[Announcement] Halforums Announcement! Moving Hosts!

Dave

Dave

Staff member
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?

urljet.png


xfhost.png


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.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
bhamv3 said:
So, we still have lots of space remaining? I can continue to upload massive pictures?
Click to expand...
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.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
GasBandit said:
And this is still a VPS, right? Not general hosting?
Click to expand...
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.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
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. :D
 
Hylian

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.
 
Emrys

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.
Click to expand...
I second this emotion. You rock so much, Daddy Dave!
 
bhamv3

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.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
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.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
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.
 
Ravenpoe

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.
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

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

How's everything going, boss?
 
Espy

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.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
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.
 
strawman

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:
 
Gared

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

Dave

Staff member
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:
Click to expand...
Crap. That's a php error. I thought I had it fixed in all styles.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
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.
 
strawman

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...
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
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...
Click to expand...
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.
 
Zappit

Zappit

Staff member
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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top