Forums Community Alert! Downtime Notice. Options

[cre8pc]

Greetings everyone,

We are in the process of moving these forums to a new server environment. This is stage one of a process whereby we're moving, and then later (stage 2) changing over to new software as well (Invision).

We have a new hompage designed and we'll be launching new things that we've been wanting to do for awhile.

For now, we expect to be offline this weekend - Friday, August 19 - Sunday, August 21. Our Tech Admins will keep you informed as to more details, and approximent times.

We will try to keep everyone informed of our progress via blogs and this thread. Thanks for hanging in there with us

[AbleReach]

Big task ahead behind the scenes, eh?

Will our watched threads be preserved?

Thanks again for all you do.

Elizabeth

[Grumpus]

I'd guess that the answer to that one is no. I'm not sure how the gang is exactly going to do the transfer, but I don't think that the message ID's will be the same here as they will be on the new site, regardless.

Best thing to do would be to check all your watched threads and copy down the thread titles into Notepad or something, then put it aside. When the new board goes up, it's just a matter of doing a quick search for the thread title and you should be able to find them all and resubscribe.

I'm more interested in knowing if the USER DB itself is going to be copied over. I would imagine that that would be a bit tricky to do it and also make it match up with posts and such. And, of course, there's the issue as to whether the PM's will carry over. Copying the actual threads/posts over is one thing, but tying everything up together is a little trickier. Hopefully, they'll let us know so we know if we need to save PM's and bookmarks and such before the switch.

G.

[Adrian]

This first change is jsut to move to a new server. Pretty much it'll be a case of grabbing everything here, sticking it on other server, checking it all works, then sorting out DNS.

When the change in software comes later on, then yeah, it's quite possible that some thing will be lost, depending how they work, and whether thay can be merged across. If I said you were going to lose things like watched threads, I'm sure ILoveJackDaniels and ProjectPHP would take great delight in making it work, and proving me wrong

[cre8pc]

To make sure I'm not confusing anyone more than I usually do...it's as Adrian says. We move to a new server this weekend only.

New software is a whole 'nother (scary) adventure and we'll keep everyone informed and warned as best we can. As for getting to know the new software, it's the same Invision software that I believe is also used by High Rankings's forum, but we'll be adapting it to our needs, style, etc.

We have the new software up and running and are getting familiar with it ourselves, so we can help the community better once we make that change.

We'll be inviting you all to help us work out any bugs and we have the Cre8 Community's LONG list of "things I wish you would do", of course!

[Brad]

I think you will like Invision a lot, it has some great off the shelf features. I hope the move all goes well. If you are going to be offline then a weekend in August is the best time to do it.

[projectphp]

Yep, that is the plan so far (I have every imaginable part of my body crossed and, if I was a contortionist, probably a few others as well!)

If there is anything you really want to keep, like PMs etc, then the best bet is to save them fora rainy day, just in case!

[ILoveJackDaniels]

Absolute worst case, we can always keep the phpBB version online concurrently with the Invision one until we work out any glitches. We'll make sure nothing's lost before we do a final switch to new software!

As to this weekend's move - it's a change of host, the only slightly problematic bit being the transfer of the large amount of data we have here.

[AbleReach]

When the change in software comes later on, then yeah, it's quite possible that some thing will be lost, depending how they work, and whether they can be merged across.

Do you have a time frame for this?

Elizabeth

[Adrian]

We've been talking about it and trying to sort something out for quite a while, some of that time spent hoping phpBB would actually do something about releasing the new version they've been promising for ages. One of the problems of free software I guess.

It's also a very big job to try and transfer all the information across, especially as we got a fairly well hacked version of phpBB here. So unfortunately it's one of those "it'll be ready when it's ready" posts, as of course, everyones busy with other things as well.

I think I'm right in saying we'd like to do it sooner rather than later, but of course it also needs to be done properly. Realistically, think months rather than weeks.

[bwelford]

BTW Adrian, that post would seem to be your 4000th post. Lots of props. Shouldn't we have a party?
:par1: :par1: :par1: :par1: :par1:
:par1: :par1: :par1: :par1: :par1:

Many congratulations.

[James]

For those of us that aren't in the know, can you explain the reason for the move to Invision? What features/benefits will it provide over phpBB? Given the amount of work in transferring information from phpBB to Invision, is the change worth the effort?

[Adrian]

Thanks Barry, I'd noticed I was creeping up on the amrk, but had missed tripping it!

James, that's quite a kettle of fish you're opening, heh.
In short, we were holding off on doing some things because of what we thought was an impending new release of phpBB. A release that is different enough from this version that pretty much all the hacks and customisations would need redoing, or at least having some hefty testing to check they still worked.

That new version has been delayed and delayed, and there are some problems we've got with the boards (session timouts for instance) that haven't been fixed because of it.

When deciding what to do about the upgrade, someone asked "Why phpBB?", and that then lead into some long discussions on the pros and cons of some different systems.

There's also been the issue of servers. You can see at the bottom of every page here that it states who hosts us. JAT have been very kind to us in providing the hosting for the forums so far, and from what I've seen, have gone above and beyond what we could possibly have expected when things went a bit pearshaped.
For various reasons, which I don't think need going into here, that's changing, so presumably you should be able to see the changed link at the bottom after the weekend.

The decision to also move to Invision wasn't taken lightly, believe me! It mainly affects the people who are going to support the boards. In our case that's mainly Dave and Michael at the moment. Dave thinks Invision would be easier to hack about with than phpBB.

To the rest of us who just have to use it, it probably won't make a huge amount of difference, other than it hopefully running better, faster, and with less 'issues' than at present.
There will be a different look with Invision, but that was going to happen anyway. There should also be some other interesting features if they can be worked out

[James]

Thanks for the background information Adrian. Much appreciated.

[Brad]

Are you going to parse the old threads into a static archive? I had this done when I switched forum boards a few months back. I used Gigablast sitesearch to custom spider it and make it searchable by the members so they can find old and treasured threads and I am very happy with the results.

[Scratch]

Good luck with the migration, chaps! May the force be with you!

[tam]

Couple of question... if the forums down what url should we be watching for the techs updates?

When you give the times can you put the timezone too

Do you know when friday? It turns friday here in about 4.5 hours

[cre8pc]

Tam writes:

if the forums down what url should we be watching for the techs updates?

A new page will be up in place of the forums. It will look like this:

Downtime Notice

Tech updates will be reported in the blogs noted on that page. Once we're moved, a new notice will be put in its place with the redirect to the new IP address.

**Anyone wanting to be included in the blog-chain for announcements, please PM me and I'll add you to our list. Thanks!**

Do you know when friday? It turns friday here in about 4.5 hours

Michael (who is not in the US) is working with our host on the final time, due to locking the forums and moving the DB. I'm guessing most of Friday we'll be "live" for folks outside the USA (since our host is in the US, on the East coast).

In other words, danged if we know! (But as soon as we can, we'll send the info along.)

To the cheerleaders, many thanks. Michael and Dave need beer. Lots and lots of beer!

:celebrate:

[tam]

Great, thanks Kim Fingers & toes crossed everything goes smoothly!

Tam

[tam]

Well that was definately smooth Congrates!