We have started a new Picky Picky Game to replace the one whose database vanished. I have added code to the server so that the archive of the old game is inserted before Page 1 of archive of the new game. The first round of candidate panels has been primed with the candidates from panel 25 of the old game.
This was fairly straightforwrad because I has troubled to make a
nice automated script for creating new PPG instances or fixing
existing ones. I extended this to handle the task of loading
the recovered pictures for panel 25 in to the new game.
This way I was abl;e to test it on my development database at
home before risking the production server. The last tricky bit
was setting up redirections so that people who has bookmarked the
old /sample/ URL will be directed to
/phoenix/ (the new game).
I have also written another maintenence script that dumps the contents of the game to a bundle of XML files and image files. This can be used to back up the database, in case of future accidents. I plan te extend this to allow more of te pictures to be served as static files rather than via my CGI script (which should make the server more efficient).