This is the first announcement on the 5th International Symposium on Syrphidae.

The 5th International Symposium on Syrphidae will be held in Serbia, near Novi Sad (the capital city of Province Vojvodina), in the National Park Fru?ka gora (http://www.npfruskagora.co.yu/english/turizam/kako-stici.htm), from the 18th to the 21st of June 2009.

Yesterday we had some troubles with the forum and, I am partly pleased to say, this was due to the popularity of the site. The other part of me is slightly embarrassed, because I knew the problem would arise at one point but a logical error prevented me from anticipating it now. The content management system (CMS), by default, has a database structure that allows 65536 posts. As we are 'only just' 64000 I though I did not need to take action yet, hoping that it would not be needed before the CMS is upgraded later this year. I overlooked that the database numbers each post individually and the maximum ID number would be reached earlier. SO yesterday evening I changed the setting for the posts table in the database and we should not have any problems anymor in this century. I did not realise that the attachments table carried the same setting for post ID and no attachments were allowed. I changed the setting in that table, too. W should not have problems anymore.

I apologise for not anticipating this issue in the proper way and for any posts/images that may have been lost in this way.

Paul

Probably due to a flood in search bot visits (I can not imagine a DOS attack on Diptera.info) one of the panel scripts on the opening page of the site caused an overload on the database server. As a result the host decided to make the database unavailable until I had sorted the problem. Well, I had sorted the problem but next it took them more than 24 hours to get things back. Anyway, the panel was disabled and another panel is now presented in a more simple version to also reduce the server load. Hopefully everything will keep on moving normally now.

I apologise for any frustration this may have caused you. You can count on it that I was frustrated...

Paul

A new article by Martin Suvák (on the behaviour of Coenosia attenuata [Muscidae]) was added today.

Elena Kameneva dedicated a paper on Herina (Ulidiidae) to Bob van Aartsen, who passed away last year at the age of 87. The paper can be downloaded HERE. The downloads are listed alphabetically so you need to scroll down to 'K'.