The big news over here at the WPS Website Department was that our site went offline on Friday. We chalked it up to a maintenance issue on the homepage, but what really happened was far more complicated. Basically, the company that used to host womensprosoccer.com (we haven’t used them since Sept) never bothered to forward the messages from the server that the files were corrupt and data backup was failing. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that 4 months of data on a failing server won’t hold up for long… so on December 26th: CRASH!
Here’s the rundown…
Friday: The League and Team websites went down around 12pm ET today. Karyn was in contact with the hosting company since then as they ran through a number of tests and attempted fixes on our server to bring it back online. Our server is now back online, but all of our website files were corrupted.
Saturday: After testing both drives on our web server, Karyn learned that one hard drive was completely corrupted and the other hard drive was unstable. She began the process of replacing and re-installing both hard drives.
Sunday: Karyn was able to restore the SQL database off of a Dec. 21 backup and the database looked to be fine, minimal content missing. Next, we had to re-install the Content Management System (Ektron).
Monday: The League and Team websites went back online at 7:45am ET this morning.
Props to K-Lush for backing up the server on her own 500GB on Dec 21st (she just “had a feeling”, how crazy is that?!?), and for her greuling work all weekend to get the site up and running again. So much for a Christmas vacation, K. I’m definitely buying the first round when you get back out here to sunny San Fran. Also, big thanks are in store to the MLS web team for helping Karyn, and Ektron support for the latest install of the CMS. And finally to all the WPS teams for being both patient and supportive throughout the process. And for understanding when we said all your HP images are lost. Hopefully you saved them some place.
Save the website, save the world. Sometimes when you’re working through the weekend, a little humor goes a long way.
My blog, Soccer Science: The Neurotic Genius of Soccer in the Digital Age, takes a look at the new media technologies that are revolutionizing the way we see the beautiful game. I'm a web geek, former college coach, industry professional and sports fan. 
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I was so sad when I went to the page and there was nothing on it.