[This was written by Tabernacle of David teacher Ryan White, and was originally posted at Rooted In Torah.]
Hi Everyone,
Thank you all so much for making this website possible! It’s been about 3 years now since I launched this website and we have grown incredibly in both membership and content since then. I truly could not have done it without your support.
First, the bad news: As some of you may have noticed, the website went down on 1/16/18 and then again on 1/30/18 for about half a day. I worked with the great people at my hosting service to investigate and fix the cause of the problem. The first outage was caused by a hacker who gained access into the WordPress system and caused this website to go down. The issue was resolved at the time and better security measures were implemented to prevent hacking the admin passwords but apparently this hacker placed some malware files that lay dormant for exactly 2 weeks and then infected my hosting service account, causing all of my websites to shut down. Again, I was able to work with my hosting service and they ran security software which identified all of the infected files. All the infected files have been removed and a subsequent scan shows that the website is free from malware and the websites are back online.
None of your accounts have been compromised during this event. I am using a WordPress website with S2Membership for controlling access. My website stores zero financial information from you. When you created an account, the account is actually created with PayPal or Stripe through their secure financial portal and then their systems generate a code which my website simply checks to see if it is still active. Additionally, I personally deleted all of the malware files and verified that none of them were in any way associated with the S2Membership area of the website.
The website is fully operational, but may experience some intermittent outages over the next 24 hours as I chose to upgrade the hosting servers to a better service which should provide better load times and better security features.
And now on to the good news! Well, sort of… Things are about to change, for the better. Due to your incredible support, I was able to take an 8 day period off from work and am going to devote that time to a major overhaul of this website. I am implementing a modern-looking home page that will improve the navigation on the website. Additionally, I will be adding multiple sub-pages that will group postings better so that you are able to easily navigate exactly to the type of teachings you are looking for as well as assisting in discovering new ones! There will also be a newsletter that will be mailed out periodically to highlight new teachings and exciting new features.
Speaking of new features, many of you have graciously signed up for higher donation memberships and as means of thanking you, I will be creating a 4th tier of membership for those donating $25/mo or more that will give you 25 download tickets per month, along with potentially some more bonuses.
Depending on how long these upgrades take me to implement, there may be a few more surprises in store to be released soon, including an entirely new Yeshiva course.
The time period for this upgrading is from 2/6/18 – 2/13/18. During this time period, access to the website will remain, however you may end up seeing some crazy things happening on the pages as I am changing the WordPress theme and updating the pages. If this effects your access, please wait about 30 minutes and then try reloading the page.
Ryan
The post Upcoming Maintenance and Server Interruptions appeared first on Rooted in Torah.
