I’ve wasted the entire morning on the Message Board, which, I am sorry to say, is not what it once was. 
All of my posts have been erased, which also wiped out the links to those topics from the index.
Techie Alert
MySQL apparently has a bug in it that affects message boards from time to time. Early this morning it affected mine. I woke to discover that my board was down. After hours of posting for tech support and Googling, I found the answer and repaired the corruption of the MyISAM tables. Unfortunately, doing so deleted my user name and all of my posts and topics. Had I created a backup of my forum, I could have restored everything. But I did not create a backup. 
Good grief, am I kicking myself now.
The forum is not the only message board on my site. I also have a wwwboard like the Avon Ladies, Romance and Friends, At the Back Fence, and the Brava Authors. But I’m not impressed with that style of message board (witness the unbelievable amount of Spam that hits the Avon board daily. Yikes!!) so I don’t provide a link to it anywhere on my site.
For now, I’m keeping my forum and adding “Weekly Site Back-ups” to my To-Do list. 
I’m really upset. This sucks. But as I’ve said before, a website is a hell of a lot of work. Is the payoff worth it? Certainly, I think so. But it’s a headache, time-drainer, procrastination tool, and distraction from writing as well. 
((Sylvia)) It sucks when things like that happen!
on October 13th, 2004 at 12:44 pm
{{{Sylvia}}}I lost my forum last week too :sad:- my friend and I put so much work into starting it up, coming up with topics, etc. and we didn’t bother to back it up. No one could figure out what happened, so they used the words “crahs’ and ‘bug.’ Websites ARE a lot of work. And they also make you realize how paranoid you have to be abot backing things up too.
on October 13th, 2004 at 12:49 pm
I love that style of message board. There may be glitches, but I think they are easier to use and more likely to entice lurkers to comment.
on October 13th, 2004 at 9:48 pm
Toni,
). With the other kind of board, messages eventually scroll off the screen and disappear. But you’re right. They are very good for quick, drive-by posting. 
And I’m always trying to find ways to get visitors to delurk.
It’s good to see you again!
If the present board does this again (which unfortunately is highly likely from what I gathered in my research today), I may switch. The thing I like about the forum is the visual confirmation upon registering that prevents spammers and the way old posts are stored forever for infinite access (at least that was the plan before the database table error! Argh!
on October 13th, 2004 at 10:50 pm
((((sylvia)))))
on October 14th, 2004 at 8:36 am