LCCA Website Back On Line
Starting midafternoon, Monday, The LCCA web site Lionelcollectors.org is now LIVE and ON-LINE! The LCCA and its new vendor ran into unexpected complications that resulted in down time much longer than expected.
The LCCA site is quite old by internet standards – the site was live in the late 1990’s with the first data entries dated from 2002. To put this in perspective, Apple released its early iPhone in July 2009! There have been many updated languages, and software upgrades (windows introduced Microsoft XP in 2002). More notably the web site has grown over the years with multiple enhancements, additions, changes, and other modifications – many written in different computer languages.
The club was informed at the beginning of the year that the company hosting our servers was going out of business and that our site would go down and no longer work by April. This call to action resulted in a hurried search for both a new company to host us and the technical support to get the job done. Preparations were made for two months, backing up files and processes, sharing the necessary passwords to move and authenticate programs, to verify credit card processing was working correctly and a host of other necessary activities. Earlier in the month, after a notice was sent to all members, the site was shut down and the file transfers began. The job was expected to take a few days, a week at most.
But that was not the case. The LCCA had used the same vendor to write and support its internet site. All this time and had been told that all changes and processes were documented so changes would not be difficult. The reality is that this was not the case. And with the company now closing and losing its technicians, in a few cases, the club had to contact programmers that had left the original company in order to get help it needed. An important software license we had was with a company that was no longer in business. Over the years, file pointers were moved, changed, and modified resulting in a difficult time finding and understanding how to adjust them to the new server.
The net result was that the web site was down for far longer than expected, and to the frustration of all, left the club “internet dark” for far too long. The good news is the site is now up and running. During the server change, several web links have moved and been broken – and over the next few days will be repaired. There are parts of the site that may be delayed in becoming active. Due to the nature of the change, while there was a test site to use, a great number of things could not be tested or repaired until the site went live, and these will continue for a few days, if not weeks.
SUMMARY - The site is now live – the changeover to the new server has been completed, and there remain a few items yet to get corrected. The site still maintains its security certificate through Sectigo. All financial transactions and credit card processing are verified safe and secure. The site is up and ready for action.
The LCCA appreciates the patience of its members as it completed this unexpectedly difficult task.