Hi Folks,
It is hard to believe that amidst natural catastrophes and political turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East, another relatively small disaster took place. On the early morning of the 8th of March, apparently someone in Wakefield pulled the plug (and trigger!) of the Fotopic server, cashed the bank accounts and is now probably ordering a cool drink on some South American beach. Fotopic hosted not only the “British Rock Art Collection (BRAC)” and the “Worldwide Rock Art Selection (WRAS)” for about six years but thousands of other websites with over 27 million photos on-line. With over 18.000 rock art photos on-line and over half a million photo hits so far, the site was used by many rock art enthusiasts from around the world. But is was not only the photos -hundreds of them contributed by our good rock art friends- that are no longer enjoyable on the web. Stories and literary thousands of links to relevant information are gone as well. Thousands of clients trusted the company and lost all their photos what makes it double sad. The chance of a re-appearance of the site gets slimmer by the day and we foresee that we will never get a glimpse of its content again. And no one saw this coming; no warning in advance…… e-mail bounced back, telephone lines dead….. over & out!
So that was that! And although we still have our family, friends, homes, database, photos (yeah…double backed up!) and good spirit, just a bit of self-pity seems to be justified! But not for long; out-living your websites is a weird experience. We will use the time to come to see how we proceed from here. It is obvious that this Blog will get a more prominent role. There are already some reactions on Facebook. Bear with us folks!
From Gus and me all the best and keep on rocking.
Jan
Absolutely gutted for you guys. The data must still be on a server somewhere so hopefully someone from the company may raise their head at some point.
In the meantime, the photo pages (minus photos but with text) are still in the google cache:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rockartuk&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB%3Aofficial&q=inurl:http%3A%2F%2Frockartuk.fotopic.net%2F&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=inurl:http%3A%2F%2Frockartuk.fotopic.net%2F&pbx=1&fp=a5a83db4b436d47e
Only the individual photo pages appear, the collections annoyingly don’t. However the photos say which collection they are in…
This is bloody awful news. BRAC kicked shit out of all the official sites on rock-art for imagery and info, imho. AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!! If you start a site up again and I can help in anyway, please ask.
All the best – Paul
Hi Jan
I’ve found that you can see some of the rockartuk archive (some photos) at http://web.archive.bibalex.org/web/*/http://www.rockartuk.fotopic.net/
from Sept 08/2004 – Apr 22/2006, which give page layouts, texts & links – which may be useful. It also has photo reference tags.
BW
John
I’m gobsmacked. I can’t even begin to imagine how this must make you feel Jan.
I there’s anything that can be of assistance, say the word.
Dear Jan & Gus
So sorry to hear this. If there’s anything I can do to help – please let me know.
Kind regards
John
Hi Jan
Sad news! i wondered what’s happened to the BRAC collection
my e Mail account also disappeared at the server loosing all my contact details forcing me to
set up a new account
I can help to provide any missing sections
when you reinstate the collection
All the best Paul Brown
This is really frightening Jan, considering all the hard work you’ve put into this over the years. I Hope its back online soon, or the data / imagery is it at least recoverable and transferable!
Its when something like this happens you’ve got to wonder about the need for an official national (UK wide) accessible image archive for individual heritage collections. Whilst the NMR, HERs,Canmore etc are excellent resources for research, collections like BRAC are the primary source of imagery. The fact they take so long to build up yet gone in an instant is frightening