22 April 2010

SAT3 Cable is undergoing network maintenance - Delays and connection issues may be experienced.

18 April 2010

Foxweb hosting recovers...

The situation as briefly explained to me was that a dispute had arisen between Foxweb and a former Foxweb employee, who went and deleted the Foxweb server data basically wiping out all the Foxweb websites, hosted websites, development websites and backups as well as the associated mail services. This just two days before they were scheduled to leave for a SEO conference in Europe.

I was asked by Foxweb to step in and take over the hosting which I have done. It appears that the disgruntled ex-employee, having crashed all the websites, has been approaching the inconvenienced Foxweb customers with offers of hosting. Foxweb will no doubt give you the details when they return from a conference in Europe, that is when flights eventually resume. Until then they are quite literally trapped.

Morals and ethics aside, if you wish to transfer your site please contact me or Daniel Brand (the legally registered owner of the Foxweb hosted domain names) directly, and I shall endeavor to expedite such a move in any way I can. Under the circumstances, unauthorised website transfer requests cannot be entertained. For those who have transferred sites to other hosting services, please contact me or Foxweb to arrange for the transfer ownership of your domain name record. I can only apologize on behalf of these two companies for putting you in this unenviable position but do suggest that in future you make good backups of your sites, and ensure that you are the registered owner of your domain names.

For my existing clients and those who choose to remain with UntiedArtists, I promise to maintain the standards of hosting, administration and support that have been the hallmark of my very specialised boutique web service over the last 4 years.

For the past 10 days (working 18 hour days), I have recovered, restored and rebuilt many of the Foxweb domains and websites (over 70 at the last count) from data recorded on Foxweb computers, but without access to the versions currently being held hostage on the old webservers.

Getting the sites and mail back up and running was further complicted by Uniforum (the people who run all the co.za lookup services) also having a network failure. In all a torrid time for everyone concerned. But I have managed to get most of the sites up and running again. The mail services are functioning perfectly, the 'spam filters' have dealt with a massive increase in unwanted spam and attempted hacking but by now have learned what regular traffic looks like so the '***SPAM***' notifications on emails should have settled down to fairly acceptable levels.

However I don't have many contact numbers, nor do I have all the details of the email accounts and their associated passwords. Willie Brand of Foxweb did give me a few but it looks like not all of them are working properly. If you can please send me you details and a contact number I'd not only really appreciate it, but will be able to restore additional services.

If you have any questions or problems I can be reached on 073 216 9174 (24 hrs if neccessary) or webmaster@untiedartists.org, webmaster@foxweb.co.za.

Once again I can only apologise on behalf of both parties in this regard. I do trust this is satisfactory,

Yours sincerely

Alan (Torch) Goss
webmaster@untiedartists.org