Site info, migration, and upcoming downtime

Barefoot TJ

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Staff member
Mar 5, 2010
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Where to start? Where to start?

Like that? Upcoming downtime?

Okay, as you all know, we have been having temporary outages due to a possible corrupt database or inadequate server resources, although we are on a VPS, Virtual Private Server (for those wondering, a server partition dedicated to just our site alone; our files aren't mixed with others' and depending on the server level, our resources are dedicated to our files, not others'). I have been working with our current hosting company for a long time to resolve this problem to no avail. Many times, I have found that our trouble tickets have just sat in the queue untouched while we sit offline. I'm not happy with our current situation with this hosting company. We pay $80 per month for this service. I expect better.

Additionally, we have been dealing with a developer who has struggled to maintain his business, and therefore, has not followed through with his end of our agreement to bring our site and proprietary modules current with the latest platform version. We have had no choice but transfer our business relationship to another developing company. From another thread, I explained: Long ago we paid in advance to have work done to have our site upgraded to the latest version of XenForo to correct some minor bugs, allow for more functionality of the site, have better handling of spam threats, and bring our platform and modules current, so that we don't fall too far behind. Since the proprietary (to the BRS) modules we use were written by a particular developer, we have had to stay with him to get those modules recoded to be compatible with the latest XenForo version(s). This developer has gone belly up recently (yes, even after we beta tested his work), but he did manage to pass us off to a new developing company who has agreed to pick up where the first one left off using those same funds. We now await the changes to our test site, then the production site.

We are going forward with the upgrades to the site and the modules. Some of you will be happy to know that by doing so, we will also have a mobile-friendly site. For the others who have been asking for a mobile-friendly app, that will have to wait according to funding and priority.

In order to make these changes to the site, we have to increase our resources on the VPS. Right now, the developers are spending 5 minutes per template to upgrade each one, and there are a lot of them. I fret upgrading our server with our current hosting company for the reasons stated. By going with a new hosting company, we can get double the resources (2 processors instead of 1), more storage, more memory, etc., for the same amount of money, $80 per month.

We will be migrating the site to the new hosting company this Monday, December 7, at 6:00 p.m. CST/7:00 p.m. EST. We have to do this before the end of the month in order to avoid being billed for another month with the current hosting company. We are expected to only be down for a short time, 24 hours is the max., so keep checking in.

If you have any projects you are working on or are organizing any events, please tidy those up, if you can before the migration, since these have never gone off smoothly for us in the past.

Thank you for your continued support as we move forward with our progress.
 
The first phase is complete, the migration. Welcome to your new home.

Now onto the testing phase of our updated modules and site software. (Don't worry, if you've helped with testing recently, your work is not wasted. We went through all of your concerns, and those kinks will be worked out.)
 
Within the last few weeks I recognized that the site was very unstable, sometimes not accessible for several hours. Yesterday I was writing an answer to a thread in the German chapter, and when trying to send, it told me that the server didn't exist. A new user had to try for several days until the form for joining BRS finally worked.
Can you please comment on how long this unsatisfactory condition will probably continue, TJ?

Thanks and a happy new year to all,
Martin
 
Within the last few weeks I recognized that the site was very unstable, sometimes not accessible for several hours. Yesterday I was writing an answer to a thread in the German chapter, and when trying to send, it told me that the server didn't exist. A new user had to try for several days until the form for joining BRS finally worked.
Can you please comment on how long this unsatisfactory condition will probably continue, TJ?

Thanks and a happy new year to all,
Martin
I have not seen any problems or heard of any complaints, other than yours. I will share this post with our developers and get back to you shortly.

With that said, as soon as I can run through the test site one more time and give the go-ahead, we will transfer over to the new site.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience
 
TJ -I tried to get onto the site a couple of times this weekend just passed -on both occasions I got an error message saying the '...server was not responding...etc...'.
I just put it down to usual I.T. unreliability and left it a few days before trying to log on again.
-Not a complaint, just an observation really in case it's useful info for your I.T. chaps...
 
TJ -I tried to get onto the site a couple of times this weekend just passed -on both occasions I got an error message saying the '...server was not responding...etc...'.
I just put it down to usual I.T. unreliability and left it a few days before trying to log on again.
-Not a complaint, just an observation really in case it's useful info for your I.T. chaps...


I keep getting this message lately too, maybe it's a U.K thing. Tried deleting browser cache etc but nothing seemed to work.
 
From our developers who handle our hosting:


I've contacted the datacenter your VPS is located at, and they've stated that they're having some network connection issues and that they're working [on it]. Unfortunately they did not give any sort of ETA for when the issues will be fixed although, it appears to be working fine currently. I'll try to keep you updated on the status, but since it is a network issue and not a server issue there unfortunately isn't much we can do currently until they get their issue fixed.

I will keep you all posted. Please post here if the problems continue from this moment forward. If no postings from you all, I will venture the problem has been resolved by the hosting company.
 
Latest from our developers: I just got an update that the network degradation issue has been fixed, and your service should be back to normal now.



 
We are ready for the next phase, site upgrade. This Friday, January 29, at 6:00 p.m. CST, we will be swapping the site over to the new XenForo version with new modules in place. Let's hope nothing breaks. I do not know how long this will take, but it should be very long. After the site is up and running, if you notice anything odd, please email me at [email protected]. Thanks!