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twheeler
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May 8, 2008, 7:42 AM
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Hundreds of Articles Disappeared. Help.
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I read a previous post about a similar situation, but that person was using an earlier version of AM. We have this client on 1.41.
We have a partial pro-bono client who posts news from all around the state every morning before 8:30. It's really a great site. To get it done quickly they log in two at a time and post, and they routinely add an average of 50 stories a day. These are posted as links to external sites, with a one-paragraph summary, so there are no pages, per se, published by AM.
This morning they logged in and began posting articles, only to find that nothing they'd saved had actually been saved and posted. Further, another editor had several stories written in advance to be made visible at a later date; all these articles were missing. Lastly, they discovered that every article after March 10th had disappeared. Their last archive was on March 27th, and to my knowledge they had been posting articles from then until this morning without issue.
I really feel like the client is pushing the limits of AM, even though there isn't an "official" limit. I wonder if they run into problems because they are working concurrently. They put up a LOT of content. They have gotten better about archiving but it still seems like they wait until performance is really sluggish. Though there are currently less than 2,000 unarchived articles, I can't even begin to think about how many articles are gone.
So, this problem has two parts:
1) I need to know if there's a way to get the missing articles back, preferably while preserving what was recreated after this morning's glitch. I fear there may be no backup, but I am checking with the hosting company on that.
2) If this client is exceeding AM's capabilities, I need to know what the limits are so I can communicate them to the client and manage their expectations.
Thanks in advance for any replies.
(This post was edited by twheeler on May 8, 2008, 9:14 AM)
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MikeB
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May 8, 2008, 1:57 PM
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Re: [twheeler] Hundreds of Articles Disappeared. Help.
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Hi,
Thanks for the post!
I've had a look over this and it is a bit tough for me to see what might have happened here. That said, there aren't any automatic backups created by Article Manager so if something has happened on the server with the data you'll want to get in touch with your hosting company about this.
Regarding the limits of the software, I'd generally say that you may notice a slowdown in the admin program and search script when you get up to 1500-2000 articles in the "Current" archive. This can vary depending on the server and you'll want to note that the only drawback would be a bit of a slowdown and shouldn't result in any data loss.
Though it may not be feasible if you're not charging this client for your time, one thing to keep in mind is that the latest version of the software has the ability to use a MySQL database so if you're able to upgrade them you shouldn't notice any of those sorts of slowdowns.
I hope this helps! 
Cheers,
Mike Briggs - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com
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twheeler
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May 8, 2008, 2:45 PM
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Re: [MikeB] Hundreds of Articles Disappeared. Help.
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Just replying in case anyone is following this thread.
Something happened to the article.dat file, probably while they were trying to do their morning updates. There is the first line of a March 10 article in the file, then whatever was between that and the May 8 posts is gone. I'm not sure where/how the data loss would have happened, but the way this client uses AM (2 - 3 people at a time, 50 articles a day) is probably a little more intense than most. Are articles deleted from the database before being overwritten? Maybe somewhere in the write process everything just stalled out.
Based on the article numbers, over 3,600 articles were lost. About 1,900 current articles remain. So the number of articles before the article database was corrupted was well over the limits of AM.
The client has been doing quarterly archiving, but I suggested this morning she increase the frequency to monthly. To your credit, they have had very few problems with AM in the three+ years they've been using it but recently added a new business section and that doubled the volume of articles being posted.
The host did have a backup and the client is having to pay $80 for a restore from backup (they're not happy). I'll add the missing articles into a copy of the article.dat file, which should make everything right again - right?
Mike, you and I are thinking alike because I mentioned the upgrade with MySQL to the client when I called her about the backup this morning. I'm not sure if they'll go for it, though.
Thanks for your post back.
(This post was edited by twheeler on May 8, 2008, 3:10 PM)
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MikeB
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May 9, 2008, 10:15 AM
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Re: [twheeler] Hundreds of Articles Disappeared. Help.
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Hi Teresa,
Thanks for the update regarding this.
In regards to the couple of questions you have, the database shouldn't be removing blocks of articles. That said, I'm curious if filelocking had been turned off at any point with this installation. With having multiple people logging in, with filelocking turned off, it's possible that two users were trying to modify something at the same time which caused some of the data loss. That said, it's tough to say and it seems pretty specific to this install.
From what you've outlined, if you just paste those articles back into the admin program that shouldn't be a problem at all. I'd definitely suggest making another backup of the data file before you do this just in case the results don't come up the way you expected.
I hope this helps Teresa!
Cheers,
Mike Briggs - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com
Hire me!
Save time by getting our experts to help with your project. Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with Priority Consulting.
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twheeler
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May 9, 2008, 1:17 PM
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Re: [MikeB] Hundreds of Articles Disappeared. Help.
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I checked and filelocking is enabled. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Good to know cutting and pasting articles into the article.dat file should be fine. Still waiting on that restore from backup, but in the meantime I've done some archiving so hopefully adding the lost articles back in won't overload the database again.
Have a great weekend
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