Mmmmaybe. The thing is, as I've said before, the Forum doesn't use a database database; it's really just a bunch of text files with sekrit markup in them that gets parsed by some scripts. Based on its behavior during our tests last night, I'm starting to suspect the opposite is actually true - that something happened to a bunch of the text files, munging the markup in them that the forum scripts use to build the "database" in the first place. That would explain why running a database rebuild made the problem worse, I think.

Like I say, work in progress. Today is the first day of the spring semester's penultimate week of classes, so I have papers to finish and final exams to prepare for, and naturally my creative lobe has taken this opportunity to find the traction that eluded it through most of the "slow" part of the semester on various non-academic projects.* Dave, who's doing most of the heavy lifting, is only able to work on it in his spare time. Neither one of us really knows how this crufty old software works, which, as many of you may know, is something of an obstacle to troubleshooting, particularly timely and effective troubleshooting.

Some of you have offered your help, and I appreciate it, but as yet I haven't thought of a way of managing the access required to make that work; another thing I don't have optimal mental bandwidth for dealing with due to the above. (Besides which, it's not really my call anyway; it's Dave's server.) So for right now, I think we'll have to hold off on that.

Ultimately, the real solution to the problem may be to move to a more modern forum platform. There are a lot of reasons why I'm not very comfortable with that, but on the other hand, randomly losing content is clearly not something that can be allowed to happen. Losing the What's Past Is Prologue reaction thread was painful, but losing actual stories is just not on.

I suppose it could be argued that it's my own fault for using a discussion forum as a content-providing tool, but dammit, it's handy.

--G.
* Always waste time when you haven't got any. Rule 408: Time is not the boss of you.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.