ridecount » whats happened to ridecount?!

So, you wanted to know what happened to ridecount over the last few weeks? Let us attempt to explain here, and answer some of your questions....

Where did ridecount go?

ridecount was offline for approx 3 weeks, beginning mid-May 2008. This was because our server mysteriously went offline, with no explination. We later found out, that our hosting providers UKEasily.co.uk had been having problems with the datacenter landlords. There were rumours that bills had not been paid, but theres been no official explination from anybody about what actually happened, so we've been left to speculate from the bits we do know and have seen.

So you lost your server?

Yes, basically. The landlord where our server was rented from cut off the power and data connections after a dispute with our hosting providers. All without warning also, so we had no time to prepare or save anything from the server before it was cruely cut off from the world.

But what happened to my ridecount profile and all of my ridecounts?!

They unfortunately went with the old server - lost, effectively. We were not given any opportunity to grab our data from the server, especially as we didn't even know what was going on until it was too late!

Did you not keep backups of all the user data?

Backups were automatically generated by the server, yes. But our big mistake was to leave them on the server itself, and not download them safely away from the server. We only ever expected the worst thing to happen to ridecount was to be hacked, or perhaps a database lost in some crazy error or something. We never expected to loose complete access to the server!

So you have nothing at all?

Well we have the odd "offline" backup. But the last one we could find was dated from August 2007. As you can imagine, we've lost a fair bit of new data in the period since, so it was pointless we felt restoring that tiny bit of data we had got. We have used bits of it to rebuild the park and ride database though, which is why we have the website up quicker than we expected.

Great, so I have to start all over again?

I'm afraid so. We really are truely sorry, and so angry :-( We've learnt our lessons (the hard way too!) and we'll ensure we take more regular offline backups this time round. They even get emailed to us just in case we forget to pick them up!

Ok, so, how can I help out?

Well we could really do with your help to rebuild the lost ridecount data. Use the park suggestor tool to add missing parks, and use the 'report missing ride' tool when logging trips to tell us about any rides we've missed or need to remove. We'll do our best to sweep through and tidy up too, but theres a lot of parks we've not visited so we're not really sure ourselves.

Oh no... I just found a problem using the ridecount site?!

Please please please let us know! We've tried to test the site as much as possible since we've moved to our new home, but unfortunately we might have missed a bug here and there. Contact us via the helpdesk (and we can chase it up properly) or even just leave us a quick note and we'll fix it ASAP.

 

Ok, so theres the story. Grusome really. We hope you understand the position we're in, and we hope that you can stick with us to help build a better ridecount for everyone, everywhere.

But if theres anything else you'd like to ask.... just get in touch!