June 2019 downtime incident discussion and information regarding the MV Plugin database

EDIT: SERVICE HAS BEEN RESTORED AS OF 6 JULY 2019. THE FOLLOWING DISCUSSION REGARDING THE INCIDENT HAS BEEN ARCHIVED FOR THE SOLE USE IN THE PROVISION OF INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES REGARDING THE CIRCUMSTANCE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DOWNTIME. PLEASE ACCEPT FULL APOLOGIES ON BEHALF OF THE COMMUNITY FOR THE PROSPECT OF WHATEVER INCONVENIENCES THIS MAY HAVE CAUSED.

I don't know what's up but the mvplugins database is completely offline. Seeing that it's listed in the pinned topics I'd have this analyzed on first opportunity to see what happened in order to avoid confusion (and in case it helps to explain it appears to be a condition 404, which if anyone knows a thing about webmaster subjective points means we have a major problem on our hands).

Also, in case there's a better place in the forums to mention this feel free to move it for me. This is literally my first thought of where to post this because of what's going on. (And if this also ends up being the equivalent of another REFMAP I'd seriously consider updating the information like STAT.)

The MV database isn't maintained by us, so there is nothing we can do about it I'm afraid.

Yeah... aside from some kind of update notice or Internet Archive link in place of what's there now I don't know what else in this case. Again, I literally noticed it this week - as I said it's like what happened with REFMAP but not as extreme since the host service is still there. But an official notice was the minimum of my request to begin with so I'm not concerned about the rest if that's beyond the known community extent.

What is the URL for the website in question? I can attempt to contact whoever maintains it about the issue.

@Windows i7 If you go to the first post in the thread with the link in it, you will see the names of the Members who originally set up that site. I have no way of knowing if one of them was responsible for keeping the site going or not.

I've checked, and the domain is not yet expired - so it isn't a problem from that side.
It is also very unlikely that the site itself was updated this week because it was set up to handle everything automatically.

So best guess? PHP-version was too old and expired.
I got several warnings about that in the last weeks for a few of my sites that my hoster will shutdown support for PHP 5.6 and I would either have to update to PHP7.x or pay extra for continued support of 5.6
The last warning for that was a week ago and since I didn't use that part of my website (it was only a test) I simply deleted it, but I had compatibility problems with running the functions before that.

Most likely the people responsible had ignored the warnings, the hoster now upgraded to 7.2 and the code for the old site no longer works.
But since the admin contact went over a domain protection service you can't even contact the admin directly...
Someone else can try to go through the system, it's at
https://www.name.com/contact-domain-whois/mvplugins.com
I don't have time for this.

Sounds like it's probably what happened since A record www. doesn't seem to have had DNS turned on on CF, and is pointing toward what I bet is the server where the site is hosted at, which is DreamHost...

And searching "DreamHost" + "PHP" on google = https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021966571-PHP-5-6-and-7-0-removed-from-the-panel

Doh... there goes the neighborhood.

I knew this could possibly turn out similar to how the REFMAP incident played out, but still...

I'm saddened every time someone mentions REFMAP or RPG Revolution :(
I also never got over Dark Dominion closing around 2002/3 either.

Well, it's certainly not any easier when you end up with yet another hot carcass on the pyre. Was afraid of this kind of thing when I first noticed what happened, but it still doesn't change the facts of the matter... especially when they're at the root of yet another loss.

Yup... When RRR was acquired it died almost right away and I was active until 2014 when it kicked the bucket, yes RMN is a replacement for RRR but not as fun. It was a shame, it became what GamingW was back in 2002-2005 (I joined RRR in 2005).

I'm starting to show my age...

Hi. I have contacted the other guys who were part of the mv plugins team. They aren't online right now, but should hopefully see my message sometime later today. Will let you guys know more once I do..

Peace :*
~Dekita

I'm working on it, will have it up in a few hours.

It's back up!
It went down because dreamhost migrated it to a different server and our cloudflare was not updated to reflect the new IP address. When we did update it, it was still not working, but not because of the PHP version. Instead of trying to figure out what was wrong with dreamhost's server, I moved it to digital ocean that I have been using for a while now and is much more reliable and gives me more control.

Quoting this in a new reply as a BUMP

Confirmed. Motion submitted to archive discussion.

Also, we really don't need to bump things with reckless abandon, plus there's a chance that it may be against some of our ethics and practices around here (especially if it's been under 72 hours since without regard for the intent... and which this was obviously not).

@BreakerZero I've reverted your original post to include the original discussion so that this post is not confusing. There is no need to edit out the original discussion, it only makes the post confusing for those reading it in the future.