Back from a long downtime....

[Koby]

Okay, well we have been offline for nearly two weeks, and I had no clue. I've been too busy to get online. :/ Well the problem is now fixed.

Our host locked our account due to a lot of claims that we were sending out spam emails (which we are not). The ONLY emails we send were to the members of this forum (which by signing up you were agreeing to allow us to send updates about the forum, etc to you)... But seems some people were unhappy with that. In which case they could have replied to us asking to be removed from being emailed.. But they decided to try to attack the site by having us closed.

What does this mean? I won't be sending updates about the forum via email anymore to prevent this from happening hence forth as some of the problem was all the bounced emails due to false or no-longer-existing email addresses. So you will have to keep coming here to check on updates instead (SO PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T FORGET US, AND PLEASE BOOKMARK US!!!!)

Anyhow, after no word from my host about why we weren't up after waiting almost two days since emailing them, I finally decided to call them and they unlocked the site and sent this email:

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter to ISPs/webhosts whether your recipients signed up for a particular email or not, or if your account was hacked and the emails were sent out without your consent or permission. The process in which we receive complaints goes as follows:

The recipient of the unsolicited email marks the email as spam.

This spam complaint is sent to their ISP/host.

The host sends this complaint to 1&1.

Nowhere in this process is it ever taken into account if the mail is solicited or not, if the recipient signed up for the email and forgot, if the sender had gotten hacked, or if it is erroneously marked as spam. Unfortunately, this is the nature of the rbl system. Eventually, if an ISP or host continues to receive spam complaints originating from a particular webhost or server (in this case, 1&1) then they will cease with sending complaints to us altogether and just block our mailserver to prevent any further spam from reaching their customers. In this case your email would be blocked, along with thousands of 1&1 customers who utilize the same mail server.

As you can see from this description of the process, it is imperative that we resolve these spam complaint issues before they reach the point of landing 1&1 on an rbl listing.

If you believe that ALL of the email you send out is solicited, then you need to reevaluate your opt-in system as we are receiving many spam complaints from your 1&1 account.

If you arrange the sending of the concerning mails by yourself, please note that you have to use a so called "confirmed opt-in" sytem for your newsletter subscriptions/mass emails to ensure that E-Mails are only sent out to recipents who explicitly agreed to receive them.

When using confirmed opt-in the subscription process looks something like this:

* Somebody asks for an address to be added to the list of recipients

* The system sends an E-Mail to that address with a verification link or code

* Only when that (unique) link is clicked or the code mailed back the address is allowed to be added into the database

You can find further information for example at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt_in_e-mail

Therefore in the future I'll probably setup some kind of mailing list you will be able to join or leave so that we can continue updates, and whenever we start it again, the monthly newspaper, as well..

Heres to having the site back up! xD

-Koby.

[Anooxy]

Your host sucks.

[Kukuk]

Oh man, I thought this place was dead.

Good to see it's not!

[Azirius]

Good to see your site is back up Koby. I have kept coming back now and again to see if you were up and about again, but I haven't been doing so of late.

That is really poor about your host receiving complaints of spam, Members can be so... spiteful at times, but I can't see many of your members (at least the regulars) being so malicious.

But at least you are back up and know the issue, it's better than going off-line and not knowing if there is anything you can do on your end to resolve the matter, though I'm sure this may have cost you some visitors thinking your site had just disappeared!

Also, I seem to find the site somewhat slow loading and sometimes not even loading at all... Any reason for this? (I had a very similar issue at one point, I contacted my host and they rebooted the Apache thing... which I believe runs things like .htaccess)

[† Napoleon Bonaparte]

I too thought that Kametsu died without notifying anyone. lols I'm glad that it was just a downtime and not permanent. Glad to see the forums back up Koby. :>

[Koby]

About it being down sometimes or very slow:

I contacted them shortly after about it, and well they just keep giving me the run around claiming the site is using too much resources. TOO MUCH RESOURCES MY ASS.. how can we be when we are hardly even online 5% of the time I check on it.. O.o

I've contacted a few people about being hosted by them, but no word back.. I can't really afford hosting anymore at the moment so I may just shutdown the sites and make a free forum or something and make the domain go there.. (though that'd be like a very very VERY LAST resort.. O.o )..

Hopefully I hear back from the people I contacted..

[Azirius]

Well, I *could* host you, but you'd only have FTP access no control panel access. Dunno if you are one of the people who would want to risk being hosted on Dreamhost, lol, but I wouldn't make you pay for using my space & bandwidth. If those others don't get in touch, just say, 'kay? :]

[Koby]

Well, I *could* host you, but you'd only have FTP access no control panel access. Dunno if you are one of the people who would want to risk being hosted on Dreamhost, lol, but I wouldn't make you pay for using my space & bandwidth. If those others don't get in touch, just say, 'kay? :]

I'll consider it, still waiting on their reply.

[Crystal Shards]

The Freezing could host you for free, and I know they have a similar deal as I did with TheIcy. It's a points system, and what you do is post a couple times a month and you get your points. I would be willing to give you all my points since I'm only there as an integral part of the community and not as a customer. Therefore you'd basically not need to post very much, if at all, and get hosted with a control panel, MySql, and Fantastico for free.

And of course if all else fails you can always get hosted by me, for free, with all the access you need. I personally would recommend trying The Freezing first but hey. Haha.

~Crystal

[Golden Nightmare]

I can see if Animeyo.net will affiliate with ya. The admins are understanding and such..^^

I'll pm him tonight and see what he says ^^

[† Celestial Yuna]

Zymic.com has free hosting and everything that you need such as unlimited hosting accounts per sign-up, also for each hosting you add, you get five sql databases and five usernames and that's per hosting account you create. Each hosting account get 6000MB webspace and 50,000MB bandwidth. You can add your domain and create sub-domains. Check it out with them if anything, Koby... oh and hi by the way. It's been awhile hasn't it?

[Koby]

Zymic.com has free hosting and everything that you need such as unlimited hosting accounts per sign-up, also for each hosting you add, you get five sql databases and five usernames and that's per hosting account you create. Each hosting account get 6000MB webspace and 50,000MB bandwidth. You can add your domain and create sub-domains. Check it out with them if anything, Koby... oh and hi by the way. It's been awhile hasn't it?

Seems a little "tooo" good to be true.. I took a look around and a couple people were complaining about being offline a lot.. then I read their new announcement of banning all vBulletins from being hosted by them due to so many of their users having nulled versions.

I own a license though, but since that announcement means we wouldn't be able to use the forum.. so I can't use that host. :/

Anyhow good to see your still alive and well.. =P Haven't heard from ya in a long time.

[† Celestial Yuna]

Yeah it does sound "tooo" good, but that's what Scott's using for the time being until he can get Asgard up and running again and we can beat down the high electricity costs here in SA... how are things where you are? Here they are almost more than doubled due to the extreme heat temps. =/

We own a license too and so far Scott's site is still up and running for the time being, but we'll see what happens.. sure things go down but I've yet to see Scott's site go down for a long period of time. Usually they are always updating their stuff and having to redo things and take off other places due to as you said.. the nulled VBulletin boards... but eventually things work out, right?

Yeah.. I'm still around.. if I get time to sit at the computer that is.. so busy with a lot of stuff lately, especially with my wedding coming up and all my relatives and some of my friends from around here are trying to toss in their last minute suggestions.. and here I am about to go out of my mind on just trying to keep it the way Scott and I want it. Who would have ever thought it would be so tough to just plan let alone.. get it all going right. O.o

But not to go off topic.. I'll check around as well and see what I can help out with or find as we've been doing the same thing on with Scott's site for his home job with his designing company.

[Koby]

lol, yeah. Well here electricity isn't that horrible I guess.. but everything else is..Gas is just about $4 a gallon, Ice Cream is about $7.50 a gallon (but I gotta have it, lol) unless you get that walmart brand crap.. and other crap has gone way up...

[† Celestial Yuna]

Hmm, well before we go way off topic here.. maybe a new thread should be posted on something like this as there is a lot on that issue to talk about alone with the way the economy has been going nothing but up. O.o

What do you think and if you do.. you start it as I gotta switch computers. lol

[Crystal Shards]

Dude, thefreezing.com. I'll pay for your points man. I post there enough. They have everything you need too.

~Crystal

[Koby]

Dude, thefreezing.com. I'll pay for your points man. I post there enough. They have everything you need too.

~Crystal

Hello, I joined a while back as Koby.. however it wont let me login..

so I tried to create a new account.. well it wont let me do that either.

So when I try to login to my old account it simply sends me here:

http://www.forum.thefreezing.com/index.php?action=reminder

I did the password reminder thing where it's suppose to send me an email to reset..

but after 2 hours of not receiving the email.. I don't think I'm gonna get it..

So whats going on with the forum? O.o

That is a message I posted there as a guest.. it's not letting me sign in or make a new account.. :/

[Crystal Shards]

I'll ask Gary when I see him online next, which should be in one or two days.

~Crystal

[Koby]

I'll ask Gary when I see him online next, which should be in one or two days.

~Crystal

Thank you.. I just checked thefreezing's hosting packages and their biggest package is not even close to what I'd need. :/

[Crystal Shards]

You can talk to them about getting bigger. I will ask Gary right now. But I'm sure it can be worked out.

What all do you need?

~Crystal