UPDATE: PP Blog Stories Lost In Migration To New Hosting Platform Retrieved; Some Problems Related To Platform Migration Still Unresolved

Dear Readers,

As we noted here, our migration to a new hosting platform — undertaken by our hosting company on Friday — resulted in some problems.

In the hours after the migration, we were unable to retrieve data on posts between June 2 and June 11 that somehow went missing. We reassembled data on these posts this morning and re-posted them manually.

Although we have re-published the posts, they are not at their original URLs. At the moment, it is unclear if and when a fix will be provided that returns the posts to their original URLs. We are expecting that the host will  restore the database to its former state through an automated process.

Here are a few things you should know:

• Those of you who subscribe to our email feed may receive content that you’ve already viewed because we republished the lost posts at different URLs. We expect that this will happen just once — tonight — but cannot rule out that it will happen again if the database is restored to its former state.
• Some database “clutter” — strange-looking symbols, etc. — may appear in the republished posts. We sought to edit out the clutter during the republishing phase, but there was a lot of it.
• The act of republishing the posts brought with it certain issues that could be confusing. For example, the posts may use words such as “today” or “Wednesday” or “tomorrow,” but because the republication date lists today’s date, the references could be confusing.
• We thought it best to republish the posts, and will add a note to them that asks readers to check this thread for an explanation on why the posts might not reflect current events.
• It is possible that the republished posts as they currently appear are not the final versions that appeared when they were published originally. We had to examine many pages of data to republish the posts. It is possible that we missed the “final update.” For example, if we published a post on a Tuesday, learned more information on Wednesday, and added an “UPDATE” line and additional details to the post, it is possible that the republished post does not include this information.

Meanwhile, our Contact Form — which also was affected by the migration — still is not working. At the same time, our ability to retrieve email has been affected to a degree. For now, we are unable to retrieve email through our normal means, and are relying on a secondary retrieval system.

It appears as though we’ll be able to resume a normal publishing schedule, now that we’ve manually restored the “lost” stories. There are still some glitches, however.

Comments that once appeared below the stories when they were published at their original URLs remain in the database. We likely will not seek to restore them to place them below the new URLs because the process will be too time-consuming. It is our hope that all the original URLs of the stories and the comments will be restored in the coming days.

We regret the inconvenience this has caused readers and posters, and we apologize for that inconvenience. The problems started Friday evening and basically knocked us offline for several hours.

We have been able to make some manual “repairs,” but still do not have the functionality we enjoyed prior to the migration.

Patrick