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  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

Donations

Morturn said:
That’s, that means a lot to us. Much appreciated.

There is a lot happing in the background with regular attempts by spammer to set up fake accounts for fraudulent activities. A lot of it originating in Russia, China etc.
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Unsurprising, I guess Morturn, but still disappointing. I donated by bank transfer (details in first post) so all ok.
 
My donation check (cheque) has cleared our bank account! If you have not donated, please try to send something. This is a great place with great folks, a lot of us spend multiple times on it daily. In fact, it's how I start my day, a cup of tea and my iPad!
Thank you to everyone for all that you do and contribute, especially the learning experience!
 
This is a first time for me since I took over the running of this Forum over 20 years ago, I am sorry to say that funds that are raised by donations has nearly run out of money, the last 12 months have been very costly to keep going as it not like Facebook sites, we actually own our server, which means we don't have anyone restricting our content or telling us what we can or can not do.
Of course we lost a lot of funding when Covid pandemic meant we couldn't hold our meet ups where a lot of income was raised by raffles etc.
We need to raise money so that Warren , my son , who is our guru and dedicated to the day to day running of the site and fixes things.
I know that most funds are raised by some members who donate on a regular basis, and for that I really am really grateful.
Please could you come to our aid so we all can carry on enjoying this special site.
Don't forget (every little helps )
Thank you in advance.
Jim a.k.a postie.
 
just to add my 2p to things, this is site is massive you may not think it is but it is.

We use over a TB in traffic each and every month, we have close to a million posts on here (ignore the stats they are wrong i need to fix that)
there are around 70GB and growing at a huge pace of images (this doesn't include the forum itself)

Picture just to show the posts and this is still going as i repair the site ready for dumping it to the new server the weekend.

1713283337156.png

the server runs 24/7 and this does have a hit on the hardware as there is no "downtime" its operational not in power saving mode "ALL THE TIME"
standard pc equipment can't keep up with our use for obvious reasons.

We run our own server due to the vastness of the site it would be VERY expensive to run it externally and as Postie (Dad to me) says we then get to control it on our terms. The connection it uses alone which is a dedicated 1000mbps business line is over £60 a month (I cover this as I use it as well)

Then there are licensing costs on top of all the above.
 
postie said:
This is a first time for me since I took over the running of this Forum over 20 years ago, I am sorry to say that funds that are raised by donations has nearly run out of money, the last 12 months have been very costly to keep going as it not like Facebook sites, we actually own our server, which means we don't have anyone restricting our content or telling us what we can or can not do.
Of course we lost a lot of funding when Covid pandemic meant we couldn't hold our meet ups where a lot of income was raised by raffles etc.
We need to raise money so that Warren , my son , who is our guru and dedicated to the day to day running of the site and fixes things.
I know that most funds are raised by some members who donate on a regular basis, and for that I really am really grateful.
Please could you come to our aid so we all can carry on enjoying this special site.
Don't forget (every little helps )
Thank you in advance.
Jim a.k.a postie.
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Jim, consider it done by snail mail as always.
And thank you for all that you and Warren do to make our lives a little more enjoyable!
 
postie dosh sent to you by paypal a moment ago not much but all helps
 
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  • Appreciate
Reactions: RRJ
Jim
I am sure all members are sorry to hear there are problems and would be glad to help. From what Warren has said it would appear that there are problems with the hardware. It is important to the survival of the forum that this is remedied. Also important that there is a reliable good backup separate from the main machine , so that any problems in the future are minimised (It would seem that now, presumably because of compression , photos from the backup seem to show less detail). I hope you will be able to ensure that you can restore the forum to full working
 
Made donation via debit card to PayPal I hope this works.
Really missed the forum when it was down. to quote Joni Mitchell ' you don't know what you've got till it's gone ' Thanks Jim and Warren.
Carolann
 
Donated via Paypal.

Just a thought, maybe the 'Donation' button on the front page could be be made a little larger/visible to not escape attention.

I'd also like to think members who benefit from help with photo restoration and genealogy ( especially from Janice & MWS ) can also remember the 'Donation' button.

Many thanks to the BHF team.
 
as i said weekl
mikejee said:
Jim
I am sure all members are sorry to hear there are problems and would be glad to help. From what Warren has said it would appear that there are problems with the hardware. It is important to the survival of the forum that this is remedied. Also important that there is a reliable good backup separate from the main machine , so that any problems in the future are minimised (It would seem that now, presumably because of compression , photos from the backup seem to show less detail). I hope you will be able to ensure that you can restore the forum to full working
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Always has been mike, traditionally it been done 3am Sunday every single week as an offsite backup. Daily backups were taken as well on a sperate drive but it was a catastrophic hardware failure that resulted in all parts going.

images are the same as they were but yes being compressed down a HTTPS tunnel to "cache" until i move to the new server.

we lost a week not the forum and i think that's worth baring in mind.
 
So the full offsite backup is still there, and the images will be back to full size when the new system is in place?. Had not realised that. Is the reason offsite backups were not daily a capacity problem?
 
warren said:
it will be what we call a lift and shift
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oky doky. mr shifter :grinning:

What does lift and shift mean?
What is a benefit of using a lift and shift approach AWS?
Most migrations happen in phases to minimize risk and speed up time to production. The most common approach is to lift-and-shift (also known as "rehost") an application and its data with as few changes as possible.
 
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