[Darth-Apple]

I still get a 403 error when I access the site. Their apache stuff doesn't look like it's bricked so badly to causce that, judging from the message displayed. I think they just chmoded all of their files to deny read permissions to the files. In filezilla that's like a 30 second task.

Let's be clear. For makestation, first, I never keep database backups in my www directory, period. Second, if the server ever got that bricked that the file directories were all exposed like that, I would chmod everything to deny all permissions before two weeks into downtime. Not only that, but I'd kill some processes like nginx (we're using nginx our replacement for apache) to prevent issues entirely. Instead of wasting weeks of time, I'd fix my PHP installation first thing.

And hopefully they are using unmanaged servers too. If they are, it's way too easy to store your database backups outside of the www directory so they aren't open to the public. Simple, easy, no problems. if their servers are managed, the whole thing with their files being public like that probably isn't their fault, but honestly if that's the case, they should have switched hosts a long time ago, so they are still to blame ultimately.

Honestly I do think they'll be back. They have had multiple incarnations already, and their downtime problems have been an issue for years and people have put up with it. I doubt the next incarnation will be "SMFnew" though. One thing is for sure. The SMFnew name is forever shamed.