shut down drama

It happens to every great site - that period where everyone thinks that it has shut down... disappeared into oblivion. This was the case with Winglin, the now-departed and beloved [original] TVSeriesFans Forum, and other classic sites in the TVB online community. When something happens to a site, everyone panics and fears the worst. "The webmaster's gone," "the site's gone forever," "it's never coming back," and so on are the speculations heard. The past few days was my second taste of shut down drama.

The first shut down
Last year around this time, SiteSled deleted my entire Virtues of Harmony II website. I was horrified and struck with grief at my great loss - over two years of hard work were wiped out like that. I was feeling hopeless. It would take forever to rebuild my massive site (of which I don't think anyone besides me and maybe a few others actually saw every single page and picture) so I just didn't know what to do... However, one thing was certain - I couldn't let Virtues die out like that. No. I won't let all of my efforts be wasted and I won't let it fade away from the online community.

Consequently, I made the decision to purchase www.virtuesofharmony.net and build a comprehensive site combining the whole Virtues saga. In January 2006, timeless: the VIRTUES OF HARMONY network was unleashed and became my representative website work - a compilation of four years of site building and fan support. Thus, I had overcome my first "shut down drama" and out of the flames flew a gorgeous and even more beautiful phoenix as TVB Musings was added to the network three months down the road.

It's gone. Seriously
Come Tuesday afternoon - it was around 4:20 PM and I had just finished a meeting for a presentation I had the next day - I decided to check my site. I was expecting to see my bright and sweet Linda Chung collage greet me when the page loaded, but my expectations were not met. Instead, this page full of ads with a link to inquire about the status of the domain having "expired" loaded. I was horrified and freaked out. Everything was gone.

I knew immediately what had happened - my second "shut down drama" had just commenced.

It's not my fault
I registered for www.virtuesofharmony.net last November for a period of one year. I knew that it was going to expire this month, so I contacted my host 3 weeks ago. I told them that I wanted to renew it and set the domain for autorenewal (so that every year I'd get a bill and it will renew automatically). They said it was fine and told me I had to pay the bill before the 25th because that's when my domain was said to expire. 2 weeks passed and I still didn't receive any invoice. I contacted them again and they told me they were working on it and that everything was okay. Another week passed and come Tuesday - my site was suspended.

I was so furious because it shouldn't have happened. I was waiting to pay and didn't receive any bill. It wasn't my fault and I was so pissed at my host. Furthermore, I was so scared that I'd lose everything again (like last time) and have to rebuild once more. I paid for the server in full until February 2007, so I was hopeful that all of my files were intact since I did pay for bandwidth, storage, and so on up until February.

I contacted my host when I got home at 4:30 PM. I had to go to class at 5:00. When I came back around 6:00, I was expecting a response - but there was nothing. I figured I'd give them another couple of hours. Hours and hours passed and I grew more and more worried. There was an emergency contact number where they said I could reach them "24/7" but for some reason, I couldn't call them. My phone kept giving me an error and telling me that it was an "unassigned number."

Wednesday came. No response. I contacted them again. Wednesday night - still nothing. I grew angrier as the clock kept ticking. Why weren't they answering me? Didn't they value customer service and satisfaction above all else? In any case, I was very, very upset. I then started wondering whether something had happened to their company...

"I'm an idiot!"
After over a day's worth of waiting, I kept going through my host's site to see if I could get any response from them at all. Finally, I clicked on a link to view my domain and it hit me - I didn't have to wait for them at all! There it was - staring me in the eyes - a link to renew. I felt so stupid. All this time I thought I had to wait for my host to send me a bill but I could have just renewed it on my own days (weeks) ago.

So, I went ahead and renewed it for another year. Things should return to normal... right?

That wasn't the case. A few hours after I paid to renew the domain, my site still wasn't up and running again. I figured that they needed a few hours, so I went to bed hoping that the site will be back to normal when I woke up. Flash forward to today, noon - it was as if nothing ever happened. My sites were intact! I was so relieved. This drama had a happy ending. [My host still didn't reply to me until after noon today. Needless to say, I am very disappointed in them. However, I can't fully put the blame on them and they have given me great service besides this "tiny" incident, so I will stick with them.]

From now until forever
I am so happy to be back. Is it wrong of me to say that I missed going to my own sites? Haha. I just love having a piece of the Internet that I can call my "own." Since TVSF died, I haven't had any place to go online or any forum to voice my opinions, so my sites are my online haven. I was so touched to see all of the inquiry and "panic" that occurred as a result of my "shut down drama." Thank you to everyone for supporting me - I am really grateful. Without you guys reading and visiting, I'd have no reason to update.

I can't promise that I'll always be around, but I will say this - even if updates aren't frequent, my sites will always be up. I made it a mission to preserve Virtues of Harmony and its legacy for the online TVB history, and I will stick by this by making sure that www.virtuesofharmony.net sticks around forever.

Thank you for everything. Normal updates will resume shortly. It's the final month of 2006, so I have some big things planned. Stick around and spread the word!