By Gabriel Princewill
The Eye Of Media site was down for three days after four days of published material was lost over the Christmas period due to an internal flaw in Godaddy’s back up system combined with technical complexities of word press.
Most perplexing of all in the scenario was how long it took experts to remedy the crisis. Published material between December 20th and December 21st mysteriously disappeared from our site forcing a frantic investigation on Christmas Day as to what caused the sudden problem.
After prolonged discussions with experts from the giant websites organisation, articles were eventually restored to the 20th, leaving days of missing articles unexplained.
Godaddy employees tried in vain to restore articles to the 24th of December after the inexplicable blunder eradicated useful articles published in the build up to Christmas and the new year. We were told to allow 72 hours for the problem to be resolved , but after just over 100 hours of waiting, the lost back up was said to have been restored.
However, the worst was yet to come. The situation deteriorated as the site was completely obliterated on the eve of new year’s eve, sparking panic and despair among members of our team. Godaddy assured us that the material had not been lost and escalated the problem higher up, as more experts were brought on board to try to resolve the problem.
In the face of failed attempts to restore the site to its usual state as the new year beckoned, the period eventually served as a longer holiday period. Uncertainty about the cause of the shutdown led to precautionary measures to abstain from publishing further articles until the root of the problem was fully identified.
The sudden obstruction meant that all our articles originally scheduled for the new year period all had to be abandoned, as full focus turned on the crisis at hand.
FRUSTRATING
This in itself was protracted and frustrating, forcing our organisation to endure the losses and the potentially inevitable knock to credibility that accompanies this type of breakdown.
Courteous representatives of Godaddy, as in the past, gave conflicting accounts of what was causing the problem . The common explanation provided was the size of our data file. However, they all expressed empathy about the situation.
Whilst we had every good reason to assume that the back ups, (the value of which is incorporated in our monthly hosting fee) ought to be guaranteed irrespective of the size of our files. Godaddy suggested we move to a higher business storage plan to accommodate what they said was an expanding site with growing visitors. Their idea is under consideration.
PLUGINS
A debate about the potential effect a number of plugins set up in some segments of the back end could have had in causing the disturbance soon emerged . Our own internal developer insisted this not to be an excuse for the extended problem that saw the site ineffective for the whole of Christmas and the new year.
Godaddy said that in this day of technology, the issues that occurred can happen . Godaddy has agreed to compensate us for the loss and inconvenience.