Dear Friends of the Digger Archives:
On Monday, Sept. 18, 2006, 1PlanHost.com, the web provider for the Digger Archives, after months of deteriorating service, finally seems to have pulled the plug on their large customer base. For two days, no one knew what was happening. There had been no announcement from 1Plan. Web hosting review boards lit up with messages from disgruntled customers (see sample links below.) Finally, many of us who had originally come to 1Plan together (Planet Drum, Artemaya, Georoots, BearBytes) decided to cut our losses and find new shores where we could anchor our webs.
Where are we at?
The first thing on the agenda was to set up new channels of communication for the ongoing conversations that were interrupted with 1Plan's departure. The first such was a new Guestbook, but after a couple days, the spam got to be ridiculous. Just as we replaced the old guestbook with the SnitzForum four years ago, we now have a spanking new Digger Forum:
Free Frame of Reference (discussion forum)
Come and join in the talk! See you around the corner.
If you would like to drop me a line, please send it to yellobug at pacbell dot net. Check back soon!
Eric
25 Sept 2006
Allaying fears.
Several people have written me expressing concern about the content that was in the Digger Archives site. (Several even mentioned they had been planning on using specific documents for research soon.)
Let me allay those fears.
Ever since learning how to create web sites, I have followed the philosophy of having "shadow webs." These are duplicates of the live or production web site. The shadow web is where all the development takes place. Rest assured that the Digger Archive's shadow web is fine, and is backed up in numerous locations.
So why don't I just republish the old site?
I think it has to do with always looking for something new to try out. The new web host, Lunarpages.com, has numerous site tools, such as content management systems. I really want to try out CMS with the Digger Archive. If I just republish everything now, I know I will have less incentive to try out something new.
Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Feel free to join in the discussion on the Digger Forum.
20 Sept 2006
Julian left a note in the Guestbook asking for the recovery of two of the Digger Papers, so I've imported from the old site the full text, and specifically the two articles he requested:
Trip Without A Ticket
Post-Competitive, Comparative Game of Free
City
These don't appear as "pretty" as they used to on the old site, because I still have not re-created the site theme, but what's important are the words, eh?
20 Sept 2006
For anyone who wants a glimpse of the havoc that 1PlanHost.com caused for all the 100s of customers whose sites *poof* disappeared overnite earlier this week, here are some pages that contain samples of the irate messages people are leaving all over the 'Net (some of the messages date from the earlier buyout of 1PlanHost by WebHostPlus, which is when the problems began earlier this year):
http://www.geekcertified.com/display-94.html
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=505737
http://forums.hostsearch.com/showthread.php?t=1786
http://www.whplawsuit.com/ (These guys purport to be gathering potential class-action lawsuit plaintiffs, but this is a minimalist site at best.)