Great explanation, boris!
Hubby and I were flushing dns caches etc. last night just to make sure the problem wasn't on my end. When I told him that one of the servers ended up still in maintenance mode he had a d'oh! moment.
I'm glad someone finally did post here, or who knows how long I (and maybe others?) would have just gone on thinking the forum was down. I know a few forum members by twitter name, and I was almost at the point of contacting individuals to see whether they knew what was up. Can't believe how off-kilter I felt when the forums weren't there (for me)!