Is cubancigarwebsite.com down for you?

[oliverdst]

19 hours ago, ATGroom said:

Ah, "hopefully not." 

Last time I was relying entirely on their internal backup process, which turned out to be non-existent. After that fiasco one would hope that they have fixed their backup process, and also different to the last time, I now have their premium managed backup service. In theory this should mean that even if they lose the image and don't have a backup, I should be able to rebuild the site with only a few hours of data loss.

If the premium service also turns out to be a lie, then I do have some local backups. It has been a while so there will be some loss, but not total like last time.

In any event, we are now at around 30 hours of outage, which is highly irregular for a professional hosting company.

Last time though they were very up-front about it. The whole process began with an email that basically said "we lost a server, there were no backups, your account is wiped." This time at least they're saying that they're working on it.

Will let you know more when I do!

Working.

Alex, it's not my business but why do you keep working with these guys?

I really can't believe they didn't have a backup in the major loss event and now they, as you said, were 30 hours down. They really look very unprofessional or at least not in the same level CCW is.

I am pretty sure you have strong reasons to be with them.

Maybe it's time for a monthly small fee and with that upgrade your partners and even, why not, you and Trevor make some coin. I am sure many people wouldn't agree pay to use it but maybe you could find some "sponsors" and raffle cigar parafernalia every month as a benefit for the subscribers.

Again, not my business, just trying to help your great work.

[Trevor2118]

On 2/14/2019 at 9:36 AM, oliverdst said:

Maybe it's time for a monthly small fee and with that upgrade your partners and even, why not, you and Trevor make some coin. I am sure many people wouldn't agree pay to use it but maybe you could find some "sponsors" and raffle cigar parafernalia every month as a benefit for the subscribers.

To set the record straight......Alex has full ownership and control of CCW.  My only involvement is as an Honorary Consultant.  

CCW has never been about making a profit, and donations (at least in my time) only partly offset the costs of running and maintaining the website.

This is probably a good time for me to suggest that an annual donation (even to the value of a single cigar ) would be greatly appreciated by Alex.

 

[ATGroom]

On 2/14/2019 at 6:03 AM, gojira said:

It's down again for me.

 

EDIT: works on my cell phone though.

 

Edit again: Can't log in though.

I think that one might be your internet connection or similar... the log in, maybe a password typo? The server is definitely up. There's only one, so it should be global. The log in stuff wouldn't have been affected beyond perhaps everyone having to log in again.
 

On 2/14/2019 at 9:36 AM, oliverdst said:

Alex, it's not my business but why do you keep working with these guys?

I really can't believe they didn't have a backup in the major loss event and now they, as you said, were 30 hours down. They really look very unprofessional or at least not in the same level CCW is.

I guess for some context, CCW has been hosted by the same company since 2008, and I had some of my other sites with them for a few years before that. In that period we've had one catastrophic failure, and perhaps five comparatively minor outages like this 30 hour one, which is pretty much in-line with the 99.99% uptime guarantee that most every host gives you.

Still, one big failure is one too many, and for a while it was my intention to leave after the big one. You may recall that for about six months after the disaster the site was a static HTML clone while I rebuilt the software? Well, suffice to say, the compensation deal came in the form of a lot of credit - enough for several years at a higher tier than I had previously been on. While the site was static though I thought "so what, it's static, if it fails again I can be online somewhere else in two hours" so I left it with them... and then as I bought the site back piecemeal I was more focused on getting it all rebuilt then moving, and by the time it was finished... well, there just wasn't a lot of incentive. I will probably move it elsewhere when the credits run out.

 

On 2/14/2019 at 12:37 PM, Trevor2118 said:

To set the record straight......Alex has full ownership and control of CCW.  My only involvement is as an Honorary Consultant.  

CCW has never been about making a profit, and donations (at least in my time) only partly offset the costs of running and maintaining the website.

This is probably a good time for me to suggest that an annual donation (even to the value of a single cigar ) would be greatly appreciated by Alex.

Thanks Trev, donations always welcome. In fact, over cash I would actually probably prefer single cigars, particularly new releases, regionals, limiteds, and anything that has a grey silhouette on the site. Or really old stuff, where most of the images are 3rd hand scans from Habanos via MRN. Some people send in pictures, which is good, but it just doesn't have the consistency of when I do them myself with my own equipment. I also like to smoke them too, so anything is welcome.?

[gojira]

Reviving an old thread as I have trouble accessing CCW. Is anyone else having problems accessing the website?

[Salomones]

Same here since Yesterday.

[teamrandr]

Same

[Puros Y Vino]

Inaccessible in Toronto as of 4:48PM EST

[Trevor2118]

Alex has been informed but he is currently on his way to Sydney. I will be seeing him today around 11am, with John S. and will update then.

 

[X-Man]

Been on and off for me since Sunday.

[ATGroom]

Have been having some intermittent server issues for the last few days.

I thought I had resolved everything last night, but it seemed like it totally bricked overnight. It's back online now.

A bit inconvenient as I am travelling today, so if it dies again then I may be delayed in trying to figure out whatever the wider issue is. Please bare with me.

In the meantime you can purchase a hardcopy here: https://www.helios.house/books/el-habano-moderno🤪

[TacoSauce]

7 minutes ago, ATGroom said:

Please bare with me.

oooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooooooh! What an invitation! Don't mind if I do!

[joeypots]

It’s up for me now.

[Puros Y Vino]

Up again here.

[ha_banos]

Being very slow at the moment. For example, clicked to pop up the edit dialog....took 36 seconds to appear.

 

[joeypots]

Slow but works ok for me. 

[Puros Y Vino]

It was excruciatingly slow a few hours ago and it still is.  

[ATGroom]

It was fine by the time I saw this this morning.

Over the last few months I've been seeing regular unusually aggressive bot traffic.

My preferred way to handle that would be to make the site perform well enough that it wasn't an issue, so I tried a few things like some code optimisations, optimised all the images, and I increased the capacity of the hosting (I was a bit loath to do this as it meant a corresponding increase in the hosting costs, but it seemed necessary at the time). It all helped, but the site was still regularly being maxed out regularly by bot traffic.

I've now enabled Clouldflare which should in theory solve the problem at the source by blocking the bot traffic outright. Hopefully no further issues.