(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Automobile forum Impalassforum.com’s archive was accidentally erased by its web host, Rackforce (www.rackforce.com), when its tech support deleted a database file containing more than 1.5 million forum posts posted over the past 10 years.
The website, which let users share information about the Chevrolet Impala, had lost a decade’s worth of data, according to Zack Kanter, who alerted the WHIR to this issue. Impalassforum.com was the largest 1994-96 Impala SS and 1991-96 Caprice information source and discussion forum, said Kanter, who sells high performance auto parts for Power Performance Motorsports (www.powerperformancemotorsports.com). He said that dozens of vendors rely on referrals from the website’s posts and archives to sell products. “[I]t is truly a tragedy in the automotive community,” Kanter said in an email.
RackForce general manager Randall Robinson said that Impalassforum.com was a highly unusual and unfortunate event, and RackForce worked with Impalassforum.com to resolve the situation.
“The issue was caused by a miscommunication between the customer and one of our technical staff, which resulted in a data file being deleted,” Robinson stated. “We made every effort to recover the lost information; however, because the customer did not subscribe to any back up services with RackForce nor did they have any back ups of their own, the lost data was unrecoverable.”
The hundreds of thousands of detailed modification instructions, safety recalls, product reviews, and build logs that were lost should serve as a reminder of the importance of backup services, however, it is little consolation to an online community that has lost so much. Rackforce has assured Impalassforum.com that a similar tragedy is not repeated.
“We take customer service very seriously and have addressed the situation with our technical staff to ensure that this type of miscommunication will not happen again in the future,” Robinson said. “We have also extended our enterprise backup solution to the customer at no cost as a gesture of goodwill.”
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