Workaround for the DNS screwup

Hello folks - firstly an apology.  It's my fault the site's offline.  I won't bore you with the details, but I'm working on fixing it ;o)

Now a fix that I've just tested and works :o)

From your start menu, open up My Computer.  Find the folder C:/windows/driver/etc and look for a file named hosts.  double click on it and open it with Notepad or your favorite text editor.  Add the following lines near the top of the file, but after all the Microsoft comments:

195.69.94.29 www.britmodeller.com

195.69.94.29 britmodeller.com

Save the file.  It'll want to save it as hosts.txt.  Let it.  Close Notepad.  Rename the hosts file as hosts.old, then rename hosts.txt as hosts.  Close your browser, and reopen it.  You should now be able to resolve Britmodeller.

Takes a couple of minutes, but it'll see you through until we can get the site back up & running in the correct way :o)

Access Issues due to corrupt DNS Entries

For some reason there seems to be a corrupted entry in some ISP's DNS Server databases relating to Britmodeller.  Because of the way these databases are propogated across the net from the primary servers, it may or may not spread to your ISP's DNS server, and may possibly come and go if you are affected.

If it affects you, you can change your computer or your router's primary DNS entry to 8.8.8.8, which is Google's primary DNS server. This will get you into Britmodeller until the corrupted entry is expunged by the next round of updates (usually around 24 hours)

You may not be affected, but if you are at some point, at least now you know what to do :o)

Wobbly day, down tonight

After a bit of a crappy slow day, the site's down this evening... or really slow, depending on your luck.  We're working with IT to get it up & running again, so please bear with us :)

I was thinking about the comments we sometimes get when the site's down.  "Move to a better host" being the usual throwaway comment - well, you're unlikely to get a host that will guarantee more than 99% reliability for your site.  When you then calculate that 1% of a year is 3.65 days, you start to realise that our occasional short outages aren't actually that bad... just annoying because we're all addicted!

Planned Maintenance

Hi everyone - our hosts are doing some upgrading of their fibre network, which means that the site will be down for a couple of hours this evening.  Please bear with them, as these things seldom run to plan ;o)