USScouts.org

[derbycity]

I have not been able to access USScouts.org for over a week (or long). Anyone know what is going on? It's like loosing your best friend!

[DustinLBuckner]

Check out my thread at Tiger Cub Group Coach. It has the answers.

[jmcquillan]

Unfortunately, they lost their host. The host went belly up and declared bankruptcy. They had just enough time to get their gear out of the building. Presently they're searching for a new host, but claim that they will keep us all up to date via email as to their status (from time to time). To make matters worse, the loss of the host also effected MacScouter.

 

And I agree, it's like losing a good friend. We can only hope some real do-gooder host out there can make provisions for our friends on the web again.

 

[jmcquillan]

I'm going to try to paste in the email I received from USSCOUTS to answer your questions...hope this works.

 

Fellow Scouters:

Earlier today the U.S. Scouting Service Project went offline. The websites that we operate including www.usscouts.org; www.macscouter.com; www.netcommish.com; and others are no longer available for your use. It is our steadfast hope that soon we will be able to offer all of you as many Scouting resources as possible via the web.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Drivernet.com has for the past few years hosted the U.S. Scouting Projects web server. Today our host filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors at about 2:00 P.M. We had about two hours notice of this development and just enough time to remove our server from the premises.

WHAT WE ALL LOST!

The websites at the U.S. Scouting Service Project total over 10 GB of information in some 8,000 information files and some 15,000 image files. Up until today, the U.S. Scouting Service Project was perhaps the largest repository of Scouting information on the web and in the process of expanding.

WHAT IS NEXT

We are all volunteers and all trying to rise to meet this challenge. Tonight we are having an emergency meeting of our board of directors - eight volunteer Scouters scattered across the country. We will be looking to find a host that can handle the high volume of traffic that our site generates. We were getting between 2 and 3 million page views per month, which requires a very high speed internet connection, such as a T-1. T-1 connections can cost upward of $1,700 a month, which is far more than what we can afford. If anyone knows of a source for hosting that can handle this load and who would be willing to donate the connection or offer it at a very, very reduced rate, please let us know.

HOW LONG WILL WE BE OFFLINE?

We dont know the answer to this question yet. We hope that the time offline will be limited, but it could be several weeks. Once we secure a host, it will take time to get our server working at new addresses and to propogate the addresses across the Internet so that when you type in usscouts.org in your browser, it will find us.

HOW WILL I KNOW WHEN YOU ARE BACK ONLINE?

We will broadcast an e-mail message to as many lists as possible annoucing when we are back online. We have also set up an temporary web page at:

http://www.webnme.com/usscouts/'>http://www.webnme.com/usscouts/

where we will make announcements.

WE STILL HAVE SOME LIMITED CONTENT ON THE WEB

We know that many of you use our search service to find other websites and have as an emergency measure set up our ScoutSite Search engine at:

http://www.webnme.com/cgi-bin/searchscoutsites.html

where youll still be able to search for Scouting sites that were in our database. It isnt all of them, but it is still a healthy collection of some 2500 unit, district, council, and other websites.

WHAT ABOUT BALOOS BUGLE?

Depending on how long we are offline, we may put some content up at alternative sites and announce the availability of this content via http://www.webnme.com/usscouts/. For example, we probably will put the next edition of Baloos Bugle up on this site, if necessary.

 

Mike

Michael F. Bowman

Vice President, http://usscouts.org

Webmaster, http://www.webnme.com

 

 

 

US Scouting Service Project: http://www.usscouts.org

Dynapolis Internet Communities: http://www.dynapolis.com

Questions/Problems: Mike Bowman

 

 

 

[derbycity]

Dear jmcquillan. Thanks for the information. I have posted USScouts plea for a new T1 sponsor on our website. Maybe if all troop webmasters do this, we can help find another patriotic company willing to help them get up and running again. (I know Drivenet.com must really feel bad for causing this). To USScouts: If you are reading this, please keep us posted. Your group of volunteers have done so much to keep the quality in scouting. Thanks for all of your work.