Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... November 01, 2010, 02:20:34 PM Glad to have you all back! For those of you who have not been following along on Facebook, an explanation is in order, so here it is:About two weeks ago I received an email from Godaddy, the host of our forum, telling me that our hosting was being moved to a new forum. I didn't think much of it, I just figured they were upgrading their hardware.After the move you all noticed that the forum was running extremely slow. I figured this was a teething problem with the new server and that Godaddy would straighten it out. They straightened it out all right... They disabled our forum, with no notice to me whatsoever. I called their tech support and was talked in circles until I hung up in disgust. They refused to admit there was no problem with the forum itself and that their new server was at fault, I refused to admit otherwise. In the end they said they were not going to re-enable the forum until I fixed it, but they had a very key file "locked" which preventing me from even viewing it, much less fixing it (if there was a problem, which there was not). They essentially claimed our forum was using up too many CPU resources, even though we only use a fraction of our allocated web space and bandwidth (not to mention the fact that the forum worked fine until THEY moved it).About CPU cycles: Every hosting service offers a certain amount of web space (in Godaddy's case, 150GB - we only used something like 4GB) and unlimited bandwidth. These sound like massive numbers, but the third factor they don't advertise is CPU cycles. It takes very few CPU cycles to display a normal website, but a forum like this, which must constantly access a database and draw countless unique web pages for each individual viewer (every time you click on a link on this forum it generates a web page just for you) takes some computing power. Picture it like this: An old computer with, say, a Pentium IV processor running at, say, 2GHZ. Imagine stuffing a brand new 2TB hard drive into it and conneting it to the internet via fibre optic. You've now got almost unlimited storage and very high bandwidth. Now imagine installing Windows Vista on that machine. It will run, but it will be painfully slow. You've still got all that storage and bandwidth but your CPU can't handle the load. This is what Godaddy was claiming our forum was doing to their server. Now, a very small forum like this with few active members should not take very much computing power to run, but unfortunately even the little bit we needed was more than Godaddy was willing to give us.With that in mind a decision was made to move the whole shebang to a newer, better host more optimized for forum hosting. A quick (and spectacularly successful) fundraiser was held, the hosting services were bought, the forum was moved, and now, here we are on our new host! This new host should have CPU cycles to spare.As I said, the fundraiser was quite successful. More than enough money was raised. We're paid up on our hosting for two years in advance. I would've done more but the host wouldn't do three years. I intend on spending the rest of the money raised on doing some upgrades (latest vBulletin software, adding some functionality, etc). A special thread will be opened very soon for those who gave to discuss what to do with the money. In the mean time, enjoy! Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #1 – November 01, 2010, 02:26:01 PM I notice our cars don't show on the top anymore. Not a big deal though. Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #2 – November 01, 2010, 02:28:16 PM I noticed that too - our new host says that they may disable some scripts during the move. Perhaps Alex, who wrote the script to begin with, can troubleshoot and get it back? Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #3 – November 01, 2010, 02:33:23 PM was the forum freshly installed on this server? or was everything literally copied over? Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #4 – November 01, 2010, 02:34:39 PM I believe everything was literally copied over (all of our custom smilies are still there, for example) Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #5 – November 01, 2010, 02:37:28 PM Again, thank you. And thanks as well to those who chipped in, I was going to, but didn't get paid till last thursday, and by then, the amount had been met...i hope to be able to contribute something worthwhile soon..Thanks again, and again! Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #6 – November 01, 2010, 02:39:41 PM ok let me look into it. Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #7 – November 01, 2010, 02:42:09 PM carm have you changed my admin level at all? because in the admin control panel I only see like 10% of the menus I used to see. Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #8 – November 01, 2010, 03:01:39 PM I am so glad this site is back, I was having some major withdrawals! To all of the mods here, thanks for being so dedicated to the site, it really is a home away from home. Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #9 – November 01, 2010, 03:05:09 PM Quote from: Kitz Kat;340008I notice our cars don't show on the top anymore. Not a big deal though.Don't click on it. Brings you back to the Godaddy server. Found out the hard way. Quote Selected
Good work! Reply #10 – November 01, 2010, 03:06:28 PM Whew! Glad the forum is back up. Having withdrawl jones over here. One of you hackers should send godaddy a bullet, and Danica is a no-driving c*#t. Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #11 – November 01, 2010, 03:12:08 PM Quote from: baxo;340015carm have you changed my admin level at all? because in the admin control panel I only see like 10% of the menus I used to see.I don't think I've changed your status. A few of the aftermarket plugins were disabled (they were causing problems) but nothing to do with your status or the banner...*EDIT* I just checked and yes, you were limited. I've changed it so you have full permissions now... Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #12 – November 01, 2010, 04:35:12 PM Well, there's that TAINT again. Kinda forgot what it looked like. Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #13 – November 01, 2010, 04:43:44 PM Glad the site's back up, I certainly missed it. :D Quote Selected
Welcome back! An explanation of why we were down... Reply #14 – November 01, 2010, 04:44:23 PM Good to be home!!!!!!!! Quote Selected
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