Tuesday 3rd Dec 2013:
We were all driven nuts over the weekend and much of yesterday, by the long periods when this forum was unavailable.
Tommaso (milanese) took it upon himself to investigate - he has run his own forums and knows how to tackle the back end of a website. He still is not sure whether the problems were caused by a hacker or by the increasingly heavy footfall here and the possible inability of the basic hosting package I paid for to cope with it.
He concluded that we needed one of the hosts dedicated server packages; these are not cheap.
In one of the most wonderfully generous actions I have witnessed, Tommaso booked the package and paid for it himself, for a year.
That is just a few US dollars short of $1,800 guys.
Thank you Tomaso. I am proud and honoured to be able to call you my friend. Our forum is indebted to you.
Later edit:
A number of you want to make donations to Tommaso. Shelley (fxozgirl) is setting up and will administer a suitable Paypal account to hold donations towards this forum's ongoing costs.
It will take a few days to get this up and running; I will let you know when it is.
