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Author Topic: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting  (Read 13075 times)

MedO

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Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« on: February 06, 2013, 08:00:48 am »

Hi everyone.

We have some serious downtime coming up in a bit over a month. No date yet, but we can't really avoid it without risking serious security issues.

Our trusty server still uses Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, and the support for this release will run out soon, so we need to upgrade to something newer. However, we can't just use Ubuntu's normal upgrade path since the virtual server environment is quite tightly integrated with the host and management stuff at our hoster. This means the way forward is to let them copy a new system image to our server.

Unfortunately at the moment they still have Ubuntu 10.04 as the newest Ubuntu version, which means we would be in the same place again in just two years (with 12.04 we'd have four years of peace). However, since we have to re-install all the things anyway, we could just as well move to a different hoster altogether. I've been pretty happy with Host Europe in the past, but they have some silly restrictions (no IRC services) and we sometimes get these mysterious performance issues that make our forums grind to a halt... besides, Host Europe have not lowered their prices or improved their offers for a bit now, so it might pay off to look for a better offer now. If we want to change, this is also the only time of the year where we can do that, since our contract always runs for a full year.

So, if you find a good offer please post it here. We currently use the L offer from here:
http://www.hosteurope.de/Server/Virtual-Server/
...except that we only seem to get 1-2GB of RAM at the moment, so they didn't pass that improvement on to us yet.

What I'm looking for is a server with at least 30GB of HD space, 1GB of RAM guaranteed and at least 2TB of traffic/month. More is always better of course, if we e.g. want to run a Minecraft server some time then we can use all the RAM we can get :P

I also don't insist on continuing to host the forums myself, so if someone else is interested and trusted by the community it would be something to consider. It could be an improvement to legal security as well because of the rather strict German laws.

Anyway, all this will probably mean a longish downtime unless we can keep using the old system while setting up the new one. We'll see.
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Catman

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2013, 08:14:33 am »

Inb4 Ajf takes over and turns the site into some kind of cyborg
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ajf

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2013, 08:22:51 am »

WELCOME TO AJF GARRISON 2 FORUMS
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MedO

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2013, 08:49:08 am »

Oh I should mention, we'll probably roll a new forum software while we're at it. The most obvious candidate is SMF2, but if you have other suggestions I'll be happy to hear them as well.

AJF already brought up FluxBB. We're not limited to PHP solutions, but if there is a converter from SMF data that would be a plus.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2013, 08:50:15 am by MedO »
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Quote from: Alfred North Whitehead
It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

Quote from: John Carmack
[...] if you have a large enough codebase, any class of error that is syntactically legal probably exists there.

ajf

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #4 on: February 06, 2013, 09:39:54 am »

I'm also looking at MyBB, a friend's forum uses it.
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did you know that spinning stars work like this???

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. execute_strings on fire off the shoulder of Overmars. I watched object-beams glitter in the dark near the room_goto_fix. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain. Time to die.

ajf

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #5 on: February 06, 2013, 10:00:15 am »

OK so MyBB looks really, really nice.

Andrea: there is a specific db package I had in mind
Andrea: I just need to find it again
Andrea: oh, it WAS MyBB
Andrea: it has some interesting features
Andrea: for example, custom moderation tools(!)
Andrea: lets you create a tool that does a bunch of mod things at once

http://www.mybb.com/features/administration - look at dat admin panel, it actually looks reasonably easy to use
http://www.mybb.com/features/threads - THREAD PREFIXES
http://www.mybb.com/features/reputation - POST RATING
http://www.mybb.com/features/warning - warning history
http://www.mybb.com/features/tasks - task scheduling
http://www.mybb.com/features/plugin-system - hooks and plugin system
http://www.mybb.com/features/moderation - delayed moderation
http://www.mybb.com/features/calendar - forum calendar

Plus everything SMF does, I think.

Yes it has a conversion tool for SMF.
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did you know that spinning stars work like this???

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. execute_strings on fire off the shoulder of Overmars. I watched object-beams glitter in the dark near the room_goto_fix. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain. Time to die.

misty

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2013, 10:08:25 am »

but who doesn't love SMF ;_;

myBB looks nice though, like not a total overhaul
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ajf

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #7 on: February 06, 2013, 10:10:00 am »

but who doesn't love SMF ;_;

myBB looks nice though, like not a total overhaul
All PHP forums look the same.
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did you know that spinning stars work like this???

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. execute_strings on fire off the shoulder of Overmars. I watched object-beams glitter in the dark near the room_goto_fix. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain. Time to die.

21Dan

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #8 on: February 06, 2013, 11:31:42 am »

http://www.forum-software.org/forum-reviews - I've seen some good ones.. MyBB looks sexy.
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Luigibro

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #9 on: February 06, 2013, 01:09:10 pm »

Inb4 Ajf takes over and turns the site into some kind of cyborg

and then drops it after a week
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Phantom Brave

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #10 on: February 06, 2013, 01:13:37 pm »

SMF is by far the only forum software I'm completely comfortable with.
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ajf

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #11 on: February 06, 2013, 01:23:37 pm »

Inb4 Ajf takes over and turns the site into some kind of cyborg

and then drops it after a week
I don't drop things this big.

SMF is by far the only forum software I'm completely comfortable with.
Me too, but I also hate SMF.
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did you know that spinning stars work like this???

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. execute_strings on fire off the shoulder of Overmars. I watched object-beams glitter in the dark near the room_goto_fix. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain. Time to die.

Phantom Brave

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #12 on: February 06, 2013, 01:38:18 pm »

SMF2 is pretty good once you figure out how to make the theme more like this one.
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ladies and gentlemen i would like to announce that the fact of the matter is up that the fact of the matter is a fact and it matters

Orpheon

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #13 on: February 06, 2013, 02:00:38 pm »

As long as we can keep this theme and stuff, I'm happy.

Also, we deliberately got rid of reputation a while ago, that's not a feature we need (just mentioning this because ajf listed it in MyBBs features).
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ajf

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Re: Downtime notice / possible change of hosting
« Reply #14 on: February 06, 2013, 03:13:02 pm »

As long as we can keep this theme and stuff, I'm happy.

Also, we deliberately got rid of reputation a while ago, that's not a feature we need (just mentioning this because ajf listed it in MyBBs features).
post rep is interesting though

and I'd probably get rid of this theme but restyle the default SMF2 or MyBB theme. Either way, we can't keep the existing one exactly, since it would be incompatible.
Logged
did you know that spinning stars work like this???

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. execute_strings on fire off the shoulder of Overmars. I watched object-beams glitter in the dark near the room_goto_fix. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain. Time to die.
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