and lives, and volunteer our time to put into keeping this board running. Please have some patience. We're not sure when everything will be back to *normal*. I apologize for any inconvenience. :(

I didn't mean to hurt you =P

I tought it was something easy to fix, since involves only replacing bad data zip files.

But since you told you are working on that, that's good enough, thanks.

Before mid-january i was able to read headlines from new forum threads in my newsreader.
The URL for the excel-forum was
http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/exte...s2&forumids=17
Will this be functional again?