"Server outage hits UK wargames sites" Topic

Just a heads-up that an update for the Tradestands server, which hosts a number of UK wargames businesses, went pear-shaped today and that as a result the websites for businesses including Fighting 15s, Black Hat Miniatures, Early War Miniatures and, IIRC, Too Fat Lardies among others are not accessible.

None of us have gone out of business, I write in a vain attempt to forestall forum topics asking whether so and so is still in business. :-)

Andy at Tradestands is on holiday, celebrating his 60th birthday, and although he has passed the issue over to tech experts at the hosting company, a solution may not be in place for days or even a week.

During this time none of us can access orders, customer details, raise invoices and the like. Nor can we handle emails because the outage affects our shop emails too. Use other means of contacting, such as Facebook messenger.

I will probably take a short holiday to bypass the crisis. Or wait for custom orders to come in via the Fighting 15s Etsy shop etsy.com/shop/Fighting15s where I have all of 11 codes listed as a way of advertising what I do.

Ian, Fighting 15s and Gladiator Miniatures

Thanks. The attempt is indeed vain, but appreciated.

If this was ransomware, I think we can leave miniature wargamers off the suspect list. We all know there's no money in it.

Black Hat Miniatures has closed down anyway
TMP link

Vanguard Miniatures appears to also be down.

Not sure if it's for the same reason.

Black Hat Miniatures has closed down anyway

I included Black Hat for the very good reason that its email is unavailable and that anyone who had not seen that it has just sold its last ranges might be puzzled if the site is down and they can't get a response to emails to the usual contact address.

Outage will be from seven to 10 days.

Not a very good service that has a single point of failure. You'd be much better off using a cloud service where there are multiple servers supporting the sites. Then if one server goes down the other(s) continue to provide the service.

WSS has been active in compiling list of affected businesses' websites at link

MajorB: most of the businesses affected also have single points of failure in that they're one man bands. Possibly two-man bands, but none the less if the owner is out of action, the business is out of action. I thought of saving myself to the cloud for future eventualities.

Other single points of failure include premises (I've been flooded after losing the workshop roof in a storm) and the casting machine (I now have a spare and a spare for the spare, but that's a luxury for many). If I contract cast for other businesses, they would also have been affected when my casting machine broke and was at an engineering firm for a week. Plus, like Tradestands, I take holidays too, and the world of Fighting 15s stops.

Hi

Yes. Thanks, our web host's server has suffered a catastrophic failure – Looks like the site could be offline for 7 to 10 days. Any site linked email addresses ( info@gmbdesigns.com ) will be out of action too… and that phone number in the above list is no longer in service.

All current orders ( up to and including Weds 3rd July ) have now shipped. Any enquiries to my old email. gmbdesigns@blueyonder.co.uk

Thanks

Grahame, GMB

I can't get to Leven Miniatures either. Anyone know if this is affecting them ?

For us Yanks.

link