The forum's still up, but the admin's planning on moving it to another domain:
https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?175838-Main-DP-Sites-are-Temporarily-UnavailableThis is making me very sad. I mostly used DP as a directory; they had a large list of sites about classic game systems, some of which they hosted. I know BalleyAlley agreed to mirror an Arcadia 2001 site they hosted, but I don't know what will happen to the other hosted sites. I did copy their links page to my PC tho.
There is a mention on their forum that a few other parts of the site are backed up, and that they may bring that stuff over to the new site.
Awhile back I discovered that VGF was still online. Does anyone remember that site? Their main page redirects to their forum, but I found a link to the rest of their content on smbhq:
http://www.vgf.com/404.htm Yeah, that's a 404 error page, but it still has links to other, abandoned-but-working parts of the site.
Digital Press had been up for a long time; if the copyright notice on their forum is correct (1991-2017) they were probably one of the 1st gaming sites on the web. So it's sad to see it go, even if they hadn't had any major updates in a long time they were still interesting from a historical perspective, and they still had good content archived. Same thing with GameZeroMagazine, StompTokyo, VGF, AtariHQ, SMBHQ, SoST, TheMushroomKingdom.net, Videogames.org, this site, and many,
many other sites.
UPDATE: They came back on Oct. 20. From their fourm:
Executive summary
Everything is now back to normal. All of the site's sections are available and accessible. This includes the forum and the other sections of the site. Joe, the store, and the museum are good too.
Timeline breakdown
Aug - Oct: Joe, the site's owner, accidentally doesn't pay the bill for this site's hosting to its Web host, DreamHost.
Oct 10: Everything hosted by DreamHost "disappears" due to non-payment. The forum is hosted at DigitalOcean so it continues. (Everything DP can't be stored at DigitalOcean due to file size concerns with the hosting plan.)
Oct 12: I, the site's admin, notice the missing parts of the site and write an e-mail to Joe. I also write about what's happening on the forum.
Oct 13: Still not having heard from Joe, I call his phone number. The number is disconnected. I call the museum. I talk to John Hardie. I explain. He takes a note to convey to Joe. I ask for Joe's phone number. I am given a dummy phone number meant for solicitors, yet I don't know that's what it is at the time. I call the dummy number and it endless rings with no answer. Meanwhile, Joe gets the message from John about the site's situation. At this time, I am talking with one of the store's employees who says she will also convey my memo to Joe. Joe attempts to send a text message to my phone number - however, it is a number that doesn't have text messaging service as it is a "regular phone number," so the message silently disappears into the void. Joe pays a DreamHost bill that is for another Web site of his (not the digitpress.com group) and presumes that the situation is resolved as he doesn't hear from me afterward.
Oct 15: Still not having heard from Joe, I call the dummy number 2 - 3 times throughout the day. Concerned, I make a post about the situation here at the forum.
Oct 19: The store's employee(s), having a meeting with Joe (over the phone I guess), mention the "sites are missing" situation.
Oct 19/20: Joe, having spoken with PapaStu (a longtime mod here), delves back into his records, and realizes that there is another DreamHost account to pay (the digitpress.com one). He pays the bill. The non-forum site sections are restored to the Internet.
Oct 20: Joe writes an e-mail to me in the morning, explaining some things from his side. He gives a current cell phone number in the message. I call and we discuss things further. Everything is smoothed.
What now?
For now, things go back to normal. Though I have some backup copies, I am going to make additional, more recent copies and of everything both recent and old. I have a slow Internet connection, so I'll first make an off-site backup of these servers to my server, then copy that to my local computer. Later, I'll still research migrating an offline copy of this forum from vBulletin to phpBB... you know, Just-in-Case(TM).
