My shared server on Affordablehost continues to have persistent database issues, probably from some other user getting DDOS’d or Slashdotted or running infinitely looping database calls. Twice yesterday, my site has jumped into a time warp, first the MySQL databases resetting back to Nov 26, then the whole site resetting back to Dec 12. Then, right after restoring the last two days of content (the last two days of comments are gone, sorry) — but before I could do backup — the database went down again.

It’s all up and running now, and I’ve gotten my backups, but it just highlights how far downhill Affordablehost has gone since they were bought by dotCanada.

UPDATE: It happened again. The db jumped back a day to Dec 13, so that I regained the comments which I thought were lost, but then I lost the last three posts made since last night. This means that they did have db backup to Dec 13, but did not restore it yesterday, opting instead to restore Dec 12’s.

I’m very tempted to ascribe this oversight to malice, seeing as how they very conveniently erased this entry about their incompetence, but someone once said something about not ascribing to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. I’ve restored the lost sites from my cache, but I doubt that the restored posts will even stay up a day, given Affordablehost’s track record. There have been no notifications of downtime, no apologies, no admission of error at any point. Responses from support have been slow and cryptic. The sooner I can migrate, the better. Easier said than done, but this gives me impetus to hurry up. (“Hurry up” meaning it’ll take about two months to get down to it instead of six. Busy busy busy.)

UPDATE: A message from support: “I did some changed from our end, It should be fixed by 4-8 hrs. Please check after that time.”

Good heavens. I sent off this response:

“NO NO NO, please don’t. Last time you “fixed” it, you reset my whole site back by two days and I had to restore from backup. I’ve already fixed it myself. Now that my site is in exactly the state I want it to be, if you “fix” it now, you’ll probably be using two-day-old backups again. Whatever you’re doing to this server, please make sure it doesn’t affect brownpau.com’s db or static files any more. This site is updated every day, and the rate at which you do backups is not keeping up with that.”

Update: Special Axishost deal for Affordablehost refugees! Axishost is Tina Peters’ new web hosting venture.