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Halforums Announcement! Moving Hosts!

Mar 11, 2013#1

Dave

Recently I've had a bit of trouble and find I need to move forum hosts. We currently use URLJet - who are great, by the way! - but they are just too damned pricey. In a way it's my fault, and Arvixe's fault. Why? Because every time Arvixe had an issue with their shared server, they convinced me that the issue was of my own doing and that I needed to upgrade. Well, I upgraded to where I couldn't afford it any longer, and then moved to URLJet. But when I got there I chose the same specs that I got with Arvixe, and ended up paying $155 a month.

So along comes XFHost. It's a fairly new place run by some guys I have known a while from the Xenforo.com website. I've been talking with him and I'm going to pull the trigger on this. Basically, we'd get the same thing we have now for about $110 a month less. Want to compare?

As you can see, we are painfully over what we need. Right now our TOP stats - EVER - are 381.54 GB of bandwidth, 23 GB of disk usage. And that's WITH a test bed on the same server!

So I am paying for about 600-700 GB bandwidth and 60 GB disk space that I just don't need. I could cut down with URLJet, but that would nerf our RAM and STILL be over $100 a month!

So I'm taking a chance with a new guy. There's a risk and I wanted you to all know this. I've been to a couple sites he hosts and they are fast. So. It'll probably happen before the end of this month. There may or may not be any downtime while this transfer takes place. He assures that there will not be so this'll be his first test. But he's a Xenforo guy and this will be optimized for the software package. There may even be some new stuff we can do that we couldn't before since URLJet is focused on vBulletin.

Okay, this is where you can voice your questions, comments and concerns.

Mar 11, 2013#2

bhamv3

So, we still have lots of space remaining? I can continue to upload massive pictures?

Mar 12, 2013#3

Dave

bhamv3 said:
So, we still have lots of space remaining? I can continue to upload massive pictures?

Yeah, we're gonna be moving to a 58 gig allocation (which is listed in MB for some reason) so we're still about 1/2 of that.

Mar 12, 2013#4

Jay

Thanks for the update Dave, sounds like a logical choice.

Mar 12, 2013#5

GasBandit

And this is still a VPS, right? Not general hosting?

Mar 12, 2013#6

Dave

GasBandit said:
And this is still a VPS, right? Not general hosting?

Yes. VPS. I spoke with the owner about this and overselling. He's new so he only has 3 servers. He assures me he will not oversell. Like I said, I'm taking a chance on a new host, but if it works it'll be worth it. If it doesn't work then we'll move to a new place.

Mar 12, 2013#7

Ravenpoe

Mar 12, 2013#8

Dave

I am signing us up for quarterly payments with a dedicated IP and memcache. The total - paid quarterly - will be about $125. So $125 every 3 months as opposed to $155 per month. Changes may happen as soon as this week.

Mar 12, 2013#9

Hylian

Dave, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all you have done to keep this place up and running. If you ever need help or anything (with the site or anything else) just ask and I am sure most of us here would be more than willing to help out in anyway we could.

Mar 12, 2013#10

CrimsonSoul

Zehosting is awesome. It's who my sites are hosted off of

Mar 12, 2013#11

Emrys

Hylian said:
Dave, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all you have done to keep this place up and running. If you ever need help or anything (with the site or just ask and I am sure most of us here would be more than willing to help out in anyway we could.

I second this emotion. You rock so much, Daddy Dave!

Mar 12, 2013#12

Shakey

We're all gonna die! :aaah:

Mar 12, 2013#13

Dave

No shit. Holy cow, man. That was fun and still apparently not completely finished.

Mar 12, 2013#14

Shakey

You deal with too much shit for us poor schmucks.

Mar 13, 2013#15

bhamv3

I propose a moratorium on "Dave is old" jokes for a week.

All in favor, say "aye," or in Dave's case, wave your cane.

Mar 13, 2013#16

Dave

Well. Um. We're back. I was up until almost midnight working this. I won't go into everything that happened, but we should have had music playing in the background like a Keystone Kops movie.

Or Yakkity Sax.

Mar 13, 2013#17

DarkAudit

Tapatalk wasn't working yet as of about 2 hours ago.

Mar 13, 2013#18

fade

I'm seeing a brief flash of something right before each page loads. I saw it from home and from work. It looks like some kind of error message, but it's so brief I can't really tell you what it says. It's just a plain text screen, which then immediately jumps to the correct thing.

Mar 13, 2013#19

Emrys

We have been forsaken!

Oh wait, we're back. Yay!

Mar 13, 2013#20

DarkAudit

Tapatalk working again.

Mar 13, 2013#21

Ravenpoe

The What's New button seems to be missing in the animated style.

And is tapatalk working again? That's just what I came to ask about.

Mar 13, 2013#22

North_Ranger

Wow, I go away for two days and the forum gets moved? Damn glad you guys didn't change the locks, too

How's everything going, boss?

Mar 13, 2013#23

Espy

I did notice I got an error when I tried to upload a small picture a bit ago, it appears to be working fine now.

Mar 13, 2013#24

Dave

A couple of things have changed but nothing really that bad. PHP version has gone from v5.2 to v5.4 and a couple other behind-the-scenes versions have gone up.

Once I do some speed tests I'm thinking of adding the new live threads update. Remember how live threads used to update without refreshing? Well, we can do that again, but I worry about load times.

Oh, and on the 26th of this month we will be updating to at LEAST version 1.1.3 (or 1.1.4 if it's released by then) and then adding a Resource Manager. What does that do, you ask? Well, it'll allow us to do things like item reviews, for one. Right now I don't know what exactly we'll use it for, but they are going to sell it for $20 so I'd be stupid to pass it up. It'll go to $60 after the 26th, so it's worth it to get it.

If you see an error message, try and get a screen print if you can. Even if you can't, let me know so I can check the server logs.

Mar 13, 2013#25

strawman

I'm getting the following at the top of every page, likely has to do with the XenMinimal template. Doesn't bother me, but it may point you to issues the others are seeing that their templates hide under CSS layers of stuff:

Code:

Template Errors: thread_view
 
    Illegal string offset 'thumbnailUrl' in /home/davidn/public_html/xenforo/library/XenForo/Template/Abstract.php(265) : eval()'d code, line 2049:
 
    2048: <li id="' . (($__compilerVar74) ? ('AttachedFileTemplate') : ('attachment' . htmlspecialchars($__compilerVar75['attachment_id']))) . '"
    2049:    class="AttachedFile ' . (($__compilerVar75['thumbnailUrl']) ? ('AttachedImage') : ('')) . ' secondaryContent">
    2050:
 
    Illegal string offset 'thumbnailUrl' in /home/davidn/public_html/xenforo/library/XenForo/Template/Abstract.php(265) : eval()'d code, line 2053:
 
    2052:        ';
    2053: if ($__compilerVar75['thumbnailUrl'])
    2054: {
 
    Illegal string offset 'filename' in /home/davidn/public_html/xenforo/library/XenForo/Template/Abstract.php(265) : eval()'d code, line 2068:
 
    2067: $__compilerVar76 .= '
    2068:            <!--<img src="' . XenForo_Template_Helper_Core::styleProperty('imagePath') . '/xenforo/widgets/page.png" alt="' . htmlspecialchars($__compilerVar75['filename']) . '" />-->
    2069:            <span class="genericAttachment"></span>
 
    Illegal string offset 'filename' in /home/davidn/public_html/xenforo/library/XenForo/Template/Abstract.php(265) : eval()'d code, line 2076:
 
    2075:    <div class="AttachmentText">
    2076:        <div class="Filename"><a href="' . XenForo_Template_Helper_Core::link('attachments', $__compilerVar75, array()) . '" target="_blank">' . htmlspecialchars($__compilerVar75['filename']) . '</a></div>
    2077:

Mar 13, 2013#26

Gared

Dave said:
A couple of things have changed but nothing really that bad. PHP version has gone from v5.2 to v5.4 and a couple other behind-the-scenes versions have gone up.

Once I do some speed tests I'm thinking of adding the new live threads update. Remember how live threads used to update without refreshing? Well, we can do that again, but I worry about load times.

Oh, and on the 26th of this month we will be updating to at LEAST version 1.1.3 (or 1.1.4 if it's released by then) and then adding a Resource Manager. What does that do, you ask? Well, it'll allow us to do things like item reviews, for one. Right now I don't know what exactly we'll use it for, but they are going to sell it for $20 so I'd be stupid to pass it up. It'll go to $60 after the 26th, so it's worth it to get it.

If you see an error message, try and get a screen print if you can. Even if you can't, let me know so I can check the server logs.

I thought we got rid of the live threads auto update thing because it refused to allow anonymous posters to remain anonymous.

Mar 13, 2013#27

Dave

stienman said:
I'm getting the following at the top of every page, likely has to do with the XenMinimal template. Doesn't bother me, but it may point you to issues the others are seeing that their templates hide under CSS layers of stuff:

Crap. That's a php error. I thought I had it fixed in all styles.

Mar 13, 2013#28

Dave

Should be fixed, stienman

Mar 13, 2013#29

strawman

Yep. Thanks, Dave!

Awesome as usual. You rock.

Dec 31, 2013#30

Dave

Thread resurrection!!

Well, the new host has been very good to us. And, in fact, he's been good to so many others that in the year since he opened he grew. Like a lot. This attracted attention and now he's been bought out. He was kept on as an employee running the site as normal. Was.

I just got a message from him saying that he's disagreeing with the direction the company is going and so he's parting ways. The new company said that they are raising prices to keep up with service desk tickets - but those who are already clients won't go up.

So I've asked Mike what bad direction he was talking about. I don't want to move again because it wasn't even a year ago since the last time we had to. So if everything is going to stay the same I'm staying, but keeping contact with Mike in our back pocket just in case as he's starting a new business. Same kind, in fact.

Just thought you guys should know what's going on.

Dec 31, 2013#31

strawman

Sounds like a good plan. Sticking with the guy who sold his business then emails all his old customers to bad mouth the new owners seems scammish and lawsuit prone.

Just in case, make sure you've got a good backup of the forum somewhere other than the host...

Dec 31, 2013#32

PatrThom

stienman said:
Just in case, make sure you've got a good backup of the forum somewhere other than the host...

[error(1): threshold exceeded]

--Patrick

Dec 31, 2013#33

Dave

stienman said:
Sounds like a good plan. Sticking with the guy who sold his business then emails all his old customers to bad mouth the new owners seems scammish and lawsuit prone.

Just in case, make sure you've got a good backup of the forum somewhere other than the host...

That's a good idea. I haven't done this because the bandwidth needed to regularly do this is excessive. But I'll flash a copy to the test bed.

Oh, and the new people have been our actual hosts since October and I didn't know it. The downtime we experienced was directly because of this switch...but nobody said a word.

Dec 31, 2013#34

strawman

Dave said:
Oh, and the new people have been our actual hosts since October and I didn't know it. The downtime we experienced was directly because of this switch...but nobody said a word.

Ouch. Hiding things right off the bat...

Dec 31, 2013#35

Zappit

Well, if shit goes down, the Spiderforest forums would take us. Good folks that want to build a community.

Would make a good contingency plan, like when we regrouped at the Bomb Shelter Comics forums after the second forum nuke.

Jan 1, 2014#36

Dave

It wouldn't be anything that drastic. Merely a pain in the ass to have to find and move to a new host. Again. Blargh.

Jan 3, 2014#37

PatrThom

Sorry, Dave. Wish there was something I could do to help. Really I do.

--Patrick

Jan 3, 2014#38

Dave

I'll post more about it when it's done. Suffice it to say I have to move fast or pay for another 3 months with the new guys.

Jan 3, 2014#39

Bones

brofist of solidarity for you Dave. You are a truly awesome human for doing all this just to keep this little place humming for all us mooks.

Jan 3, 2014#40

Dave

This will give you some idea of what's going on. ON another site talking about the new company I am seeing a lot of things like this:

We are down again. Suspended it says. Five overdue invoices. This is getting ridiculous.

The response?

It's back up - Sorry about that - looks like the my.cnf file (mysql config file) had a typo in it and when the server restarted mysql around midnight, it couldn't start back up. I fixed the typo and restarted MySQL.

So what HAD been going perfectly fine now wasn't. And the downtime we've had was directly because of the new guys tinkering. Oh, and since my invoice is due tomorrow, I needed to make up my mind today. I did not want to move. Let me be very clear. This is a pain in the ass for everyone involved. But I truly believe it is in our best interests to do so.

Jan 4, 2014#41

strawman

You are a trooper, Dave. Thanks for keeping this place warm and cozy for us, I know it isn't easy.

Jan 4, 2014#42

Zappit

You got our support, Dave.

Jan 4, 2014#43

Dave

Part of the deal for me moving with Mike is going to be adding a Texas Hold'em Poker addon that I've wanted but didn't have the ability to run before because of memory issues.

Jan 4, 2014#44

Zappit

I went offline for a few hours, and now the moving message is gone. Did we...did we already move?

Jan 4, 2014#45

Dave

Yes.

Jan 4, 2014#46

Ravenpoe

Dave said:
Part of the deal for me moving with Mike is going to be adding a Texas Hold'em Poker addon that I've wanted but didn't have the ability to run before because of memory issues.

Oh fuck yeah.

Jan 5, 2014#47

Bowielee

It's weird, I'm not getting the message on my laptop or my phone browser, but I'm still getting the down message on my work computer. I'm assuming it's a cache thing, but not being an admin at work, I can't clear it

Jan 6, 2014#48

jwhouk

So where is this Texas Hold 'em game?

Jan 6, 2014#49

Dave

Working on it!

Jan 6, 2014#50

Dave

Maybe this will give you an idea of why it's taking a bit.

Jan 6, 2014#51

Bubble181

Let's see.

[bunch of technobabble, which I've learned from Star Trek can be safely ignored]
Cheers! Happy gaming!

[End words and references, which I've learned from modern day press isn't worth checking anyway]

Nope, don't see the problem

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