Author Topic: Forum Dead/Reborn  (Read 3618 times)

Matt Koeske

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    • Useless Science
Forum Dead/Reborn
« on: May 06, 2018, 02:43:08 AM »
Well, you may have noticed that Useless Science disappeared . . . again. Right after I claimed it was repaired and once again functional.  Essentially, the same thing happened as described in the previous post about the site being down.  My host was supposed to clean up a malware infection.  They claimed they did.  The site was back up for a couple days . . . and then I received a permanent suspension for having malware on my site.

There was no reasoning with them.  Even after paying extra fees to have the host remove the malware and secure the site against future infection, they failed to do just that.  And they chose to blame/punish me rather than take responsibility (along with my money).  Even though I had been a loyal customer for over a decade and never previously had any problems with malware infections, nor even violated a single policy.

It was a very odd experience.  They refused to host the site.  Over the last weeks, I've been trying to get the site files and databases back from this host, find a new host, and recreate Useless Science.  There have been some snags.  I learned that my previous host (Lunarpages) was once solid, but has more recently gone down the drain and now has tons of customer support complaints and problems.  Count me among the critics.

My new host is currently very highly rated from what I could find . . . and I'm hoping for a good experience.  It looks like, as of today, 5/6/18 at 2:00 AM, Useless Science is ALIVE!  Re-animated.

There are probably going to be a few snafus that I haven't figured out yet.  Currently, I can't figure out where the users' custom avatars got off to.  I will try to keep looking, but please feel free to restore or recreate your avatars as you like [I figured it out . . . and now things are almost eerily back to the way they were].  I'm not sure all settings are restored to what they used to be, but please feel free to let me know if something isn't working for you.

And of course, I'm holding my breath regarding hacking and malware invasions.  I don't know how it happened before or what I should do to prevent it from happening again.  My new host should have some additional securities the old one didn't, but nothing is impenetrable.

I will say that when I finally got access to my old files and downloaded them to my computer, my free antivirus software instantly found and removed about a half a dozen malware files without incident.  I searched through every file and found no others.  So, it seems I got booted from my old host because their security is not as good as a free antivirus program . . . and they couldn't figure out how to successfully run such a program on my file system.

As much as I'm pretty confident the old host deserves all manner of criticism, I'm still currently a bit leery, since the whole thing was pretty mysterious to me and the actions of the old host are perplexing, frustrating, and somewhat scarring.  I don't want to count my chickens, and I suspect that there are some vulnerabilities with the SMF forum software (or the add-ons or themes I used) or with the only other script I use, WordPress.  Unfortunately, I don't know what those vulnerabilities are.  So I will continue to keep registration locked down for the time being.

And so, with significant exhaustion and fingers crossed, welcome back ye loyal few to the Useless Science forum, which yet persists like an insatiable but unsophisticated zombie lurching and dragging for your brains.

-Matt
« Last Edit: May 06, 2018, 03:12:10 AM by Matt Koeske »
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]