Hello everyone and Happy New Year!
We certainly do wish you all well, and hope you've enjoyed creating wonderful holiday memories with your family and friends.
As we begin a new year we do so with gratitude for all we have to be thankful for in our association with you, our valued contributing artists, friends and customers. We recognize that we wouldn't have a business if it wasn't for your continued support and encouragement for what we're doing. So, again, we thank you!
The past couple of months have been a challenge to say the least. We would like to share a bit of where we have been, where we are and where we wish to go.
On Friday, November 13th our entire site was taken down by an Islamic group looking to garner more support for their cause. They uploaded an image via our forums that contained a malicious script that deleted everything on the server. The server logs show that nothing was taken off the server and there was no attempt to gather information from our database. It was all simply deleted.
Thankfully, we had been in the process of upgrading our store installation to the newest version and had a copy of it on another server. The new copy of the store contained all of our product and customer data, however, it did not contain images or file attachments.
Two of our team members, Alisa and my husband Jeff, worked day and night to restore thousands of images and product files to our store. The bulk of the restoration has been completed and we are working on wrapping up some remaining loose ends when it comes to images and download links.
Our HiveWire forums were also deleted from the server and our backup copies did not contain images. We DO still have the original forum available in read only mode, however, without images it's essentially a skeleton of what it was. We do not feel this skeleton is a good representation of who we are so we decided to start over with a new forum solution.
Our new Community at HiveWire 3D is built on the XenForo framework which is installed on a secure server that is separate from our store installation. We are very excited about the features this new forum offers. It's pretty robust in its default state and we have already installed some really nifty add-ons that are giving us some of the customization we have been looking for. It's fairly easy to administer and doesn't require having to know programming-speak to set things up. We are finding this new solution very exciting and very doable.
We had planned to open the new community forums to the public on December 14th, when on December 13th I went upstairs and found my brother not breathing. My husband did CPR but it was too late. My brother passed away at the very young age of 43.
The stress of everything sent me to the hospital with chest pain that night. I was there for a few days, had a 100% blockage removed with a laser and a stent placed in an artery in my heart. I came home to a funeral and then before I knew it, Christmas was here. As you might imagine, it's been a challenging month.
With the holidays behind us now I've been doing my best to do my part to finish getting things ready for you. We have a bunch of really cool tools installed with a bunch more coming as we go along. Our Community Volunteers and Beta Teams have been testing things along the way and are excited as well.
If you're reading this and have come with us thus far, you might know that we have had many ups and downs since we opened for business in the summer of 2013. We have experienced a sort of "trial by fire" with all of the challenges we have faced over the past two and a half years. We started with seven partners, then five, then three and now two - Chris and me. We are two very dedicated and passionate people who are determined to continue to create a growing and thriving business here. We have invested everything we have and we are here for the long haul. We know we do not do it alone. Our Hive is, and will continue to be, buzzing with an abundance of bees, pollen, nectar and honey.
Thanks to Jeff and Alisa for their specific efforts to resurrect the products on the store. Special thanks too, to Paul Lessard for keeping existing products that are in the production pipeline moving forward. Thanks also to Ken Gilliland, Laurie Prindle and many other artists that have so much trust in HiveWire to represent their products appropriately. Thanks to our QAV Team, Beta Team and Community Volunteers who have so generously given their time and support to keep products moving and get our forums buzzing again. We wish to also thank so many of you that have emailed your well wishes and supporting comments, thoughts and prayers on our behalf, and to me and my family specifically.
We are honored and ever-grateful for your continued support.
We certainly do wish you all well, and hope you've enjoyed creating wonderful holiday memories with your family and friends.
As we begin a new year we do so with gratitude for all we have to be thankful for in our association with you, our valued contributing artists, friends and customers. We recognize that we wouldn't have a business if it wasn't for your continued support and encouragement for what we're doing. So, again, we thank you!
The past couple of months have been a challenge to say the least. We would like to share a bit of where we have been, where we are and where we wish to go.
On Friday, November 13th our entire site was taken down by an Islamic group looking to garner more support for their cause. They uploaded an image via our forums that contained a malicious script that deleted everything on the server. The server logs show that nothing was taken off the server and there was no attempt to gather information from our database. It was all simply deleted.
Thankfully, we had been in the process of upgrading our store installation to the newest version and had a copy of it on another server. The new copy of the store contained all of our product and customer data, however, it did not contain images or file attachments.
Two of our team members, Alisa and my husband Jeff, worked day and night to restore thousands of images and product files to our store. The bulk of the restoration has been completed and we are working on wrapping up some remaining loose ends when it comes to images and download links.
Our HiveWire forums were also deleted from the server and our backup copies did not contain images. We DO still have the original forum available in read only mode, however, without images it's essentially a skeleton of what it was. We do not feel this skeleton is a good representation of who we are so we decided to start over with a new forum solution.
Our new Community at HiveWire 3D is built on the XenForo framework which is installed on a secure server that is separate from our store installation. We are very excited about the features this new forum offers. It's pretty robust in its default state and we have already installed some really nifty add-ons that are giving us some of the customization we have been looking for. It's fairly easy to administer and doesn't require having to know programming-speak to set things up. We are finding this new solution very exciting and very doable.
We had planned to open the new community forums to the public on December 14th, when on December 13th I went upstairs and found my brother not breathing. My husband did CPR but it was too late. My brother passed away at the very young age of 43.
The stress of everything sent me to the hospital with chest pain that night. I was there for a few days, had a 100% blockage removed with a laser and a stent placed in an artery in my heart. I came home to a funeral and then before I knew it, Christmas was here. As you might imagine, it's been a challenging month.
With the holidays behind us now I've been doing my best to do my part to finish getting things ready for you. We have a bunch of really cool tools installed with a bunch more coming as we go along. Our Community Volunteers and Beta Teams have been testing things along the way and are excited as well.
If you're reading this and have come with us thus far, you might know that we have had many ups and downs since we opened for business in the summer of 2013. We have experienced a sort of "trial by fire" with all of the challenges we have faced over the past two and a half years. We started with seven partners, then five, then three and now two - Chris and me. We are two very dedicated and passionate people who are determined to continue to create a growing and thriving business here. We have invested everything we have and we are here for the long haul. We know we do not do it alone. Our Hive is, and will continue to be, buzzing with an abundance of bees, pollen, nectar and honey.
Thanks to Jeff and Alisa for their specific efforts to resurrect the products on the store. Special thanks too, to Paul Lessard for keeping existing products that are in the production pipeline moving forward. Thanks also to Ken Gilliland, Laurie Prindle and many other artists that have so much trust in HiveWire to represent their products appropriately. Thanks to our QAV Team, Beta Team and Community Volunteers who have so generously given their time and support to keep products moving and get our forums buzzing again. We wish to also thank so many of you that have emailed your well wishes and supporting comments, thoughts and prayers on our behalf, and to me and my family specifically.
We are honored and ever-grateful for your continued support.
The hive is back...
Well said!!
