Bootlegzone.com had a major server crash. Both hard disks crashed, leaving the server in a very unstable state and the website is unreachable for now. Fortunately, I have backups of everything: website, forums, databases, scans, etc. The server disks need to be replaced and those are costs I can't afford. But don't worry ! BZ is not dead, in fact it will relive on another server.
I wanted to move BZ to another server for a long time: the previous server was old, expensive (120€/month !) and unsecure. It has been hacked several times because, for various reasons, the OS and the software were impossible to update without breaking a lot of other stuff.
I had planned to move BZ to another server sometime in December. So this crash comes a bit too early as I'm very busy with many other projects that take up most of my free time. But there's no choice: I don't want BZ to be unavailable for too long, so I will have to find the time no matter what.
The text you're reading right now is on the "new" BZ server. I'm currently copying back all the files to this new server (that's 120.000 scans and I don't know how many messages, private or on the forums). As you can imagine just this copying process takes time. Once it's complete, I need to reactivate the databases, the forums and make sure everything works perfectly.
EDIT (Nov. 21): the code I wrote more than 20 years ago for the website cannot be run on modern/secure WWW servers. The programming language I used still exists but my code is for a very old version of that language and the modern version does not support several features I used back then. Most of these restrictions apply to the BZ database access, some to security (back then we didn't have those problems :D ). It means I have to refactor ALL the code if I want BZ up again !
It means going through thousands lines of code ! This is a major setback as it will push further away the time when BZ is back online again. The good news is that once this is done the site will comply to more modern standards regarding database access and security, so it's worth it. Thanks for your patience.
Also, I want to get rid of the FTP Scans upload feature, which is an outdated and unsecure feature, and replace it with something more modern. And there are a few other features that I want to update because they're innappropriate or unsecure.
As you can imagine, all this will take time and it means BZ might be unavailable for a few days. I won't speculate on a date. Come back regularly on this page for updates on the whole situation.
Take care of yourself, of your loved ones and everybody else.
--tilleul