Monday morning started off with a crash that presented a real challenge for The News staff to get this week’s issue of The News to press.

The News’s central server where all ads, layouts, and news articles are stored crashed over the weekend and none of our computers could connect to it. We immediately called the staff at KCTC, since we have a maintenance agreement with them as well as backup service. 

The KCTC staff was quick to respond, but as of Tuesday morning -- crunch time -- they were not able to revive the server.  As a result, The News staff had to do a workaround by using a backup drive which did not contain everything that we need to produce The News. 

Once we got all the stories written and ads created to proceed with paginating the newspaper, we had the additional challenge of transmitting the pages to our printer, Trico Press in Davenport.  That process was challenging and took longer than usual.   

The News staff embraced the challenge and got this week’s edition of the news to press so you could have your newspaper on schedule. They did a great job, as always, of getting The News to press. 

Not having an operating server presents numerous issues, including the selling of advertising and creating the next edition of the Kalona Area Visitor’s Guide.  With the help of KCTC’s tech staff, we will be able to move forward. 

At press time the KCTC technical support staff were still trying to revive our server.  We appreciate having that kind of technical service available in Kalona.