Migration due 10/10/13 - minor downtime expected.

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Just a quick note for you forum regulars. I will be migrating the site to a new server. The recent bout of hacks and downtime has necessitated this. Fortunately, it is a planned migration, not an emergency one, so it should be smooth and seamless.

I'm aiming for somewhere between 16:00-18:00 tomorrow (10/10/13).

The forum on this server will be shut down with a message first, then the site data will be migrated to the new server. Then the domain name delegation will be pointed to the new address. If you are on an ISP who follow the DNS rules properly, you should be pointed to the new server within minutes. If you are on an ISP who don't update their DNS properly, you could wait up to 48 hours (worst case with some ISPs like Telstra). 99% of you should not have any problems. Best case scenario, the site should be migrated and running again in less then 30 mins.

By this time tomorrow this site should be running happily on the new server and hopefully there will be a long period of reliability again.

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Re: Migration due 10/10/13 - minor downtime expected.

All done. I ended up doing it about 5 hours later than I said I was going to. Seems to have gone smoothly and now the site is running on the new server. If you notice any strange happenings, please report them.

[tillyfromparadise Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close tillyfromparadise]

Re: Migration due 10/10/13 - minor downtime expected.

[Tim-HJ61 Donating Member Find all posts View Profile Close Tim-HJ61]

Re: Migration due 10/10/13 - minor downtime expected.

Not only are photo's working, but we get fireworks too!!

Thanks Robert, let's hope we don't need to bother you again for a while.

Tim

[craigcurtin Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close craigcurtin]

Re: Migration due 10/10/13 - minor downtime expected.

Great work Robert - gotta love it when IT actually works as you want to it to !!

Craig

[peter1 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close peter1]

Re: Migration due 10/10/13 - minor downtime expected.

Classic!

Don't know why the change.
It was stated repeatedly the old server was fine?
Graphics work nice anyway now and the search function seems to as well.

[tillyfromparadise Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close tillyfromparadise]

Re: Migration due 10/10/13 - minor downtime expected.

The forum seemed to be down most of the day. Welcome back again.

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Re: Migration due 10/10/13 - minor downtime expected.

Yeah, it's been fun & games again. Nothing wrong with the server, but various configs and addons I had decided they were not going to cooperate with new security settings. Additionally, there is still a significant amount of proper clean up that needs to be done to the back-end scripts and setup behind the scene following the recent hacks (there were quite a few more than 1!).
Sorry about the down time, this is not my day job and it's been sucking more spare time than I have at the moment. Things may continue to be wobbly for a while until I can properly clean out and reconstruct some bits.

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Re: Migration due 10/10/13 - minor downtime expected.

Quick addition to this saga. There is some software I've been using in here that re-writes the URLs to be easier to manage. I've been using it (and paying for it) ever since the forum was started, many years ago. Annoyingly, the company writing and maintaining this software went bust recently (but not after taking my renewal fees a few months earlier).

This leaves a dilemma. Recent threats have required significant upgrades and changes to security settings and this software is no longer able to keep up. I have had to mostly remove and disable it and it is presently only half working enough to keep displaying pages in here.

I need to clean it out properly, but there will be a penalty. Every link that is currently stored in anyone's bookmarks, posted in threads, or referenced from google will simply cease to work - you'll just see an error page. This is something I've been trying to avoid, but it seems there is no easy way around this and I'll have to just bite the bullet and do it. Google will penalise the site drastically for this, but will eventually recover ranking as it rebuilds new links. It will inconvenience everyone who has posted manual links in here as well. Sorry, but it has to be done.

There will be a (hopefully very brief) time while I transition from this deprecated software to another solution, so there may be some brief downtime. If you access the site from a bookmark and you see a 404 (or similar) error, then try manually typing the address and then navigate as normal.