Well, wasn't I just so happy this morning when I received an email from my host saying that, unlike what they told me when I first purchased my hosting, that they did not keep backups of my website since it's on a dedicated server (don't flip out). So to spare you the intense :censored:ing and screaming that went on this morning - the solution has been planned out. First, I do keep monthly backups, so I have one from the end of September, so the loss will be minimal. Basically, if you created your passport before the end of September, you really won't be affected. All the credits are still in tact on Revenue Universe, so they will be re-applied when the site gets back up.
However, the messiness comes in when we get to credits on a site you didn't register for. For example if you registered for gadgets in October we'll still have your credits for the site, but not your referral. So I am relying heavily on faith here. When you login to any site we will prompt you and ask for the number of the referral that referred you on ALL sites that were affected. If you don't know please contact your referral immediatley to find out. Anybody who is found to lie about this in order to scam someone will be placed on hold indefintley.
As for users who created a passport after the backup, it is a bit trickier. We are going to create a credit request form where you can enter the offer you did, the date you did it, and, if you have you're old passport number (the number at the end of your ref link, if you have this you will save us a lot of work and you will get credit almost immediatley after). They will be reveiwed within 24 hours and credited if applicable. People found submitting fake credit requests will be put on hold. **IMPORTANT** ONLY submit one if you had credit in your account, not if you completed the offer and didn't get credit. If that's the case, then you'll need to submit a no credit report.
On the note of no credit reports, if you had submitted one you will need to resumbit one, but they will be answered in a much timlier manner this time since if you got credited we already are aware of it. Also, this gives those who submitted them incorrectly a second chance to resubmit the correct information. The same goes for support tickets.
The last and messiest issue goes to the orders. I am going to have to manually mark all of your orders as shipped if they were shipped sometime between the backup and now. DO NOT TRY TO ORDER AGAIN - you will go on hold. HOWEVER, if you ordered a preorder that wasn't shipped (aka Nintendo Wii or PS3) you will need to order that again.
Needless to say, sadly I am not going to be able to ship out gifts today. Of course I am extremley upset about this, but am thankful that we were able to at least not loose too much info (most of the credits are for existing users, so really all that's generally required on your part is to re-enter your referral or have your referrals re-enter you as their ref).
All these special things that are inplace to help recover the information lost will be in place until November 30th, so that gives you a month to contact your referrals and let them know what they need to.
I am REALLY sorry about this, and when the site gets back up we will now have hourly backups created of the database to prevent this from ever happening again. I know you guys are probably going to be upset, but it really was beyond my control. And this is why you never want to trust your hosting company
Sorry again,
-Peter
EDIT: As for an eta, I'm hoping to get it all up tonight. The new features may not all be done yet, but the site will be up.
EIDT 2: I almost forgot, once the orders get sorted out, I will be shipping daily until Monday for all new orders to compensate for having to wait.
EIDT 3: I recommend contacting all your refs now and have them try to find their ref ids/passport numbers - this is the quickest way to solve the problem. Check PMs, signature banners, etc for this number!
31-10-06, 02:20 AM
