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[Selroth]

It seems every year we go through a major upgrade of some kind :)

Anyway, many of you have noticed errors on the site.  White screens, or strange errors saying MySQL and Database something-or-other.  They tend to come at peak hours of the website, especially when post activity is at the max.

On average this month, Draconity.org transfer 3GB worth of webpages to our users.  That's not the problem as our monthly limit is 1500GB.  What is a problem is that we're using shared web hosting - the cheap stuff.

Shared web hosting is mostly geared toward business websites, where people read about products and maybe make a purchase, and maybe a little bit of support.  These websites are not highly interactive websites, so they're fine with capping the amount of MySQL connections to 5, or in our case 20.

MySQL connections are what updates the website's database (what contains all the threads, posts, settings, etc).  Every time you make a post, it creates a MySQL connection.  Every time you change a setting, it'll create a MySQL connection.  And, as things are set up now we use MySQL-based sessions, meaning it creates a new connection every time you log in.  When we have 36 people online at the same time, this can easily hit 20 connections at the same time. Any attempt to generate a connection beyond that 20 will generate those errors you sometimes see.

Take a look at some of our stats:
http://www.draconity.org/index.php?action=stats
Quite impressive.  Congrats!  :)

This weekend I'm purchasing a Virtual Private Server, which will have no MySQL cap.  This should last us a good while, and there's plenty of room for upgrades too.  It costs a bit more though, going from about $10 a month to $40 a month - nothing I can't afford.  This should also give us the ability to do more, including hosting the IRC on our own server, set up a video/movie streaming service, and more. 

I'm also seriously looking at upgrading the forum to SMF 2 RC 1.  We're using SMF 1.1.10 right now.  SMF 2 introduces many new features such as a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for posts.  Only problem is, it's still a beta and has been for over a year now.  Though I seriously doubt there will be any major problems, and RC2 if not final release will likely be out sometime this year. 

[Aurelia]

Does purchasing it this weekend also mean moving the site over this weekend?  Will there be any downtime, or is it a smooth transition?  What will happen to the email addresses and email hosting - are they staying as they are, wherever they are?

I'm assuming the IRC won't be moved over at the same time to give a bit of a break between the big moves, plus how long is our contract with that host for?

(and yeah, I know what you're going to say lol)

[Selroth]

Also, in case anyone's wondering what happened to the Draconity.org Newsletter idea, it's not gone.  I'm just waiting for when the website can handle it.

Last time we sent out a mass-email to all our members, we got flooded with activity which took the website out of commission for a few days.  LOL

[Selroth]

Does purchasing it this weekend also mean moving the site over this weekend?  Will there be any downtime, or is it a smooth transition?  What will happen to the email addresses and email hosting - are they staying as they are, wherever they are?

I'm assuming the IRC won't be moved over at the same time to give a bit of a break between the big moves, plus how long is our contract with that host for?

(and yeah, I know what you're going to say lol)

-I'll try to move the site over this weekend, yes.

-Downtime shouldn't be too bad.  The downtime bit would be when I have to tell the domain name to point to a different server, and that can take a few hours as that has to update the DNS's across the world.

-email addresses I'll keep the same.  At worse I'll have to reset the passwords.  I'll look at this a bit more too.  Thankfully, I'm just about the only person who uses a @draconity.org email address :)

Edit: I AM the only person who uses @draconity.org email.  LOL.  The rest are re-directs which are easy to set up.

[Rossenod]

When do you think the upgrade will take place?  As in, how much longer from now will you be doing this?


Thanks. 

[Aurelia]

The forum upgrade?  Not sure, we may wait a bit on that as Sel said about it still being in beta.

The server upgrade will be this weekend I think, from what Sel's just said.  So there will be a bit of downtime but then it'll all be shiny new! :)

[Rossenod]

The forum upgrade?  Not sure, we may wait a bit on that as Sel said about it still being in beta.

The server upgrade will be this weekend I think, from what Sel's just said.  So there will be a bit of downtime but then it'll all be shiny new! :)

Sorry.  I'm still kind of tired.  It's just past 3:30 in the morning here. 

I meant the server upgrade.  I wanted to know when it would be down exactly so I wouldn't be trying to peruse the forums at that time and making a fool of myself figuring out why it won't work.

[Aurelia]

Oh hehee no idea.  That'll be something for Sel to let us all know a bit later on when he's figured out what time works best to do the swap over - it will be told though so everyone has a rough ball-park of an idea when :)

[Rossenod]

Oh hehee no idea.  That'll be something for Sel to let us all know a bit later on when he's figured out what time works best to do the swap over - it will be told though so everyone has a rough ball-park of an idea when :)

Okay, good.  Thanks. 

[Selroth]

What'll happen is just before I initiate the domain transfer I'll put the forum in "Maintenance Mode", which prohibits people from making any new posts or changes to the database - and makes it obvious the website is tempoarily down and the reason.

After that I'll backup the database so no posts or settings are lost, and transfer it to the new server.  I'll wait a few hours for the DNS to update.  During any point of this time, the users should only see the mainteance mode.  After that, I'll take the forum out of maintenance mode and things will be just the same as before, just on a new server :)

To the user, all they should see is the maintenance mode message for a few hours, then it's back to normal.

Later in the weekend at the soonest, or later in the week, I'll convert the forum to SMF 2.  All functionality should be the same, but things may look different (hopefully better).  That's IF I decide to use SMF 2.

[Rocangus]

But what about the IRC? Will it be down as well, even if you use a stand-alone client?

[Saq]

Edit: I AM the only person who uses @draconity.org email.  LOL.  The rest are re-directs which are easy to set up.

Can anyone else get one? Just curious.

[Selroth]

We'll tackle the IRC after we take care of the website.  It shouldn't go down, but will require a reboot.  Shouldn't be a problem as most clients will automatically re-connect.

Can anyone else get one? Just curious.

This was discussed a bit under this thread.  Webspace was kinda out due to security concerns.  Email I think people would just let it fill with spam and not really use it - why would they; they already have perfectly good gmail accounts.

[Rocangus]

We'll tackle the IRC after we take care of the website.  It shouldn't go down, but will require a reboot.  Shouldn't be a problem as most clients will automatically re-connect.

Okay, thanks for the info. My client reconnects after ten seconds, so I should be on again after ten seconds then?

[Nallow]

IRC, Video Streaming, Sounds good to me.