Forum had a hiccup

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Hello Boys & Girls. I'm afraid the forum suffered a bit of downtime recently. The host had a hardware problem, which they fixed. However, there are a bunch of scripts running various things in here that are hopelessly out of date now and it'll still need some more attention. I have removed an old modification related to Search Engine Optimisation that is no longer supported (even though I've paid for it), so some of the old links to things may not work for a while. Hopefully the forum is mostly stable, but if you see any strange behaviour (software I mean, not people), please report it here.

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

Re: Forum had a hiccup

thanks Robert will do

Craig

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

Re: Forum had a hiccup

Time for a new host I think.
Whoever is hosting it now seem hopeless.
I have never seen a forum have so many problems as this one even though plenty run the exact same software.

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Re: Forum had a hiccup

I'd rather not move hosts unless I absolutely have to. To do a site migration properly takes a lot of planning, timing and careful effort and I'd rather spend that time in fruitful pursuits. The current host had some upstream problems last year, but the effects were minor and they were communicative about it. Otherwise, I don't think there have been many problems since 2011 when I did the last major round of upgrades. I'd thought it had been pretty stable.

I have a few possible upgrades, patches and mods I may add back in if needed, but I want to see how the current setup is running first. I think there may be some minor problems at the moment with broken links. As I'm not in here every day any more, I need to rely on you forum regulars to tell me if anything is astray. If you do notice any faults, can you please post them in here?

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

Re: Forum had a hiccup

Thanks for the update Robert.

Clicking on 'New Posts' is broken and goes into blankness.

Peter1. There are a couple of active moderators, Tony From West Oz, Tim-HJ61. The forum owner is Robert. It is hosted somewhere that Robert knows about, pays for and deals with. As he says, he doesn't spend much time on the forum now and relies on Tony and I to alert him of problems. I suspect it's not exactly a lucrative exercise and we all have to prioritise where we put our time.

The other long standing issues that may or may not have been resolved through this upgrade are:

The Percent sign % and the degrees sign °, neither of which worked before.
{Later: seems to be fixed now}
Ability to load images into the forum. We have a workaround of hosting images elsewhere and linking them using the IMG tag but the ability to load jpgs direct still seems to not work.

Tim

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

Re: Forum had a hiccup

Peter1. There are a couple of active moderators, Tony From West Oz, Tim-HJ61. The forum owner is Robert. It is hosted somewhere that Robert knows about, pays for and deals with. As he says, he doesn't spend much time on the forum now and relies on Tony and I to alert him of problems. I suspect it's not exactly a lucrative exercise and we all have to prioritise where we put our time.

I looked up the site host and they are far from the cheapest.... or as evidenced, not even in the running to be the best.
There are plenty of hosts out there that offer better and far more reliable deals. I have NEVER had an issue with my host in the 3 years I have been with them. The plan I have is cheaper than any this site would be on presently and being completely unlimited in all aspects, would host it with no trouble. There are plenty of other companies out there that would offer similar hosting but better pricing and definitely reliability.

In terms of time, it would require a lot less input if the site ran properly than someone having to fix issues and the site only half working correctly.

I think it would be in everyone's interests and agendas to move the site to a reliable host than have it with one that is as slipshod as the current host seems to be.

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

Re: Forum had a hiccup

I think it would be in everyone's interests and agendas to move the site to a reliable host than have it with one that is as slipshod as the current host seems to be.

What wrong with the current host? The site has been stable for some time.

You might be interested in Robert's thoughts on his time/energy/cost/hosting in this other current thread http://www.biofuelsforum.com/showthr...0270#post60270


Tim

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Re: Forum had a hiccup

Peter, I didn't want this thread to be a discussion on forum hosting options. I've been using many hosts for many sites for 10+ years. I've used many cheap "unlimited" hosts, including some for this forum in the past. I still use some of these for some other sites. The "unlimited" hosts are OK in many circumstances. However, I became tired of being shoved on a shared server with 1000+ other sites and then being penalised with low CPU. They may give you unlimited storage and bandwidth, but CPU can be the killer when you need to generate new pages/queries for each page you serve as a forum is not simply static content. I moved to the current host a few years back, (who admittedly is not the cheapest) and since then, I've been very happy. Yes there is a problem now and then, but they are minor compared to what I've had elsewhere in the past.

Tim, I'm looking into the image loading issues. Glad the %° thing is fixed, I guess the upgrades must have cleaned that one out. Looked at the "new posts" link and it works for me... I'd upload a screenshot as proof, but the images don't work.

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

Re: Forum had a hiccup

No worries Robert,

I've found 'What's new' works for me. I normally use 'new Posts', but can easily change my habit. I mainly use it to trawl for spammers, nuisances and other annoyances so we keep the forum clean and useful for legitimate users. Fortunately we've got a relatively peaceful bunch at the moment so the moderators life is easy!

Tim

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Re: Forum had a hiccup

I should be 24-48 hours away from fixing the image issue. Glad to hear that the moderation tasks are not too onerous at the moment. Hopefully the "spam-o-matic" modification is also keeping many of the spammers from posting in the first place. I need to upgrade some of these mods too so hopefully there will also be some improvements.

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

Re: Forum had a hiccup

I posted a question asking about old threads, but it seems to have vanished. I can't find anything older than 2012 Is that right? I hope it isn't lost.

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

Re: Forum had a hiccup

I remember your question because i replied something along the line
"you seem to be correct.
Stranger and stranger"

That was about 5 minutes before the forum disappeared for most of the weekend.

Now that you bring it back up, it still seems to be correct.
Stranger and stranger.

I too hope everything has not disappeared forever.

I posted a question asking about old threads, but it seems to have vanished. I can't find anything older than 2012 Is that right? I hope it isn't lost.

[83Patrol Donating Member Find all posts View Profile Close 83Patrol]

Re: Forum had a hiccup

I saw your post, too. Actually, the forum went down right as I was going back to the main page after reading it.

I'm guessing there's a backup of all the old stuff somewhere

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Re: Forum had a hiccup

Not sure about threads/posts from 2012... There are much older ones in there, so the 2012 should be as well. The outage happened around the 2nd & 3rd Aug (at least when I found out about it). I would expect that there should be 24-48 hours of possible loss (worst case) from when the forum was last seen to be operating before it went down.
Having a look through the forum, I can see posts done on 31/7 and also 1/8. I would not expect to see any around 2/8 or 3/8 while it was down. I would expect that there might be some missing of they were made 24 hours before the outage - sorry. Older posts, like ones from 2012 should still be there (there are many others around that time and older still there).

I will check through the database and make sure it has no problems/corruption, but I don't think that posts made just before the outage will ever return - sorry.

[Robert Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Robert]

Re: Forum had a hiccup

I I can't find anything older than 2012 Is that right?

Don't worry, I've got your back.
Additional to what I wrote above, I've now been through and checked/cleaned/optimised the database. It's all there (apart from just before the outage).

I noticed that the default options for many forum sections were to display only the last year's posts. I've turned this off (just on the "using bio" forum section to begin with) and I've noticed that there are still threads in there from 2005. So, not to worry, all the old stuff is safe, it was just hidden. I've just gone through every forum section now and increased the display age, so you should see all old posts now.