[TECHNOLOGY] Problems with national website

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

A plugin which I uploaded on talossa.com to attempt to delete the thousands of spam users who signed up to the now-defunct Talossan Job Centre appears to have malfunctioned and deleted a portion of our websites' content.

I've got Deputy MinTech Brad Higgs working on it, and I would like to appeal to ALL Talossans who know anything about Wordpress setups, cPanel, or in particular whether we have any backups of our data, to help.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Unfortunately, all my access to that back-end stuff was deleted a few years ago. We used to keep a backup, of course. I assume that we're still doing so, and it's just a matter of restoring it. You can also see if the host has a rollback feature, which is also quite common but which I can't access. Probably there's no need to panic, don't worry.

Is this related to the menu problems on the site? Last week I tried to navigate to some stuff on the website, and couldn't... I assumed that the menu was just broken. Was that actually because the pages were deleted?

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

For reference, this is what I mean: almost everything is gone from most of the menus.



@GV , is the website one of the things you make backups of?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I'm happy to announce the crisis seems to be over. We found the automated backups and it seems to be back to normal now. Thanks with all my heart to Deputy MinSTUFF Brad Higgs, and to Eðo Grischün, who thankfully was available to help as well.

As to the menus: that was a deliberate choice by myself as Minister of STUFF. My predecessor Eðo Grischün had put some fancy technology (I think he said "iframes") in there that was supposed to automatically mirror content from talossawiki. It broke, and I had no idea how to fix it. So, I deleted the menu links to almost all that information (the pages are still there if a future MinSTUFF feels like restoring them) just because it was confusing, out of date, and the simplest way to get back into the present tense.

But this returns me to my issue of Infrastructure Decay. Talossa.com's backup file (which I just restored from) was 17 Gigabytes. And so much of that is obsolete or unused stuff. Before he retired from active services, Eðo wanted to move away from WordPress altogether, but never got the chance to do so - and I certainly wouldn't know how. I've wanted to "start again from the beginning" with talossa.com, but was loath to even try - and today I got a taste of how, when I tried to delete the 6000+ (!!!) spam users who had signed up to the old Jobs Centre (so I could actually find out which actual Talossan citizens had real access) and it borked the national webspace. Such is the rewards for trying to do something. LOL.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I'm glad everything is restored.  I'm thankful for S:reux Higgs and Grischun.

So wait... even though things are fixed, almost everything is still hidden?  The "All About Talossa" menu just has a glossary page and nothing else on purpose?  How long has it been like this?

This seems like a very big deal, and I guess I don't understand why you did this.  I read your explanation, but when I clicked through to some old pages no longer in that menu but linked elsewhere, they all still seem to work:

https://talossa.com/national-government/the-ziu-parliament/the-cosa/
https://talossa.com/national-government/the-cabinet-ministries/
https://talossa.com/royal-civil-service/college-of-arms/

Was "iframes" fixed?  Or is the problem on other pages that I just didn't find?  Is the best solution really just to hide everything for now?  Why isn't this a central priority for the Government, since the website is probably the most important point of first contact with the world?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

The "All About Talossa" menu just has a glossary page and nothing else on purpose?

No, you click on "All About Talossa" and it takes you to a basic fact sheet with links to the Wiki. Although I can see that that the way I had them set up might be misleading. A new format is now live.

Information about Talossa is useless if not up to date. The hundreds (literally) of pages on talossa.com were the responsibility of MinSTUFF to keep up to date. I don't have the time or energy to do that. Eðo's technological solution stopped working. So, I decided - after consultation with Cabinet - to replace it all with a basic fact sheet and links to the Wiki. A future MinSTUFF might, if they want, revert my decision. But the decision is mine (in consultation with the Government) to make.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

The "All About Talossa" menu just has a glossary page and nothing else on purpose?

No, you click on "All About Talossa" and it takes you to a basic fact sheet with links to the Wiki. Although I can see that that the way I had them set up might be misleading. A new format is now live.

Information about Talossa is useless if not up to date. The hundreds (literally) of pages on talossa.com were the responsibility of MinSTUFF to keep up to date. I don't have the time or energy to do that. Eðo's technological solution stopped working. So, I decided - after consultation with Cabinet - to replace it all with a basic fact sheet and links to the Wiki. A future MinSTUFF might, if they want, revert my decision. But the decision is mine (in consultation with the Government) to make.

Fair enough.  This seems like a very poor decision, but you are right that it is yours and the Government's to make.  Thank you for your time and answers on what sounds like a busy day.

[Ian Plätschisch]

I personally approved the decision to get rid of most of the menu trees. All of that information is already on the wiki; all the website needs to do is pull people in and then direct traffic to the wiki if they want more information. That can be achieved with a few pages of mostly permanent information. We all know how hard it is to keep the wiki up to date, let alone the wiki and the website.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I should note that Lüc da Schir has contacted MinTech and says he might see if he can get the "iframes" thing working in the coming weeks. But he agrees with the Government that duplication of information between the national website and the wiki is counterproductive. Perhaps in the coming weeks we can have a broader discussion on what exactly we expect talossa.com to do.