New Server for VWWatercooled

[The_Hawk]

As some of you may have noticed we have been having a few issues with forum of late with the servers just not coping for one reason or another. As with all things, the simplest solution is "MORE POWAAAAA!"

To that end I'm gearing up to move the forums to a shiny new server with more resources, more bandwidth, more speed (and less issues). All things going well that will mean we can turn attachments back on and have images hosted locally and maybe a few other nice toys for our members to play with too.

The change over could be as early as this weekend (assuming the server passes all preliminary testing) but I will confirm before it's cut over both here and on our Facebook page.

So, what does it mean for you?

Phase 1. The forum will be shut down to new users.
Phase 2. The forum will be temporarily shut down for a current snapshot/backup.
Phase 2.9. **TBA** The forum will come back online as read only. (if possible).
Phase 3. The actual cut over. Cross fingers, knock on wood and pray the various car gods that it all goes to plan.
Phase 4. Checking and real world testing.
Phase 5. Beers.

Wish me luck and I hope to see you all on the other side.

Aaron.

[Jarred]

Good Work Aaron.

Keep it up

[dylan8]

Awesome. Have noticed it struggling a fair bit.
you will deserve many beers after

[Ryan_R]

Was wondering if I should renew my gold user title, no doubt you'll deserve it after this

[MountainBikeMike]

Great! It almost brought me to tears the other night when I was trying to get a load of stuff done. But I havn't been here long enough and would say overall its great

[team_v]

Would it be possible to change the captcha for new forum members to something more able to block spammers?
Maybe something more autmotive focused (pick the odd symbol out) instead of the standard captcha phrases which seem to be working but obviously have flaws as we get a bunch of spam bots through.

[kamold]

Re: New Server for VWWatercooled

Happy to join in at phase 5

Good luck hope it goes smoothly.

[Ryan_R]

Would it be possible to change the captcha for new forum members to something more able to block spammers?
Maybe something more autmotive focused (pick the odd symbol out) instead of the standard captcha phrases which seem to be working but obviously have flaws as we get a bunch of spam bots through.

Also make use of the SFS (StopForumSpam) plugin for vB if you aren't already.

[The_Hawk]

This whole process is starting to do my head in a little, at almost 1am the first test load of the data is almost complete after about 16 hours of tinkering and kicking. And to think, this is just preliminary testing to make sure things work!

On the upside, all this work *should* mean the actual transfer will be much much smoother... fingers crossed anyway.

At this stage nothing is planned further than testing, it's just late and I'm tired so I'm checking out until tomorrow night after my day job (again)

[sVWatt]

Count me in for phase 5

As some of you may have noticed we have been having a few issues with forum of late with the servers just not coping for one reason or another. As with all things, the simplest solution is "MORE POWAAAAA!"

To that end I'm gearing up to move the forums to a shiny new server with more resources, more bandwidth, more speed (and less issues). All things going well that will mean we can turn attachments back on and have images hosted locally and maybe a few other nice toys for our members to play with too.

The change over could be as early as this weekend (assuming the server passes all preliminary testing) but I will confirm before it's cut over both here and on our Facebook page.

So, what does it mean for you?

Phase 1. The forum will be shut down to new users.
Phase 2. The forum will be temporarily shut down for a current snapshot/backup.
Phase 2.9. **TBA** The forum will come back online as read only. (if possible).
Phase 3. The actual cut over. Cross fingers, knock on wood and pray the various car gods that it all goes to plan.
Phase 4. Checking and real world testing.
Phase 5. Beers.

Wish me luck and I hope to see you all on the other side.

Aaron.

[The_Hawk]

We are now entering Phase 4. After a small screw up during testing on my part, the upgrade was suddenly on track a little earlier than I had originally anticipated. My apologies for being down for a couple of hours this evening

In any case, we are now sitting on a shiny new server which many times the resources we used to have. If you're still having any issues I suggest clearing your cache/cookies and trying again, especially if you came in via the IP address. You should now see little W's in the background so show you're on the new site

There are still a few things that need to be completed before we can move to phase 5.

For the moment I would like to ask for feedback. Loads should now be faster, especially page refreshes which should be pretty much instant now, with (hopefully) no time outs or hangs. There should also not be any database errors anymore. In short it should *just work*, so if you don't notice anything... well my work here is done.

So... is it working for you?

[tigger73]

I think you can go to stage 5... mabe after work tonight

All looks good and running pretty smooth - both on my phone and PC.

I'd have to go to a faster internet connection to really determine if page loading is a lot quicker - tried a couple of picture threads and loaded pretty fast and reloads of these pages was also quick.

[The_Hawk]

There are still a few bugs to work out. if you notice anything else please let me know:

1. Emails to Gmail users not going through.
2. Caching problem <- looks fixed now.

Caching problem
It looks like one of the settings was causing the system to not refresh anything it had already loaded in the last 48 hours to minimise wasted time reloading the same content... Great in theory but it was a little overzealous in it's application. The problem is that there are things that do change... like new threads!

While I believe I have this fixed now from the server side you either dump all cookies/cache so everything is loaded fresh or you can hit ctrl-F5(PC)/command-R(Mac) on each page (once). (that or it will eventually fix itself when the 48 hours has passed).

So if you're not seeing new threads showing in sections try one of the above fixes.

[team_v]

The "keep me logged in/remember password" thing doesn't seem to work any more.

also, when i log in i get hte following message: "Invalid Redirect URL (http://www.vwwatercooled.org.au/forums/forum.php)."

[Antiplastix]

Logs me in after entering user name and password then kicks me straight out again when redirecting, bit strangely only in the Skoda section where I lurk.