Seriously: It seems like every other time that I've visited the old RITA site within the past year, it was dealing with some sort of technical problem. It pops back up again, then once again, it's gone - off the air until further notice.

Can anyone who knows tell me what the issue is, and why it keeps happening so frequently? I understand things happen, but it would sure be nice to be able to count on a regular site and message board to visit. Isn't it about time someone fixed the problem once and for all?

Thanks for the help.

Zion138
P.S. Forgive me if this has been addressed before. I honestly missed it if it has.

Hi, Zion138,

I'm a mod, so I can address your question. We've been rebuilding the site from the ground up. We started here on this site, which is somewhat limited in what it can do. It doesn't have many features; it has the advantage of being inexpensive to operate and it has simplicity. To minister the way we'd like, we need more up to date technology.

When we started the new site, RITA Now, it gradually developed some problems, as it was crashing almost daily. We really wanted to keep the wealth of data we'd accumulated, such as the thousands of posts in our archives. We asked experts, and were told it would be possible to migrate to an updated site. So we went with that. Unfortunately, after a short time, we discovered that site was also unusable. There was too much patchwork in the coding and no one could identify exactly why it wouldn't work properly.

The solution was to start from scratch with a clean slate. This time, we're working with software that is designed to be compatible. Behind the scenes, we've been learning, checking things out, and hoping when it's unveiled (maybe very soon) it will be something that everyone can enjoy using without having it crash unexpectedly.

Thank You David R.

Email: fwrudedog@gmail.com

I disavow all knowledge of this situation. ;-)

Although I would gladly help in any way I could, I don't think I would be of much use!

Keep up the good work, mods (and others involved). I would rather stay on the old site for awhile than act as a guinea pig for temporary fixes while you troubleshoot.

This brings up something else I've been thinking about. I really like the current landing page for RITA Now. "Coming Soon" and the sunset photo. Then you link here. Brilliant! That way if we get pulled out of here and people go online searching for answers they can still find this site easily.

Nicely done!

David, am I understanding correctly that EVERYTHING has been lost?Unrecoverable? All posts? That's a real bummer. There was a wealth of knowledge, studies, visions,dreams, tidbits etc there. :(

I didn't realize it crashed that often. I rarely had trouble with it until they decided to upgrade so I was perplexed as to the need for newer, more advanced software with more bells and whistles. Newer is not always better. Give me a washing machine from the 60's any day-before they figured out how to make them so they broke after a few years!

Thanks for all you and the other mods do to assist in us having a place to fellowship. I sincerely appreciate it.

Email: GodIsLove5bc@gmail.com

Except for a few items that were on our computers, all the old posts had to be scrapped. It will take a while to build up again. Most of the older posts we had before everything went down was under "anonymous," anyway. So, yes. That means we had to lose the archives, which was painful, although necessary to the process. The old and the new just weren't mixing.

We're very pleased with what's going on behind the curtain, as we address the issues needed to have a working site. We're trying to keep the bells and whistles that are functional and have set aside some things which create a drag on resources. Having a quick load time, without having to sit there for two minutes waiting to refresh the screen, is very important.

Did the Internet wayback machine at archive.org take a snapshot of anything that would be useful?

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.raptureintheairnow.com

They don't keep things like photos, but most of the text should have survived.

For anyone who needs a RITA Now fix, the Wayback Machine (an Internet archive) has collected some parts of RITA Now. Unfortunately, it's not as complete as I thought on my first visit -- though if you check all the different dates, who knows what you'll find?

Go here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://raptureintheairnow.com

You have the choice of 2011, 2012, and 2013. Then pick a date (one of the blue circles). There may be 200 different available dates (I lost count). It's also likely that more 2013 dates will show up later -- perhaps even dates from earlier years.

Note that the blue-circled dates refer to the dates the Wayback Machine's bots visited RITA Now -- not the dates of indexed posts.

I don't know if it's possible to do a site-specific Google Advanced Search for the Wayback Machine's RITA Now data. I think that would require Google to have indexed the Wayback Machine, though -- and I don't know if they have (or if they even could, since it requires entering the original address of the site you're interested in).

It makes my brain (never at its best before noon) hurt just to think about trying to test that. And in any case, I'm supposed to be outside moving gravel around the front yard ... something that makes other parts of my body hurt just to think about.

===

Great minds, CSF!

Quite seriously, if you way back fans could find some of the old favorite posts, in particular the teaching posts that we used to refer people towards, or any posts that touched you, then copy it and repost it when we get Ritan back up and running. The main point of Ritan is the fellowship, not the library. But it's kinda nice to retire to the library to have fellowship sometimes.:)

Email: TxThom@raptureintheairnow.com

TX Thom, I was afraid someone was going to suggest that.

It may also be a good idea to search Google to identify whether a post/thread exists in Google's database (even though it no longer exists on the web -- I was doing a search last night trying to id an orchid from a photo, and found photos on several sites in Google Images, though the sites no longer existed to possibly provide the name of the orchid)

If it's possible to find a citation in Google, that would probably provide an exact thread title and/or date which would help find that thread in the Wayback Machine.

When we did the big upgrade the database shift didn't keep track of the authors or searchable components, which is why all the old posts were listed as anonymous. The format of the old database, now extra corrupted, wasn't really transferable to the new system. If we had government level resources, it might be possible to reconstruct it bit by bit, but we also thought it would be best to start with all new code. By which I mean we tried to import the database into the new system and it killed it dead, beyond even the paid experts ability to explain let alone fix.

There comes a time to leave the duct tape and bondo behind and get a shiny new car. We got the new car, we're just working on the shiny part.

Email: TxThom@raptureintheairnow.com

Thanks TXThom.
Well explained :)

B-B-But I thought duct tape fixed everything!