Data != Nature [?]
Friday, 17 October 2008
I little note to the friendly readers of Dataisnature. This site may well be in a precarious position. The hosting company who I registered this domain with 4 years ago seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet leaving a poorly maintained, non-functional automated system for administration and billing. A little while back I noted I had some other domains/hosting with this company that needed to be renewed. The billing system would not allow me to renew the domains online, which resulted in numerous tickets being raised to rectify the problem. No reply. More tickets, many phones calls and still no contact. The result is that two of my domains have expired and I could do nothing but watch as they did. Allthough the Dataisnature domain is registered until 2009 unfortunately the hosting for Dataisnature is on the point of expiration.
It turns out that the company I’ve used in the UK are a reseller for domains and hosting from Enom based in the US. At this present time I’ve sent Enom a few mails to explain my predicament, who knows, fingers crossed. At the very least they might let me buy back my lapsed domains and give me access to domain transfer keys.
If this site disappears at any point know that I will do my best to get it back online as I’ve put a lot of work into it over the years and know from positive emails that many people use this site as a resource for research of their own.
As nothing is certain at present I’m going to choose to carry on posting regardless.
Dataisnature
ps. If anyone has any ideas about how I can resolve this issue I’d be happy to know about them.
No. 1 — October 17th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I had this happen with a host once; it’s a bizarre experience. I was using another company for registration, so I didn’t have exactly the problem you have, though.
Sorry I don’t have any specific advice to give, but I thought I’d just say good luck, and we’ll be here when you come back if there’s a discontinuity; I’m sure it’ll turn out OK for ya, eventually.
No. 2 — October 17th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Paul, I hope you can resolve these issues soon or (more realistically) move to a more reliable host. The online digital art world needs your archives so hopefully you don’t disappear for too long if there is a transition period!
No. 3 — October 17th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Cheers steven, greg.
Without doubt once i get hold of the information i need to make a transfer of domains/hosting that will done. I do hope to get that info from the main registrar of those domains, including this one! There just may well be an outage at some point. You never know it might just prompt me into redesigning the layout, which is ancient, or even adding new features :)
No. 4 — October 17th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
You might do well to contact Scott Beale who runs http://laughingsquid.net/ out of San Francisco in the US. He’s been in the webhosting and url business a long time and could possibly help you migrate your site to his servers, or at least offer advice on how to resolve your situation.
Also, he’s a super nice guy and runs a fun blog.
No. 5 — October 17th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Thanks a lot michael, It says on his site ‘We are open source geeks who are here to rescue you from the endless void of impersonal and unreliable web hosting’ Sounds like my kinda show.
No. 6 — October 17th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
oh hells no !
don’t let this valuable archive die
seriously thanks
ps I sent a mail to about the generation Z exhibition in paris check it out http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/deller/index.html
No. 7 — October 18th, 2008 at 9:17 am
This makes me a sad panda. This is one of my favorite regular blogs, I’m always checking it for updates and going through your older posts. Don’t die!
No. 8 — October 18th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Id suggest doing a backup of your whole site, that way, at the very least, you can put it up under a different domain.
Good luck, we dont want data is nature to wither and die!
No. 9 — October 19th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Sad panda! ahahah Man, you should back everything up and move away soon as possible. Do you have FTP access? Which is your CMS?
No. 10 — October 19th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
ta guys, yeah got backup, need to wrestle those EPP domain transfer codes out of the system somehow before any kind of migration. Davi i used wordpress administered via cpanel on the current hosting.
No. 11 — October 20th, 2008 at 5:25 am
Hey Paul,
I found this nice step-by-step on moving wordpress from one hosting provider to another, while keeping the domain name the same:
http://cormacmoylan.com/blog/software/how-to-transfer-your-wordpress-blog-from-one-host-to-another-host.eire
Basically, the gist seems to be — backup db, copy all content / template files (entire wordpress folder basically using either through ssh into the system, or ftp), make a few changes in the settings, and then install wordpress in the new host, and then import the db again… repoint the domain.
I recommend going with a more known and stable hosting provider. I have used three of the four mention on the wordpress site (and all were pretty good):
http://wordpress.org/hosting/
Best,
Soum
No. 12 — October 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
well, if your site runs on WordPress, there are existing plugins that will give you a proper database backup, and file backup as well, so i just hope this is the case. Otherwise, look for your blog’s engine community help asking for a way to perform a global backup (database + uploaded media files).
good luck ! if u need help, feel free to email me.
As alternative hosting, check out dreamhost.com . They’re big, so strong, and cheap.
No. 13 — November 5th, 2008 at 10:05 am
The domain marked as owned and administrated by you so afaik you can transfer to another registry without involving your current one. Might take a few faxes etc…
No. 14 — November 6th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Soum, Alexander
Thanks its wordpress and finally i get the keys from Enom, it backed-up, so just gotta find a little time to transfer the hosting.
thanks for the tips!