As many of you know, in the middle of July, my laptop died. I was unable to create new puzzles for several days. For that matter, I wasn't able to get online
to let you folks know that there were problems. I mentioned that I lost my files when the laptop died, but cheerfully pointed out that the files already
uploaded were still available. Slowly but surely (mainly because I only had an hour each night and I was on dialup), I started downloading files from the
website to my new laptop "just in case".
Well, sometime Wednesday (August 27th) evening, my webhost company shut down and went out of business without warning. So, I lost all the files that I hadn't
yet downloaded to my new laptop. There were 9500+ pages on the website -- I managed to download about 2,000.
So, now this website is on a new webhost company. Hopefully, this one will treat me better than the last one did. Sadly, I seem to recall saying that the
last time I switched webhosts. I think next time, I'll rent a dedicated server somewhere, and put all my websites into a machine that I physically control.
What does this all mean?
I've lost almost all the crosswords and wordsearches from January to mid-July of 2008. There's a possibility that a web archive site (like the Wayback Machine)
may have the missing puzzles and will post them online where I'll be able to grab them and upload them again. I'm not holding out too much hope. Those puzzles
may be gone forever. If you're a packrat, and you keep the printouts of the puzzles you do, please don't throw them away. I may be asking you for them in
the future.
I have wordsearches from January 2006 to December 2007. They will be uploaded in the next couple of days. I have printouts from most of the earlier
wordsearches. I'll reconstruct those as time allows. I have crossword answer printouts for most of the puzzles from the beginning in March 2000 to December 2007.
Reconstructing the puzzles (especially the earlier ones with their non-standard grids) will take a lot of time -- 400-500 hours of work. I'm hoping that by next
summer, they will be rebuilt and uploaded.
I managed to recover about a dozen articles from the knowledge area of this website. I'll upload those Thursday, if possible. Because I retrieved them from
the Wayback Machine, they are older versions of the pages. I won't even be able to *think* of re-updating them for months.
As for the web directory -- I'm hoping to start one from scratch, in hopes of making a little money from it. Until this latest disaster, Digital Windmill earned
all the advertising revenue from the web directory, not me.
To recap -- the old website ceased to exist when the webhost company ceased operations without warning. Thousands of pages and files have been permanently
lost, including the graphic I used at the top of index pages. I will be trying to rebuild everything from scratch -- but my free time is exceedingly limited.
It'll take a year or more before this site returns to what it was before this latest disaster took place. I could have coped with one of the disasters
(the laptop dying or the website disappearing), since I'd at least have all the files either on my hard drive or on the website server. But losing them both
is about the worst thing that could've happened. 8-(
New crosswords and wordsearches are now appearing. The puzzles and wordsearches for all of August are now in place. This weekend, I'll try and get December
2007 rebuilt and uploaded. The rest -- I'm shrugging my shoulders -- I don't know. As soon as I can, I guess.