Any idea what happened to Libera Dreams Forum?

[TullyBascombe]

So........... What happened to the forum for the past week?

[Yorkie]

Hi Tully.

Not 100% sure but I think an error occurred in the software that runs the forum. Unfortunately, Paul the Admin has not been around for a while and our attempts to contact him failed.

Fortunately, we had someone who was able to track down & contact the domain holder who was able to give them access to fix the fault.

We just hope that Paul is safe and well and will return in time.

[JimmyRiddle]

Well done to all those who worked hard to bring the forum back online. I only had brief email exchanges with Kevin E. back in 2006-8 when many were flocking from Yahoo Groups (Angel Voices - now redundant) to this forum. We have built up a valuable and informative resource here over the years, so it's great that everything is accessible again. Hope Paul is fighting fit and well.

[andmar]

I'm really glad the forum is back. Many thanks to everybody involved in restoring it! Good job!

Now I think how to prevent such sittuation from happening in the future. In my opinion there should be at least two independent web admins who are capable of acting in such cases and who are also responsible for regularly backing up all the forum data.

I'm too new here to be able to know/suggest who that might be. But please, let us have this issue solved. Otherwise, sooner or later we'll get into such trouble again.

Of course there is also the financial side. I have no idea who pays for the domain registration and for the hosting, but I'm sure we all appreciate this a lot. It certainly isn't a huge amount of money but still someone must pay it regularly.

From my side I can say, I'm ready to participate in those costs if it is needed. I'm sure many of us are as well.

[TullyBascombe]

I'd be up for helping with the cost though I wouldn't be much good at maintaining the website. Someone should definitely get in touch with Paul to check up on him. Does anyone have his email address?

[swalker2001]

Hi all--

Here's an update and answers to some of the questions posted here.

Several people have reached out to Paul and have not heard from him. We all hope he is well and want him to know that all his hard work in keeping this site alive for the past years is appreciated. Hopefully he can return soon as the site admin but for now we have at least gained control for the community.

There was a database problem with the web host and that has been resolved for now, but some upgrades will be necessitated in the near future to prevent this from happening again. The problem was not related to the bill being paid; the benefactor who helped get the site off the ground in the first place hasn't wavered in his financial support.

Right now I am the web admin and, to set everyone's mind at ease, I am 100% capable of managing a site like this as I have more than 15 years of experience with various websites including phpBB (many versions ago however). But I agree it's in the best interests of the community to have more than one person in possession of "the keys to the site" as has been suggested both here and on Twitter. If anyone knows of a person with web admin experience, especially phpBB (not as a board admin as we are fine in that area, but on the web host side), please let me know or put the person in touch with me here, on Twitter (@stephenewalker) or Facebook (swalker2001).

The good news coming from the interruption in service is that members of the libera-dreams community heard from people far and wide, including within the Libera organization itself, that this site is an invaluable resource and it would be considered a tragedy if it was lost. We didn't lose anything during the downtime, and a complete backup was taken yesterday and is being stored off-site. Backups will become a regular thing.

KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE

Steve

[Yorkie]

Thanks Steve for tracking down the mysterious benefactor & working with him to get the site back up & running. Unfortunately, I have no experience in managing a website so I'm no help on that front.

I'll keep trying to contact Paul & hopefully I can confirm that he is well and able to rejoin us at some point.

I would also be willing to contribute to the the expenses for running the website, I think Mark has been holding up that end for long enough!

[paul]

Hi,

Thanks to all for your concerns, I am well and still here. I can only apologize for my absence, but I have checked from time to time that Libera Dreams is still running. I noticed that there was a problem, so acted to take a full backup of the site and its data for preservation. It's been difficult to find time to maintain, and after its outage, to fix problems due to very intense work commitments. During this pandemic, work has intensified significantly. I've been planning a major overhaul of the site to bring it up to date. The new update to Libera Dreams is now work in progress, I'm performing the upgrade offline, so downtime will be very minimal.

A big thank you to swalker2001 for stepping in and helping to restore Libera Dreams.

I hope everyone is well and staying safe.

Paul.

[Yorkie]

Paul! Thank goodness you are ok, we were worried about you. Good to have you back.

[Surpinto]

Thank you, Steve, for stepping up and helping us out in this crazy situation. Paul, I am very glad to hear you are ok; and I am thankful for your continuing to keep this site updated and operating.

[filiarheni]

So glad all is fine! Many thanks to everyone involved!

Paul, you made us pretty nervous. You're not constantly around, that's true, but in corona times, strange thoughts can come up and it felt a bit like a roller coaster. I'm happy to see you here again.

[swalker2001]

Welcome back Paul! So happy to know all is well and keeping busy.

[TullyBascombe]

It's good to hear that Paul is OK. I'd hazard to say that in these times too much work is preferable to the alternative of no work so no need to apologize. I appreciate the work you've done to keep this place going and the same goes to you Steve.

[andmar]

Paul, it's so good to hear you are OK. With you and Steve the forum is in good hands again.

BTW, do you think it would be possible to add a SSL certificate to the server, so that the site could use the encrypted https protocol for data transfer?

[paul]

Paul, it's so good to hear you are OK. With you and Steve the forum is in good hands again.

BTW, do you think it would be possible to add a SSL certificate to the server, so that the site could use the encrypted https protocol for data transfer?

Thank you,

It is now secured with a Let's Encrypt certificate. I believe this was enabled by the hosting company, I will have to discuss this with Steve.