You can haz Forge Hub
Work little men, bring that FH server back up!
Well it's safe to say that Forge Hub is now back up and we're here to stay! It's been a long weekend and a lot of work to bring the server back up. Now Forge Hub is returning better than ever. A lot has happened since we first went down on Friday so I feel that it is only fair that we fill everyone in who is involved in our community. Seeing this prepare for the most epic news post ever.
The Dreaded Downtime
Curse thee! Certainly you have notice that Forge Hub has had an up and down syndrome since Friday. The reason for this being our original host decided to drop Forge Hub from their server due to excessive bandwidth usage and traffic. We had to execute an emergency move to a new server which meant that protocol went right out the door. Time was not on our side and we had to move out immediately and pray we could get the new server online. A decision then followed to move to a new host that we had stumbled upon about a month earlier. Within about 36 hours we had accomplished the move to the new server. Unfortunately things took a turn for the worse.
The new server decided to pull a fast one on us. The owners claimed that we were using too much of the server's resources in the move so they decided to shut us down and hold onto our money. Regrettably we had submitted payment for a full year in exchange for a mere eight hours of up time. So once again we had to track down another server, but this time we wouldn't make the same mistake. It was time to do what we should have been doing in the first place, use your contacts. After messaging many influential community members, Twilkey of GamingTV.us directed us towards the hosting company that many of the largest Halo communities do business with. By Sunday night we were ready to execute the move once again. Fortunately we were better prepared this time.
Monday was interesting to say the least, well not really. On Monday the Forge Hub Staff played the waiting game as we sat intensely watching our monstrous database being slowly trickled onto the new server. Not much to tell about Monday, other than it was about as exciting as watching paint dry on a hot summer day. After that dreadful situation passed, Tuesday was upon us and the upload was done. The server popped online and all was good. Or so we thought. Unfortunately some files were corrupted in the upload. I noticed this when I got home, and I proceeded to place the server in maintenance mode until they issue was fixed. Well now we are back and more epic than ever. Currently the server is in a healthy state and should be able to handle amount of traffic Bungie decides to throw at us. This means no more connection errors at peak times!
Donations
Forge Hub would like to take a moment to thank all of those who donated when we were in trouble. Every dollar did help. We did originally have enough money to pay for new hosting, but our first attempt at purchasing a new server put us at a loss. These donations are appreciated. Donations and ad money help to pay for our hosting which keep Forge Hub online and healthy. Also Forge Hub has become to assemble contests and tournaments with some attractive prizes. All donations and ad money go directly back into Forge Hub to benefit the community. This will be talked about further when I address the 1v1 tournament that Forge Hub will be hosting very soon.
Technical Glitches
As many of you so kindly point out to us their were a few technical glitches when we came back online today. Well all of them have been addressed and fixed for the most part. The first issue that we encountered was the absence of over 3000 registered users. After we loaded the site up on the new server almost half of our users disappeared from our server. A small period of confusion followed as many people didn't know what to do since their account was missing in action. In this period many individual reregistered their accounts. Fortunately for them we were able to restore their original accounts. Forge Hub's member database is now back to its original number before the move started Friday.
Unfortunately there were some new users that registered in the small window of time when Forge Hub went back online today and when we restored the 3000 members who were MIA. Now that we have restored the database any record of these new users has been erased. If you registered during this time you will have to reregister. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it was important that we restore the thousands of members who were erased.
In addition to the user database being partially corrupted so were all the avatars that had been uploaded to our server over a two month period. Luckily for the users who had uploaded an avatar for profile use, we have indeed restored them.
The Mysterious Twilkey? Not Really
We know we mentioned him earlier, but some of you may still be asking "Who is this guy?" Twilkey is a devote Halo community member that many of the Forge Hub Staff have known for years. Twilkey currently works with GamingTV.us and other community websites so he knows what he is doing so he has come to Forge Hub to help us out. He will be helping with server maintenance and fixing bugs that occur. Basically his job is to make sure what happened this weekend will never happen again.
Thank God It's Forgeday
We do realize that TGIF #5 was held this Friday despite the server outage. The event was indeed a success. We will save the details for tomorrow though. Although the server was down when the recap is normally posted, we have not forgotten about you. The recap for TGIF #5 will be posted tomorrow, complete with screenshots and videos.
Of course many of you are saying I want to play! Well the next TGIF will not be held for some time. TGIF #6 should be held in about five to six weeks from now simply because we have something much more juicy in store for all of you, a 1v1 tournament!
Forge Hub 1v1 Showdown
That's right. No you do not need glasses, you have read correctly. Forge Hub will be running a 1v1 tournament. "Isn't Forge Hub a Halo community based around the Forge feature in Halo 3?" you ask? Yes it is. That is why the tournament will be run completely on never before seen Forge maps created by many members of the Forge Hub Staff. Weren't you wondering why Guilder maps seemed lacking for the past two weeks?
Sign ups for the 128 player 1v1 elimination tournament will be posted this Friday. The Forge Hub Staff will be allowed to compete in this one as long as they didn't help with any of the maps that are to be used for the tournament. So the FH Staff you will not have the pleasure of whipping include Shock Theta, TrueDarkFusion, Coolant, Beta Waffle, Rusty Eagle, Asper, and TheYavimayan. Each tier of the tournament, 7 in all, will feature a different map crafted specifically for the tournament. Each map has a specific theme and style of combat suited to it. Each map will be posted one day before the next round is to be played. This will give competitors an equal chance to familiarize themselves with the map. Of course there is a standard game type that goes with the tournament too.
Each round of the tournament will be played with a gametype Shock Theta and TrueDarkFusion crafted for the tournament. The gametype is called FH 1v1 Showdown. All settings are set to default except for the radar (10m), time limit (8 minutes), and score to win (15 points). If a tie was to occur in a match a tie breaker gametype was also prepared with similar settings except the score to win is 3 and the time limit is unlimited. In the first 4 tiers of the tournament only one game and possibly a tie breaker will be played between each pair of competitors to determine who advances. In tier 5 and 6 three games will be played and possibly a tie breaker after each if needed. Then in the 7th and final tier 5 games will be played to determine the winner.
Of course I have saved the best for last. There will indeed be prizes. 1st place will receive a brand new copy of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (Released on March 21st) and 2nd place will receive 1600 Microsoft Points to be used via the XBOX Live Marketplace. More details regarding the validity of matches, rules of conduct, and sign ups will be posted on Friday.
The Humpday
The Forge Hub Staff would like to remind everyone that we will be competing against Bungie in their Humpday Challenge on Wednesday, March 19th. The match will be focused around Forge and Forge variants. This is a great opportunity to promote Forge and show everyone what they community can do if they are given the tools to do so. Everyone wish us luck!
Forgecast to Return
The Forgecast will indeed be returning by popular demand. The production of the podcast was recently delayed by a combinations of events and disasters. The two biggies being TrueDarkFusion being sick two weeks ago and the server move this weekend. Look out for the next episode of the Forgecast the weekend after the FH 1v1 Showdown comes to a close. It should be a large and intriguing show as many things will have finished by then including the Shell Shocked Forge Contest, Humpday Challenge, 1v1 Showdown, and more. Also by then we should be announcing new events and activities so be sure to listen in!
If you are wondering TrueDarkFusion did indeed draw the picture for the news post...