Sorry The Forum Was Down

[Pat Walter]

I am sorry the forum was down.  It was being spammed so much, I tried to update it and make security changes.  I sure made it secure by knocking it off line.  I am an 80 year old lady with some skills, but obviously no match for the current spammers and IT hackers.  So I used an older back up and lost a couple days posts.  I am sorry.  I don't know why anyone is interested in hacking a Hip Resurfacing forum - but I guess they don't care what it is about.  I started this forum on May 11, 2007.  It is old and has a very large data base.  I am thinking about keeping this forum for reference and starting a new one in an update version which would be more safe.  But for the life of me, I can figure out how in import the members into a new format.  So everyone would have to sign up again.  How does everyone feel about that.  Or should we continue with the old format here and hope for the best!  LOL    Pat

[MarvinB]

Hi, Pat!

Retired IT guy, here!  My area was hardware, not programming or database administration.  Are you near a college or university with an IT program?  You may be able to hire an undergrad to assist migrating the database to a new platform.  They may have some suggestions on open-source databases that you could use.  Just a thought.

I would have no issues with signing up again.  It would be a shame to lose any of the valuable info you’ve gathered here.

[MattFL]

I've done just enough IT and server work to be able to make a mess.  Is the challenge that the current forum software is no longer supported and has security weaknesses?  BTW, this looks really nice compared to last time I logged in a month or two ago.

[Pat Walter]

Hi Matt
I finally managed to find two, old unused tables in the mysql that weren't being used and deleted them.  Finally I was able to update and make many changes. I bought a firewall for the website and now things are much better. lol  $250 a year better.  LOL  I'm glad you like the new layout.  It better matches the main website.  It has taken me days and many hours to get it done - but I finally won.  Woman vs programing. I also have data base backups everyday for website in Wordpress and the forum in Simple Machines Forum.  That's the only reason I have ever been able to fix the big problems.  Now the Firewall package also saves backups every day, too.  Can't have too many backups!  LOL LOL LOL

[MattFL]

Great job!  You might already know all of this, but if you're using a virtual host you can setup nightly backups that take snapshots every day, and then you can choose how many it keeps and for how long.  Then if a crisis happens, with a few clicks you can roll the entire virtual server back to any backup you want.  The cost is typically very minimal, and it's hugely useful when making big risky updates.  Just snapshot before you start and at every milestone, then revert back any time you need to.  I've used Digital Ocean with success, but there are surely many other good ones.  Also you can set a virtual firewall (external to your virtual server) to only allow admin level connections (ssh, etc..) from your personal IP address(s), and only allow http/https to the world.  That adds one more hoop for the bad guys to jump through.  Anyway it looks like you have a good handle on things and thanks for hosting this web site!