celisnebula

This top post, not matter how old, is always the most relevant post regarding Sycophant Hex on the whole.



Goodness, we have made it another year! I want to thank everyone again for the donations, particularly since we were hit hard by spam bots in November, December and January before Nexcess could help us block them all out, causing us to have montly overage fees of $75 per month. That was a hard financial hit, so I wanted to thank all of you who were incredibly kind enough to help donate to mitigate that unexpected expense!


I am always blown away by the help that is extended to pay for our site to continue to run.



We are officially paid up until June 1, 2027 for both the webhosting fees (which are unfortunately $370 a year now) and the smaller domaine fee. So thank you again to everyone that has helped.




DONATIONS


Again, I am always extremely grateful of for all of the donations that anyone sends our way. Sycophant Hex has always been free to use; I cannot express how very thankful I am to everyone whom donated, your contribution has allowed us a place where you can find the fan fiction you would like to read for free.



As always, we understand if you are unable to donate - the one thing I have learned with the new social work position I have, is that some of us are just one car repair away from disaster - I know all of us have suffered in some way, so if you haven't the funds, or even the inclination to, please don't sweat it, lord knows it's an effort even to get out of bed somedays. I'm just glad we can be here for another year!



If you do have a desire to donate, we have a couple of methods to use...


PAYPAL

You can always donate directly through send a friend money on PayPal via sh.userhelp@gmail.com email address or through the paypal group pay set up:
https://paypal.me/pools/c/8qaGEpi05m


LIBERAPAY

We are still using Liberapay... I know several people have expressed disatisfaction over the site because it forces a person to then use Paypal and not everyone is a fan of Paypal. I have not, unfortunately found an alternative to this that will allow someone to dontate to use without using Paypal.









The direct link is (in case the widget is unavailable or wonky):

https://liberapay.com/SycophantHex/donate




Unfortunately, Liberapay doesn't allow for a one time donation, so if you do use this, please just do a custom amount per year, then once the first transaction has gone through, discontinue it so it stops right away.



If you know of a place to set up for donations that is free and easy to use, please let us know, since we're always looking for easier options for people to use.






INTERNAL EMAILS


We are still limping along with the E-Fiction software. Right now, we are going to keep chugging along with this - I know the buggy problems are annoying, but financially we don't have a way to pay for a new program that would work better and no one with enough knowledge on the software that otw-a offers (which is what Archive Of Our Own uses) has been available to help.


I always interested in hearing about other website platforms that could possibly work, as I don't know what I will be able to do once E-Fiction is unsupportable at all. So if you have any advice, please let us know.


This means if you register to create a new account or have lost/forgotten/can't access you account and need a new password, you have to email sh.userhelp@gmail.com to get a new password created for you so you can access the site.



When you email for a password I need to know:

Archive name (ie Ashwinder, Occlumency or one of the others):
pen name/user name chosen:
email address on the account (even if you no longer have access to it):




Please be patient while you wait for a response - it can take up to take anywhere between 10 to 14 days before a new password has been sent to you, depending on work schedules, holiday and school scheduled and whatnot. If you haven't received an email response back within 15 days, please email again, as the original email may have gone astray.




CALIBRE

As we head into summer, I know many people are looking for options to download their favorite stories so that they can take them with them to read. The ebook reader, Calibre free, has a fanfic extension where you can copy and past the link of the story you want and it will convert it into whatever readable format you want (epud, pdf, mobi). Youtube has tutorials on how to work the program for this specifically.

Calibre's website: https://calibre-ebook.com/download


Thank you so very much, Celisnebula

celisnebula

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Edit: It looks like we are back up. Nexcess isn't really sure what caused the issue. The email they sent said something about a load spike on the server which caused heavy traffic from Tencent IP ranges (listed below) and blocked them in the Apache configuration to resolve the issue. That caused the site to go down. Then they unblocked them and sent me a list of connections from Tencent and one of the IP ranges to verify what was needed. I know fuckall about that shit, which I explained to the rep and on their end they were unable to determine the exact nature of the connection between the websites and those IP ranges. So I may need a developer to look at it in the future if it weirdly happens again. But for now, we're fixed.

Unfortunately there seems to be something wrong with Sycophant Hex as a whole; I can't seem to get into the actual website itself because I am getting a 403 Forbidden: "You don't have permission to access / on this server," on all the browswers I use - Chrome/Edge/Firefox.

I have a help desk call into Nexcess, which is our webserver to see what needs to be done to fix this, but I really don't know how long the site will be down as they haven't given be an ETA just an email that they are researching and looking into the situation.

As soon as I know anything more, I will update here about the sitauton.

celisnebula

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Please do not panic...

It appears that Sycophant Hex is down. I do not know what it issue is, as I cannot load the site at all.

I have contacted Nexcess to see if there is a site maintenance, or a storm issue (it is snowing here in Michigan where the server is), or something else.

Unfortunately, with the site down, it means I cannot log in to create temp passwords at the moment. Please be patient a bit longer if you've recently emailed the help desk within the last ten days. I will get to you as soon as I can access the site once again.

Thank you,
Celis

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If you email the Sycophant Hex help desk for help with issues on Ashwinder and the like, please be aware that it's going to take me even longer to respond because, well mother nature hates where I live in Michigan and we had two damns break, so it's flooded pretty much EVERYWHERE. Plus powers out and there's spotty internet at most (using phone to post this).

So please be patient. I will eventually get to your email some time this century, baring, yanno, an alien race coming down and vaporizing me, or a zombie horde eating off my face.

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I was trying to fix an error that Nexcess sent and apparently I've killed everything.

I have sent out a help request to Nexcess to help me fix what I fucked up. Occlumency and the rest are all good... just Aswinder is FUBARed right now.

Sorry.

celisnebula

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Hello Everyone,

Last night, I messed up. I was trying to ban the IP address of a spammer and must have done something wrong because now the whole dang thing is down. I have contacted Nexcess to see if what I did can be undone. If not, the last back up was done a few months ago, I will have them reset to that back up - although it means some of the newer stories and chapters might be lost.

Sorry,

Celis

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Sycophant Hex is currently up and running.

We've made several backups of the site... an old one from 2015 which was used to root out the malware, a back up of everything before David started removing source codes line by line, and two for other back ups just in case. We'll be keeping the 2015 back up for guidance in case this happens again.

If you notice anything hinky that use to work before we had the malware problem, please email the help desk. That way if something that was tagged as Malware and got deleted that shouldn't have been can be replaced. I am still looking into updating both Ashwinder and Occlumency since the older version of efiction (mostly on Ashwinder) is where the infected files were put. If anyone is well versed in efiction - please email me either via livejournal, facebook, my personal email or the sh.userhelp gmail address - I want to know if what I was told in the past about upgrading those two archives is still valid and if so what can we do to make it work?

Finally, carecrystal was kind enough to send a flower arrangement to the funeral for larilee on Sycophant Hex's behalf. I know others have expressed interest in other ways we could pay tribute to this wonderful woman. Please leave your suggestions here and if they are feasible, I will find away to put something into place.

http://www.newcomerkentuckiana.com/Obituary/144962/Lisa-Ryan/Louisville-Kentucky

celisnebula

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I'm not gonna lie, it was apparently really bad malware.

larilee's brother has been going through all the files and killing the infected directories, added extra files, and links that hot link you to somewhere else that isn't Sycophant Hex.

He's also given me much needed advice on how to be vigilant so this doesn't happen again (like backing up offline every two months or so on an external hard drive and things of that nature). Which means we shouldn't (hopefully) need to go to another platform.

We're still not sure how the breach happened, but we're assuming it was an old admin account - so I've gone and deleted any accounts that should no longer be used and asked the admins that are left to update their passwords.

Now we just have to wait for Nexcess to view us and tell us if we're good to go or not.


*fingers crossed*


Edit: Please, say a prayer for larilee! Apparently last night she had a severe asthma attack and quit breathing, which lead to her needing to be resuscitated. The latest word is if she survives she would likely have brain damage. Malware destruction is on hold while David deals with this... so it may be just a little bit longer than we thought.

Edit 2: It is with a heavy heart that I say that larilee has passed away. She was a wonderful author and administrator of Sycophant Hex and she will be deeply missed.

celisnebula

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I finally got a nibble on the requests for help I sent out and there is someone looking at the site to see if they can fix it.

I know everyone is frustrated that they haven't the ability to read, and I am sorry that I haven't the ability to fix this myself. It had worked perfectly fine the Wednesday night, last week, when I paid the darn Nexcess hosting bill for the next year.

Right now, I don't think we need more funds, but thank you to everyone that has offered. If that changes I will definitely let you know.

I wish I had more knowledge of what was going on, but all I can say is that someone has agreed to look at the site and hopefully we can have some progress on being up and running soon.

Thank you,
Celis