VGCollect Forum

VGCollect Site Stuff => News => Topic started by: tripredacus on February 17, 2025, 11:01:06 am

Title: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: tripredacus on February 17, 2025, 11:01:06 am
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: sirhcman on February 17, 2025, 11:15:58 am
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 :(
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on February 17, 2025, 12:08:03 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: marvelvscapcom2 on February 17, 2025, 01:26:50 pm
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. 
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: sworddude on February 17, 2025, 01:52:16 pm
Thought this site was gone for a sec.

glad it's back, hope stuff gets fixed soon.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: retromangia on February 17, 2025, 02:00:43 pm
Glad the site is back up. Can we have an update on what happened, were we hacked? Was any data lost?

Thanks,
Retromangia
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bizzgeburt on February 17, 2025, 04:17:11 pm
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!
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on February 17, 2025, 06:07:11 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on February 17, 2025, 06:17:45 pm
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
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bikingjahuty on February 17, 2025, 08:53:07 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bizzgeburt on February 18, 2025, 09:12:11 am
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)
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on February 18, 2025, 09:28:07 am
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
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bizzgeburt on February 18, 2025, 10:05:07 am
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
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on February 18, 2025, 07:52:08 pm
Images are slowly being returned. Let's hope for a better working site by tomorrow.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on February 19, 2025, 08:40:24 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on February 20, 2025, 10:24:21 am
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: jason on February 20, 2025, 11:05:35 pm
Added back in the functionality for Admin Comments on Rejections.

Looking into the image edit issues.

Thanks for your patience.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: jason on February 21, 2025, 09:23:38 pm
Fixed the Edit Item Image upload issues
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: sworddude on February 23, 2025, 09:38:00 am
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
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: retromangia on February 24, 2025, 12:36:53 am
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on February 24, 2025, 10:15:06 am
I don't believe that I have all of the information, but there seems to have been a hardware issue at the hosting company.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: jason on February 24, 2025, 01:46:56 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: sworddude on February 25, 2025, 11:13:27 am
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
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on February 26, 2025, 11:13:37 am
Custom avatars restored. All previous avatars were removed, so you'll have to upload new ones.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: endemonadia on February 27, 2025, 12:25:45 pm
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?
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on February 27, 2025, 12:41:21 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on February 27, 2025, 01:46:48 pm
Wait a little longer.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bobi on February 27, 2025, 02:30:12 pm
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?
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on February 27, 2025, 03:24:33 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bikingjahuty on February 27, 2025, 05:47:28 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: jason on February 27, 2025, 06:35:14 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: jason on February 27, 2025, 06:41:09 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bikingjahuty on February 28, 2025, 11:40:47 am
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: rockybalboa on March 03, 2025, 07:07:30 am
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?
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on March 03, 2025, 09:58:32 am
That one attempt was done. We want to do a separate attempt at restoring images but it hasn't been started yet.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: rockybalboa on March 03, 2025, 03:19:57 pm
That one attempt was done. We want to do a separate attempt at restoring images but it hasn't been started yet.

thanks
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on March 06, 2025, 05:29:09 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: masamune on March 06, 2025, 11:47:40 pm
When will the purchased date and cost be displayed again as you scroll down on your collection list?
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on March 07, 2025, 10:18:18 am
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bobi on March 07, 2025, 01:36:28 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: sworddude on March 07, 2025, 02:54:40 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on March 07, 2025, 03:35:30 pm
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.

Quote
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on March 07, 2025, 03:52:41 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: jason on March 07, 2025, 07:27:34 pm
The final batch of 9k have been moved over and are now in place
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: sworddude on March 08, 2025, 08:08:51 am
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.

Quote
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

Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bizzgeburt on March 08, 2025, 12:05:41 pm
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)
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: sworddude on March 08, 2025, 01:15:10 pm
I'm pretty sure we lost 30% of all front images 

if only we lost back covers instead  :P
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on March 08, 2025, 03:45:31 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: sworddude on March 09, 2025, 07:16:47 am
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
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on March 10, 2025, 10:43:37 am
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
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: sworddude on March 10, 2025, 01:13:53 pm
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.

Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: nathan776 on March 10, 2025, 02:20:09 pm
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.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: pfogel on March 12, 2025, 04:48:41 pm
Just looked through my collection and 16 front images are missing. For many I was the one initially uploading them and since I keep them on my drive I can just reupload them.

Just a question out of interest? Will the finished list be back? When it was introduced I moved the finished date from the collection note to the finished list with the purchase date as the finishing date. Would be nice to have them back.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on March 12, 2025, 07:08:31 pm
Just a question out of interest? Will the finished list be back? When it was introduced I moved the finished date from the collection note to the finished list with the purchase date as the finishing date. Would be nice to have them back.

Restoring the Finished list is on our internal task list, and it should return in time.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on March 13, 2025, 10:00:00 am
Finished list is being worked on currently.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: bizzgeburt on March 13, 2025, 05:41:15 pm
Finished list is being worked on currently.

That's news I was eagerly waiting for thanks a lot.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: BinaryMessiah on March 21, 2025, 06:10:35 pm
Do we need to add images that are missing, or do we need to hold off and keep waiting for the database to update? I don't want to start mass submitting images and bog anything down. I'm not sure if you guys need help from the users or not.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on March 21, 2025, 06:19:29 pm
Do we need to add images that are missing, or do we need to hold off and keep waiting for the database to update? I don't want to start mass submitting images and bog anything down. I'm not sure if you guys need help from the users or not.

https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,13012.0.html
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: BinaryMessiah on March 21, 2025, 06:23:27 pm
Do we need to add images that are missing, or do we need to hold off and keep waiting for the database to update? I don't want to start mass submitting images and bog anything down. I'm not sure if you guys need help from the users or not.

https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,13012.0.html

Okay...so if I'm understanding this correctly, we just wait, and over time everything will get restored?
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on March 21, 2025, 06:28:29 pm
Do we need to add images that are missing, or do we need to hold off and keep waiting for the database to update? I don't want to start mass submitting images and bog anything down. I'm not sure if you guys need help from the users or not.

https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,13012.0.html

Okay...so if I'm understanding this correctly, we just wait, and over time everything will get restored?

To my understanding, two separate restoration attempts were made. Everything that could have been done was, meaning entries will need to be manually updated going forward. At the time of that post, 32,00 entries were still affected with missing front images.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: BinaryMessiah on March 21, 2025, 06:32:29 pm
Do we need to add images that are missing, or do we need to hold off and keep waiting for the database to update? I don't want to start mass submitting images and bog anything down. I'm not sure if you guys need help from the users or not.

https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,13012.0.html

Okay...so if I'm understanding this correctly, we just wait, and over time everything will get restored?

To my understanding, two separate restoration attempts were made. Everything that could have been done was, meaning entries will need to be manually updated going forward. At the time of that post, 32,00 entries were still affected with missing front images.

Okay, so that leads to my original question then. Are those being restored manually by admin, or do these have to be submitted by the public users? That's what I'm wondering. I apologize if I seem ignorant on the issue. I'm kind of clueless as to how this site works on the backend. I just want to ask first, as I don't want an angry message telling me to stop submitting images and cool it. I would, of course, only submit for missing images from my collection.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on March 21, 2025, 06:39:22 pm
To my understanding, two separate restoration attempts were made. Everything that could have been done was, meaning entries will need to be manually updated going forward. At the time of that post, 32,00 entries were still affected with missing front images.

Okay, so that leads to my original question then. Are those being restored manually by admin, or do these have to be submitted by the public users? That's what I'm wondering. I apologize if I seem ignorant on the issue. I'm kind of clueless as to how this site works on the backend. I just want to ask first, as I don't want an angry message telling me to stop submitting images and cool it. I would, of course, only submit for missing images from my collection.

No worries. There easily could have been better transparency with the problem, what was being done about it, and its current status (for instance, a pinned topic, the first post of this topic updated, or the title of this topic changed.)

Several staff are involved with the image restoration process, but it is a huge hurdle that will need to be a community effort should those wanting images to be restored to be completed in a relatively timely manner. So, members are free to help if they feel inclined.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: BinaryMessiah on March 21, 2025, 06:42:21 pm
To my understanding, two separate restoration attempts were made. Everything that could have been done was, meaning entries will need to be manually updated going forward. At the time of that post, 32,00 entries were still affected with missing front images.

Okay, so that leads to my original question then. Are those being restored manually by admin, or do these have to be submitted by the public users? That's what I'm wondering. I apologize if I seem ignorant on the issue. I'm kind of clueless as to how this site works on the backend. I just want to ask first, as I don't want an angry message telling me to stop submitting images and cool it. I would, of course, only submit for missing images from my collection.

No worries. There easily could have been better transparency with the problem, what was being done about it, and its current status (for instance, a pinned topic, the first post of this topic updated, or the title of this topic changed.)

Several staff are involved with the image restoration process, but it is a huge hurdle that will need to be a community effort should those wanting images to be restored to be completed in a relatively timely manner.


Fantastic! Yeah, a new pinned topic would really help for people wondering what the deal is and what the admins need from us if we choose to want to help, and maybe a run dow of what exactly happened. Maybe updates with the current status over time would be nice. Like a monthly update. I will submit images then. I also have a flatbed scanner if any images aren't online for a game.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: theodw on March 25, 2025, 12:26:01 am
Yikes!

Okay, I'll try to restore some of the covers I have on hand right now, but won't be able to add all of them (Some of my games are currently on the other side of the world).
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: tripredacus on March 25, 2025, 10:00:42 am
To my understanding, two separate restoration attempts were made. Everything that could have been done was, meaning entries will need to be manually updated going forward. At the time of that post, 32,00 entries were still affected with missing front images.

Okay, so that leads to my original question then. Are those being restored manually by admin, or do these have to be submitted by the public users? That's what I'm wondering. I apologize if I seem ignorant on the issue. I'm kind of clueless as to how this site works on the backend. I just want to ask first, as I don't want an angry message telling me to stop submitting images and cool it. I would, of course, only submit for missing images from my collection.

No worries. There easily could have been better transparency with the problem, what was being done about it, and its current status (for instance, a pinned topic, the first post of this topic updated, or the title of this topic changed.)

Several staff are involved with the image restoration process, but it is a huge hurdle that will need to be a community effort should those wanting images to be restored to be completed in a relatively timely manner.


Fantastic! Yeah, a new pinned topic would really help for people wondering what the deal is and what the admins need from us if we choose to want to help, and maybe a run dow of what exactly happened. Maybe updates with the current status over time would be nice. Like a monthly update. I will submit images then. I also have a flatbed scanner if any images aren't online for a game.

I'm not really certain about doing a thread like this. This is for a few reasons. First, the regular workload in regards to entries and image uploads is already pretty much handled in some member work threads:
Dhaabi: https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,11436.0.html
myself: https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,6782.0.html
leonefamily: https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,11461.0.html
But there are others that do a lot of work but do not create threads such as nathan776, bizzgeburt and coffeejits. And obviously those threads do not always get updated frequently.

Second, I do not feel that it is appropriate for us to attempt to direct all users to do anything, which is what a public thread would indicate. This has always been a "help if you want" type of site and I don't want anything to make people think we are ordering anyone to do anything, like replace missing front arts. There are enough active readers in the forum that know about this issue and want to help and know about this thread.

Third, any important news or changes should already be reflected in a post or thread in this News section of the forum.

Outside of that, I can tell you what my current worklog is in relation to the issues in this thread:
- fix arts in my collection
- then wish list
- then sell list
- in SMS cats
- in Saturn cats
- in Gen/MD cats
- in GG cats
- in Sega Computers cats
- in DC cats
- in PS2 Consoles cats
(this isn't to say I am taking ownership of these, anyone can help if they want but I will be going through all of these before returning to my general DB nonsense)

Then I will work on updated the Ratings thread in Adv section, which in turn means that I will upload and link the ratings images so they appear on item pages.

I can't specifically say what Jason is working on as he has not shared any sort of task list, and it is up to him whether or not he would announce any change on the forum.

I will rename this thread tho.
Title: Re: Site Status
Post by: dhaabi on March 25, 2025, 03:29:23 pm
Outside of that, I can tell you what my current worklog is in relation to the issues in this thread:

For myself, I am only focusing on PlayStation [JP] for the time being. I'm projecting the time to repair the category will be a few months, since I'm being quite thorough. Most art found online for this specific library omits the outer layer obi, and I'm making my best effort to find artwork with it. To the best of my research skills, I'm also updating obi-present artwork that's stock art, but that is, unfortunately, not going as successfully as restoring lost art is, as many of those items aren't common.

At first, I began going through the category alphabetically, but I then decided to go through specific members' collection whom I know own large numbers of PlayStation JP items first. I've gone through about a dozen members' collections, but I'll be resuming where I left off alphabetically soon.
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: tripredacus on March 26, 2025, 10:04:42 am
Filter search field on the top of the Browse page returned.
https://vgcollect.com/browse
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: marvelvscapcom2 on March 30, 2025, 03:23:17 pm
Earlier today.

Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.


Constantly when trying to access forums.

This is a common occurence and was before the big crash.  Just wanted to bring this to attention in case its of note.
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: tripredacus on March 31, 2025, 09:51:01 am
Yes we are aware. There is a limited amount of connections that the database engine will allow at one time, and when that number is reached, it will be slow and/or show that error message. Connections does not necessarily equal the amount of users, so we are going through the long and complicated process of determining whether we need to change how the database is interacted with or if we need to scale the site to handle additional traffic.

The crash was unrelated to this database connection issue.
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: tripredacus on April 08, 2025, 11:42:53 am
I have generated a list of all item entry numbers where a back image exists but the front image is missing. There are 10,407 such entries.
I can make it available for anyone who is interested in replacing front arts. It is on Google Drive, so if you have a Google account, you can PM me and I can add you as an editor.
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: bizzgeburt on April 25, 2025, 12:01:36 pm
finished-List still doesn't work for me  :o

jumps into collection list as soon as I try to skip to another page or into individual systems pages. Only shows 1. page..

Is this an issue still worked on?

EDIT: this occurs using VGC via PC and mobile phone as well.
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: tripredacus on June 12, 2025, 10:02:18 am
I have generated a list of all item entry numbers where a back image exists but the front image is missing. There are 10,407 such entries.
I can make it available for anyone who is interested in replacing front arts. It is on Google Drive, so if you have a Google account, you can PM me and I can add you as an editor.

As of today, we have completed 35.10% of this list. It seems like this is going to take forever to go through, so I will put it out there again that if anyone wants to help, let me know. Even if it means you only want to work on fixing arts for a specific section or console, it won't be a problem. Every little bit helps.
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: dhaabi on June 13, 2025, 09:14:35 am
I have generated a list of all item entry numbers where a back image exists but the front image is missing. There are 10,407 such entries.
I can make it available for anyone who is interested in replacing front arts. It is on Google Drive, so if you have a Google account, you can PM me and I can add you as an editor.

As of today, we have completed 35.10% of this list.

I'll also reiterate that this list does not include entries which originally had front art only or front and media art only. During my time going through entire categories during this process, a considerable amount have been these types of entries, meaning the percentage completion toward restoring lost entry art is actually lower.
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: tripredacus on June 13, 2025, 10:50:51 am
Yes but there is no way to actually determine what those front-only/now-missing entries were. The missing fronts list at least gives us something we know for sure are wrong.
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: dhaabi on June 13, 2025, 11:59:20 am
Of course. I just figured I'd clarify that there are many more entries needing repaired beyond the spreadsheet total.
Title: Re: Site Status / Crash recovery information and planning
Post by: tripredacus on July 25, 2025, 12:00:30 pm
Milestone has been reached on the "Missing front images" spreadsheet.

Total rows: 10,408
Percent completed: 50%
Percent replaced: 49.45%

Top 10 users who worked entries
2,300 - tripredacus
964 - dhaabi
579 - nathan776
289 - silverbow
272 - coffeejits
178 - theflea
122 - mark1982
103 - lokiperv
48 - axiomenterance
45 - empovyle

Only top 3 have access to the sheet, the rest are users who have just been doing work on the site. These values are only for items that have been checked, so some users may have actually contributed more but are not known about yet.

Images that I have processed (not all are missing front images) since February 21: 4,642