You'll have noticed that we have been away for several days; this is an unprecedented event in an unprecedented time.
Since 2007, we have had no more than 2-3 hours downtime so the events of the last few days have been extraordinary.
Our service provider ThenMedia requested their supplying Data Centre to perform an additional backup task, which they carried out on Thursday (12 March). Unfortunately the Data Centre made an error while doing so which, by the end of Saturday (14 March), caused ThenMedia's core server to crash and all their sites to go down. During Sunday they attempted to restore this server but, in doing so, compounded the problem with a further error which corrupted its entire contents. Last Monday, 16 March, ThenMedia therefore had to begin reconstructing the server from scratch.
All is now well and ThenMedia have been having strong words with their supplier who, up to now, had provided an exemplary service.
We apologies to all our users and thank you for your patience and forbearance. We are all now in need of multiple means of maintaining communication with each other so please continue to send in your stories, requests and comments as always.
Thank you and best wishes,
The Webteam