New Forum Archive - Lost data recovered

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I am pleased to say that I have now managed to recover ALL of 
the missing authors and threads following on from the attack on, and collapse of 
the original website.
Unfortunately, the database was so corrupted that it did not 
prove possible to import them into the new Forum. As a result you will now see a 
new menu option "Archived Forums". This leads to a basic snapshot of the forum 
as it was at 29th March 2011. It IS basic, there is no posting and navigation is 
somewhat simplified but hopefully fully usable. 
I am particularly pleased as the "lost" members, and their 
posts, included people like David Bird and Caleb - long time valued contributors 
to the forum.
In due course some of the older topics (i.e. those without 
posts for the last 3+ years) will also be transferred to the new archive thus 
saving precious and expensive space on the new server.
Brief technical details (for the tech 
minded):-
The corruption of the old MS Access database led to a loss of 
data integrity which in turn meant that the table relationships were completely 
ineffective. While it is probably technically possible to restore the 
missing data to the new forum it was simply not practical. Accordingly the data 
was exported to MySQL and a new "read only" forum created reading that data 
using PHP. 
Chris

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Iowarth Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Admin Group Joined: 12 Apr 2004 Status: Offline Points: 743	Post Options Post Reply Quote Iowarth Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 14 Jul 2011 at 7:18pm
	I am pleased to say that I have now managed to recover ALL of the missing authors and threads following on from the attack on, and collapse of the original website. Unfortunately, the database was so corrupted that it did not prove possible to import them into the new Forum. As a result you will now see a new menu option "Archived Forums". This leads to a basic snapshot of the forum as it was at 29th March 2011. It IS basic, there is no posting and navigation is somewhat simplified but hopefully fully usable. I am particularly pleased as the "lost" members, and their posts, included people like David Bird and Caleb - long time valued contributors to the forum. In due course some of the older topics (i.e. those without posts for the last 3+ years) will also be transferred to the new archive thus saving precious and expensive space on the new server. Brief technical details (for the tech minded):- The corruption of the old MS Access database led to a loss of data integrity which in turn meant that the table relationships were completely ineffective. While it is probably technically possible to restore the missing data to the new forum it was simply not practical. Accordingly the data was exported to MySQL and a new "read only" forum created reading that data using PHP. Chris
	Chris Davis, Site Administrator Co-ordinator, Sand Lizard Captive Breeding Programme (RETIRED)