VGCollect Forum
VGCollect Site Stuff => News => Topic started by: tripredacus on February 17, 2025, 11:01:06 am
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Please refrain from adding new entries or submitting edits to items until the site has returned to normal. We will not be looking at any edits that are submitted until then.
The forum is working, as well as being able to add or remove items from your collection or lists.
Exporting you collection, wish list or sell list to CSV also works.
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Thanks for this. I was able to get my CSV!
It's disappointing that there isn't more transparency with regard to what is going on. I am starting to look at alternatives :(
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I want to note that the CSV is only formatted for this site. It will not work if you import it to another site, nor will another site's CSV import into this one. But you can still use it in Excel, Google Sheets or any other program that supports CSV.
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Is this in regards to the outage? I havent been able to access the site for 2 days now and theirs others on Twitter "X" commenting this as well.
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Thought this site was gone for a sec.
glad it's back, hope stuff gets fixed soon.
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Glad the site is back up. Can we have an update on what happened, were we hacked? Was any data lost?
Thanks,
Retromangia
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phew, I already feared this is gonna be the 2nd collectors site I use going down for good :'( hope everything get's back to normal soon!
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Jason posted on Facebook, and I posted on X. Jason has access to the site account on X but I think he is just focusing on facebook.
You can follow me on X but I'm likely to post on the forum since it is working.
https://x.com/Tripredacus
I do not know the extent of the issue exactly. The database itself is fine as you can see, there doesn't seem to be any data loss that I can tell. The read status on the forum wasn't reset so I think the data is fine. Viewing of large collections on the main site is restored. I do not know about the status of the images, I should be able to know more tomorrow.
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You can follow me on X
If anyone reading is one of the many who don't use Twitter for whatever reason, I will also mention XCancel (https://xcancel.com) which allows tweets to be viewed without having an account.
https://xcancel.com/Tripredacus
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Did the site get attacked or did something go sidewise on the back end? Not that anything too personal is on here, but was any user data compromised from whatever (or whoever caused) the outage?
I was worried whoever owns the site finally pulled the plug on it since it was down all weekend.
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Jason posted on Facebook, and I posted on X. Jason has access to the site account on X but I think he is just focusing on facebook.
You can follow me on X but I'm likely to post on the forum since it is working.
https://x.com/Tripredacus
I do not know the extent of the issue exactly. The database itself is fine as you can see, there doesn't seem to be any data loss that I can tell. The read status on the forum wasn't reset so I think the data is fine. Viewing of large collections on the main site is restored. I do not know about the status of the images, I should be able to know more tomorrow.
nother thing I got aware of is other lists like "finished" and "backlog" disappeared ... sad, cause I used them a lot ::)
AND I saw another post about game images not being loaded correctly ...
those are the only impressions of stuff not working for now. .. everything else seems normal to me.
Hope you guys get to fix that issues soon, best of luck!! 8)
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nother thing I got aware of is other lists like "finished" and "backlog" disappeared ... sad, cause I used them a lot ::)
Backlog lists are still being shown and are still readily accessible through the navigation bar using the More Lists drop-down selection, although the Finished list function seems to be gone, at the moment.
https://vgcollect.com/backlog/bizzgeburt
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nother thing I got aware of is other lists like "finished" and "backlog" disappeared ... sad, cause I used them a lot ::)
Backlog lists are still being shown and are still readily accessible through the navigation bar using the More Lists drop-down selection, although the Finished list function seems to be gone, at the moment.
https://vgcollect.com/backlog/bizzgeburt
Thanks for pointing out
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Images are slowly being returned. Let's hope for a better working site by tomorrow.
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Though this message will likely be unseen from those whom it's directed to, there has been no indication from admins to resume database activity. Although the site has (mostly) returned to normal from the public view, the database itself has not been fully repaired with full functions returning. Edit submissions continue to be sent and new entries continue to be created despite this. The edit queue is still not being responded to either, so submissions will remain there until stated otherwise.
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DB Mods can approve text updates. If a text update shows the invalid characters due to encoding, leave that edit in the queue.
Reject any image changes if they appear (currently it seems they should not) until it is confirmed that process is working again.
Can approve/deny edits to drop-down fields.
We do not currently have the ability to put a comment in an edit rejection.
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Added back in the functionality for Admin Comments on Rejections.
Looking into the image edit issues.
Thanks for your patience.
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Fixed the Edit Item Image upload issues
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Fixed the Edit Item Image upload issues
When do you estimate the site to be fully fixed. allot of images don't seem to function
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I second sword dude, any ETA on restoring the images? Please tell me all this stuff is backed up. Thank you for all your hard work to bring this site back up on its feet.
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I don't believe that I have all of the information, but there seems to have been a hardware issue at the hosting company.
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Fixed the Edit Item Image upload issues
When do you estimate the site to be fully fixed. allot of images don't seem to function
This may take some time to restore the remaining images. We've also backed up the images we still have in two separate places.
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Fixed the Edit Item Image upload issues
When do you estimate the site to be fully fixed. allot of images don't seem to function
This may take some time to restore the remaining images. We've also backed up the images we still have in two separate places.
That's good to hear that it's backed up
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Custom avatars restored. All previous avatars were removed, so you'll have to upload new ones.
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Is it worth adding more images at the moment?
The existing images are still down, but does that mean any new additions will not function?
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Is it worth adding more images at the moment?
The existing images are still down, but does that mean any new additions will not function?
We are still in the process of recovering as many lost images as we possibly can, but we're nearing the end. With that said, if submitted, replacement images appear on entry pages when approved. However, it may be a better use of one's time to see what exactly can't be recovered by a more automated means before manually updating everything.
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Wait a little longer.
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We are still in the process of recovering as many lost images as we possibly can, but we're nearing the end. With that said, if submitted, replacement images appear on entry pages when approved. However, it may be a better use of one's time to see what exactly can't be recovered by a more automated means before manually updating everything.
Are we to understand some images may be lost for good?
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Are we to understand some images may be lost for good?
Nothing is for good. Some were "lost" but were archived and are pending restoration. This restoration will not be complete. After it is confirmed to have been done, however, we will work on checking entries and replacing the images if we can. This work isn't limited to just Mod DBs, anyone can do it BUT don't bother to do any until AFTER the archive restoration is done, to save wasting effort. I estimate that there will be at least 5k entries with a broken image for front box art after the restoration.
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Do we know what caused all this in the first place? Was it a cybersecurity incident? Was it just a random software or hardware fault on the hosting server(s)? Was it a corrupted or compromised DB? Was it a whoopsie made by one of the admins? I guess I mostly want to know if any user account info was compromised. I particularly am concerns about my password since I use it elsewhere too.
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Are we to understand some images may be lost for good?
This pending restoration has completed
Nothing is for good. Some were "lost" but were archived and are pending restoration. This restoration will not be complete. After it is confirmed to have been done, however, we will work on checking entries and replacing the images if we can. This work isn't limited to just Mod DBs, anyone can do it BUT don't bother to do any until AFTER the archive restoration is done, to save wasting effort. I estimate that there will be at least 5k entries with a broken image for front box art after the restoration.
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Do we know what caused all this in the first place? Was it a cybersecurity incident? Was it just a random software or hardware fault on the hosting server(s)? Was it a corrupted or compromised DB? Was it a whoopsie made by one of the admins? I guess I mostly want to know if any user account info was compromised. I particularly am concerns about my password since I use it elsewhere too.
The server filled up and caused an outage. Then we had some subsequent data loss but have mostly gotten back to normal. This was not an attack or anything and I take responsibility for allowing the failings to occur.
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Do we know what caused all this in the first place? Was it a cybersecurity incident? Was it just a random software or hardware fault on the hosting server(s)? Was it a corrupted or compromised DB? Was it a whoopsie made by one of the admins? I guess I mostly want to know if any user account info was compromised. I particularly am concerns about my password since I use it elsewhere too.
The server filled up and caused an outage. Then we had some subsequent data loss but have mostly gotten back to normal. This was not an attack or anything and I take responsibility for allowing the failings to occur.
Thank you for the clarification.
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Are we to understand some images may be lost for good?
This pending restoration has completed
Nothing is for good. Some were "lost" but were archived and are pending restoration. This restoration will not be complete. After it is confirmed to have been done, however, we will work on checking entries and replacing the images if we can. This work isn't limited to just Mod DBs, anyone can do it BUT don't bother to do any until AFTER the archive restoration is done, to save wasting effort. I estimate that there will be at least 5k entries with a broken image for front box art after the restoration.
Has the restoration been completed?
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That one attempt was done. We want to do a separate attempt at restoring images but it hasn't been started yet.
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That one attempt was done. We want to do a separate attempt at restoring images but it hasn't been started yet.
thanks
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Users can now feel free to update front art on any entries that show the gray "No Art" image when viewing from the browse, search, collection or list views.
Some entries do not show a No Art image on those views but DO show the No Art image when viewing the entry directly. Do not update front arts on entries that are like this, they will be automatically updated soon.
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When will the purchased date and cost be displayed again as you scroll down on your collection list?
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I have put this on our internal task list. I can't give you a time it will be done as I am not the one that will be doing that work.
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First, thanks for the time and efforts spent in restoring the database so quick and thoroughly, that’s a huge relief!
Nevertheless, 5k entries with missing front images seems quite a low estimate now; out of my 2344 items front images have no_art.jpg for 433 of them. Assuming this is a representative sample (might not be), that amounts to roughly 51k for the whole database.
That raises the question, considering the obvious collaborative aspect of the database, is there any plan to ease the possibility to any one of us to backup at least the whole content of our collection (not just a selection of fields in a CSV), perhaps of the whole database? (assuming that’s not the case today, as such backups would have obviously helped in restoring everything I guess).
Sorry if that sounded harsh in any way, but the recent events obviously have me concerned about the perennity of what I list and contribute to here.
All the best and thanks again for all the work.
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Users can now feel free to update front art on any entries that show the gray "No Art" image when viewing from the browse, search, collection or list views.
Some entries do not show a No Art image on those views but DO show the No Art image when viewing the entry directly. Do not update front arts on entries that are like this, they will be automatically updated soon.
This is a nice detail for everyone to know. is this message somewhere on the board for all to see aside from just this small message here?
First, thanks for the time and efforts spent in restoring the database so quick and thoroughly, that’s a huge relief!
Nevertheless, 5k entries with missing front images seems quite a low estimate now; out of my 2344 items front images have no_art.jpg for 433 of them. Assuming this is a representative sample (might not be), that amounts to roughly 51k for the whole database.
That raises the question, considering the obvious collaborative aspect of the database, is there any plan to ease the possibility to any one of us to backup at least the whole content of our collection (not just a selection of fields in a CSV), perhaps of the whole database? (assuming that’s not the case today, as such backups would have obviously helped in restoring everything I guess).
Sorry if that sounded harsh in any way, but the recent events obviously have me concerned about the perennity of what I list and contribute to here.
All the best and thanks again for all the work.
It is what it is. fortunately most images are still intact but ye it does seem to effect certain area's more than others.
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This is a nice detail for everyone to know. is this message somewhere on the board for all to see aside from just this small message here?
No. This is only temporary. The final restoration has been staged and this part that I posted will not be relevant once those images were stored.
Nevertheless, 5k entries with missing front images seems quite a low estimate now; out of my 2344 items front images have no_art.jpg for 433 of them. Assuming this is a representative sample (might not be), that amounts to roughly 51k for the whole database.
It was pretty close to that actually. In the first restoration attempt, we only looked at site traffic to determine what was missing. That is where the numbers I posted came from. But earlier this week we were able to directly compare the database vs what we had, and so round 2 of an attempt was done. So between the two restoration attempts, the total amount missing was indeed around 50k, with 12k able to be restored. As I said, the bulk of that is currently staged and hasn't been moved yet. So that leaves around 32k front box art images that were not archived.
It will be annoying for quite awhile to deal with it. I'm personally going to first focus on manually fixing my own collection, and then I will go into the game sections I primarily had worked on in the past, such as the Sega categories and PS2 hardware, since I kept all of the images I have ever uploaded to the site. Unforuntately I didn't really organize those images in any manner that makes it easy for me to find what goes where, but at least they are already present and cropped and all that.
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I also want to note that some images that were uploaded in the past couple days may have been removed during the restoration progress. The remaining steps in the restoration process will not involve removing images, however the restoration may end up replacing a new image with an old image on the 9k that are in the final batch.
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The final batch of 9k have been moved over and are now in place
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This is a nice detail for everyone to know. is this message somewhere on the board for all to see aside from just this small message here?
No. This is only temporary. The final restoration has been staged and this part that I posted will not be relevant once those images were stored.
Nevertheless, 5k entries with missing front images seems quite a low estimate now; out of my 2344 items front images have no_art.jpg for 433 of them. Assuming this is a representative sample (might not be), that amounts to roughly 51k for the whole database.
It was pretty close to that actually. In the first restoration attempt, we only looked at site traffic to determine what was missing. That is where the numbers I posted came from. But earlier this week we were able to directly compare the database vs what we had, and so round 2 of an attempt was done. So between the two restoration attempts, the total amount missing was indeed around 50k, with 12k able to be restored. As I said, the bulk of that is currently staged and hasn't been moved yet. So that leaves around 32k front box art images that were not archived.
It will be annoying for quite awhile to deal with it. I'm personally going to first focus on manually fixing my own collection, and then I will go into the game sections I primarily had worked on in the past, such as the Sega categories and PS2 hardware, since I kept all of the images I have ever uploaded to the site. Unforuntately I didn't really organize those images in any manner that makes it easy for me to find what goes where, but at least they are already present and cropped and all that.
32K front images not archived. oof. Makes sense why so many where missing but a tough pill to swallow :P
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I'm already in the process of submitting new front pictures.
First I'm doing the ones in my Sega Game Gear collection & wish list, which I had totally filled with all data available before the data loss. When finished, PAL Game Gear entries will look beautiful again 8)
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I'm pretty sure we lost 30% of all front images
if only we lost back covers instead :P
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I'm pretty sure we lost 30% of all front images
32,000 entries out of about 280,000 would be about 11.5% of total affected entries, but I imagine that number to be closer to 12.5%–13% Not all of those 280,000 entries are live as some have, over the years, been removed for various reasons (e.g. items we don't track, duplicates, empty entry pages.) I don't know how many entries still exist, though, so knowing what the percentage total is can only be estimated. Of course, admins may know the total number of live entries. Regardless, it's a hefty loss and mostly affected older entries which is why the affected entries are for more common platforms like Nintendo and PlayStation since they were added to the database first.
Also, thanks to all of those who've made major efforts so far toward restoring entry art. It's greatly appreciated.
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I'm pretty sure we lost 30% of all front images
32,000 entries out of about 280,000 would be about 11.5% of total affected entries, but I imagine that number to be closer to 12.5%–13% Not all of those 280,000 entries are live as some have, over the years,
Depending on luck it's going to be far worse than that.
I rarely have any pages in which I don't have to update 7+ items or way worse. and each page is 25 items and it's some of the best games that are missing images. I think the number is far worse than just 12%
if it was just 12% I'd only have to update 2 to maybe 4 games per page. reality is far far worse. and considering the titles that are hit it's definitely not as low as data suggests
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These are the numbers from round 2 (March 3rd) so it won't include the 4k images restored prior to that.
249,272 items were marked as having a front image in the DB
41,359 front images were missing
32,226 images were not archived
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These are the numbers from round 2 (March 3rd) so it won't include the 4k images restored prior to that.
249,272 items were marked as having a front image in the DB
41,359 front images were missing
32,226 images were not archived
guess I have been more unlucky than average even if I where to reduce the numbers with other stuff had to alter 31% of my collection in terms of front images.
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These are the numbers from round 2 (March 3rd) so it won't include the 4k images restored prior to that.
249,272 items were marked as having a front image in the DB
41,359 front images were missing
32,226 images were not archived
guess I have been more unlucky than average even if I where to reduce the numbers with other stuff had to alter 31% of my collection in terms of front images.
Thank you for uploading images
The vast majority of images lost seem to be in the first half of the database. For example I've went through the first 2056 Item Numbers and they have almost exclusively been Xbox [NA] and PS2 [NA]. I'd say it was over half of the items at that early stage that had lost images.