Cuban Cigar Website Update

[Rye]

I don't warrant any thanks whatsoever. The folks involved with this other site do if their intentions are honest. I really haven't the foggiest on how these sites work, I just tend to fluke into finding stuff 

[Jimmy_jack]

Wow...that's...sad  Stramge that it could actually make a feeling of loss. I hope something is salvageable.

[canadianbeaver]

Way to go Rye! Hope this helps. That must have frustrated Trevor and the others to no end.

Years of legendary work!

 

[Fugu]

6 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Yes, it certainly is. I'd say last updated in early-mid 2016? Only the most current 2016 releases are missing like the Edmundo Dantes Belicoso. Hopefully this is all they need to get 99.9% of the info recovered. The last 12 months would be a piece of cake. This may be a great stroke of luck.

Thanks, Rye.

Still hard to believe for me that the CCW host doesn't do backups, and that stuff indeed CAN get lost. Shouldn't. Happen.

It won't be a sabotage act from anti-smoking activists?!

[mygar]

46 minutes ago, Fugu said:

Still hard to believe for me that the CCW host doesn't do backups, and that stuff indeed CAN get lost. Shouldn't. Happen.

It won't be a sabotage act from anti-smoking activists?!

Absolutely should not happen. Shoot, even if the data center would burn to the ground... good safe guards would ensure no loss.

If there is any question that adequate safe guards are not in place... then move site asap

 

[Corylax18]

1 hour ago, Fugu said:

Still hard to believe for me that the CCW host doesn't do backups, and that stuff indeed CAN get lost. Shouldn't. Happen.

It won't be a sabotage act from anti-smoking activists?!

Im certain they had backups of some sort. But everybody seems to be forgetting the cost of hosting and regularly backing up a website. Ive never given money to or seen an ad on the site. Somebody is still footing the bill for that backend. Im sure that (just like the rest of us) they had options for quadruple redundancy, regular analogue tape backups stored off site, daily monitoring and guarantees from the hosting company. But since CCW isnt a company, with regualr income, the cost to implement that level of backup is absurd. 

Maybe all the huge fans of the site(me included) can buy one less 5 pack next year and pass that $ along to the guys at CCW to help ensure this doesnt happen again. Free or paid, its the best source Ive ever seen for this info. 

[topdiesel]

14 minutes ago, Corylax18 said:

Ive never given money to or seen an ad on the site.

That is a great point.  They have a donate button on the site.  I don't know if it was always there or if they added it in the past couple years.  But I recall someone mentioned it within the last couple years and asked for help maintaining it's free and advertisement free service.

Even a modest contribution goes a long way if enough people do it.

I see that the contribution link is on the static page that rye linked to.  Can Alex or Trevor confirm that money to the link on the static will get to the right hands?

[MaxG]

Here's an archive link I found on another site.  Using the arrows at the top, you can pick a date.  Looks like the last copy was Nov 28.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20161128095326/http://cubancigarwebsite.com/default.aspx

 

- MG

 

[oliverdst]

3 hours ago, topdiesel said:

That is a great point.  They have a donate button on the site.  I don't know if it was always there or if they added it in the past couple years.  But I recall someone mentioned it within the last couple years and asked for help maintaining it's free and advertisement free service.

Even a modest contribution goes a long way if enough people do it.

I see that the contribution link is on the static page that rye linked to.  Can Alex or Trevor confirm that money to the link on the static will get to the right hands?

If I am not wrong when John interviwed Trevor or Alex he said that the contribution was small but important. I think just them have access to the money/site.

[topdiesel]

1 hour ago, oliverdst said:

If I am not wrong when John interviwed Trevor or Alex he said that the contribution was small but important. I think just them have access to the money/site.

Thanks for responding, but I am just not sure how to contribute now.  If there is a way to do so before they get back up and running I will.

[oliverdst]

52 minutes ago, topdiesel said:

Thanks for responding, but I am just not sure how to contribute now.  If there is a way to do so before they get back up and running I will.

Now I understand. 

Dont know.

[Fugu]

6 hours ago, Corylax18 said:

Im certain they had backups of some sort. But everybody seems to be forgetting the cost of hosting and regularly backing up a website. Ive never given money to or seen an ad on the site. Somebody is still footing the bill for that backend. Im sure that (just like the rest of us) they had options for quadruple redundancy, regular analogue tape backups stored off site, daily monitoring and guarantees from the hosting company. But since CCW isnt a company, with regualr income, the cost to implement that level of backup is absurd. 

Ok, we don't actually know and better shouldn't speculate on what actually happened (difficult enough as the situation is right now for Trevor and Alex). But a basic level of data safety I should be able to expect as a customer/user, irrelevant of the tariff I am paying. Not being confronted with the risk of data loss should go without saying. That's the absolute minum prerequisite for a working business concept of any web-hosting provider out there. Cost or price-model is a non-acceptable excuse. I will call that a shitty business that is arguing with cost and pricing and otherwise giving it a shrug.

[Puros Y Vino]

6 hours ago, Corylax18 said:

Im certain they had backups of some sort. But everybody seems to be forgetting the cost of hosting and regularly backing up a website. Ive never given money to or seen an ad on the site. Somebody is still footing the bill for that backend. Im sure that (just like the rest of us) they had options for quadruple redundancy, regular analogue tape backups stored off site, daily monitoring and guarantees from the hosting company. But since CCW isnt a company, with regualr income, the cost to implement that level of backup is absurd. 

Maybe all the huge fans of the site(me included) can buy one less 5 pack next year and pass that $ along to the guys at CCW to help ensure this doesnt happen again. Free or paid, its the best source Ive ever seen for this info. 

Given the site doesn't change too often, backups would be easy to maintain. I've mirrored a copy of the site in the past for use on my tablet. It's not very big.   As someone who was in the data center/hosting business.  This kind of an outage is brutal.  Even our most basic clients were given very affordable backup solutions if they chose our "bronze/silver/gold"  fully managed offerings.  If they chose to go their own route, we'd swap tapes/CD's/DVD's for them.  Whatever happened here must have been scandalous and a complete lack of due diligence on the part of the provider.  Maybe we should be donating to the site and to hosting mirrors in different parts of the world and put in place some simple load balancing? If that is something Alex or Trevor want to contemplate, I'd lend a hand. 

[Smiley]

6 hours ago, MaxG said:

Here's an archive link I found on another site.  Using the arrows at the top, you can pick a date.  Looks like the last copy was Nov 28.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161128095326/http://cubancigarwebsite.com/default.aspx

- MG

 

Excellent! :-)

[NSXCIGAR]

7 hours ago, MaxG said:

Here's an archive link I found on another site.  Using the arrows at the top, you can pick a date.  Looks like the last copy was Nov 28.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20161128095326/http://cubancigarwebsite.com/default.aspx

Looks like the mirror link http://cubancigarwebsite.greatcanadiancigarheist.com/default.html  that's up now with the note about Alex (thank you to whomever is hosting this right now!) is slightly more current than the above link from MaxG. I'll also be donating to help assist in the resurrection.

[ATGroom]

So the latest is: all is lost. All data on the CCW server is irretrievably erased.

Many of you have asked how something like this could happen: it’s as incomprehensible to me as it is to you. The word from the hosting company is that while they do take multiple redundant backups, because there was a failure in the software than manages the servers along with the server itself, the backups are corrupted and cannot be restored. I have harangued them about the criticalness of the situation at great length, and they insist that they have exhausted all possible avenues in trying to recover. If anyone is a North Carolina based attorney and wants to send a strongly worded letter for me then please get in touch, but I doubt it will result in a restoration of the data. As the adage goes, data that is not backed up is data that you are prepared to lose. I should have taken local backups. I trusted a professional data storage company. This trust appears to have been misplaced.

There a few copies of the site in circulation dating from the last few months. These are flat file copies, and don’t have a database behind them like the real site did. Searches are impossible, as are logins and the collection management type stuff, and updating them would be a laborious and error-prone manual process. Over the weekend I will cobble together a flat file version from these copies and upload it to the site. It will not be updated from there, but it should provide most of the content for all but the very latest releases.

During the Christmas break I will start rebuilding the site from the ground up. CCW is built on pretty clunky technology from 2008, so this should be a good opportunity to improve a lot of stuff like the mobile layouts and general performance. How long this will take to get live, and what state it will be in in its first iteration I cannot say. I’ll try and have something by the Habanos Festival. No promises.  

For those of you who use the Collection Management feature: I am sorry to say that your data is lost. I cannot apologise enough for this. I know a lot of you had spent long, long hours entering collections that in some cases numbered in the thousands of boxes, and curating exhaustive smoking diaries. I am truly, truly sorry. If any of you have a csv export file then please keep a copy of it unmodified from when it was exported. When I rebuild the collection management feature, I will build an importer so that you can recreate your collection from these files.

In addition to CCW, the server also hosted seven other sites of mine that were similarly lost. The one that will be most familiar to you is my ‘review site’, duskybeauties.com. I generally post new entries weekly from January to June – that will not happen in 2017. I have most of the content archived and may restore it at some point, or reproduce it in some other form. No plans at the moment. As I’m sure you can imagine, I’m pretty depressed over this whole thing, and my motivation level is not high at the moment.

Many of you have contacted me offering donations: unfortunately, this is not a problem that money can fix (believe me, I’ve tried). I was trying to get some scratch together for professional camera setup with a hope to someday doing a print version of CCW, so you can donate towards that if you like. The PayPal link is https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=7LAS5ZQPPJAYJ

 Thanks so much for your many messages of support over the last few days. It has made me immensely proud to see how many people from all over the world are fans of CCW.

 May all your smoke rings be round,

Alex

[hoyopr]

Alex thanks for the update and sorry the recovery isn't possible, I'm glad to hear the resolve in your words and feel positive that CCW will rise again.

I do recall when Trevor was first bringing the site to life on FOH and as has been stated, there is no other more definitive resource for Cuban Cigars information.

Keep the spirits up.

[Puros Y Vino]

@ATGroom.  Alex, I have a 300MB flat file mirror from June 2016. LMK if you need that uploaded somewhere to at least get a start.

[mygar]

I assume the back end was either sql server or oracle. There are companies that specialize in fixing corrupted db files or recovery of data from them... as well as servers. I would continue to follow up... that in fact all has been done... as i doubt it. You and many others have suffered a huge financial loss.  I think they are weighing their efforts against cost... and will not exhaust all efforts unless threat of being sued

[dicko]

2 hours ago, ATGroom said:

 

Many of you have contacted me offering donations: unfortunately, this is not a problem that money can fix (believe me, I’ve tried). I was trying to get some scratch together for professional camera setup with a hope to someday doing a print version of CCW, so you can donate towards that if you like. The PayPal link is https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=7LAS5ZQPPJAYJ

 

Hi mate just donated $50 to help you get back up and running. Thanks for the hard work for the community's benefit.

[planetary]

Following dicko's lead, I have also chipped in $50.  Long live CCW.

[Fugu]

8 hours ago, ATGroom said:

May all your smoke rings be round

Ditto, Alex!

Many thanks for taking the time explaining it. Unbelievable, that's a real bummer!

Keep your spirit up, and do let the community know if we can be of any help besides donations.

Cheers,

Goo

[wabashcr]

Donated as well.  Use it for whatever you want.  Buy beer if that will help.  I'm of course disappointed in the loss of an invaluable resource, but more so I'm absolutely gutted for Alex and Trevor to have poured so much labor into this, only to have it taken away under the worst of circumstances.  I'm sure you both have an idea of how much your efforts mean to the community.  It's great to hear that you're planning to rebuild at some point, although I think everyone would certainly understand if that's too much to ask.  Godspeed.

[oliverdst]

I cant believe this could happen nowadays.

The company lost everything? Not only CCW is down? Somehow these guys must be sued. 

[Elvis]

Donated. Thank you to Trevor and Alex for your incredible effort, I can only hope that you can rebuild it.

And to Dicko, thanks for kicking the donations off and leading the charge!