Forum Downtime

[aaronjb]

So, as you've all no doubt noticed (given the number of texts and emails I got) - the forum died yesterday afternoon.

The short explanation is: You all post too dman much! Go drive your dman cars!  s;) s;)

Sadly our current host has a 100Mb database size limit (though you can create 10 such databases - go figure!), and they disable our database access when we reach 150% of that size.

Yesterday afternoon we reached 150.01Mb and our access was curtailed.


So, after spending the evening and part of the night copying the database off, culling as much as possible, and rebuilding the search indexes from scratch, we now have a database that's 145Mb.


As you can see that doesn't give us very much headroom for posts.



This means that we need to move hosts now, more or less.  Something that I'll be doing over the coming week - at some point there will be ~3 days of downtime (may be more, may be less - the majority of that time will be switching DNS records which can take 48hrs to propogate through the Internet).




Now I want to explain something.. switching hosts will not be cheap.

Right now we pay ~£175 a year for hosting, which is quite inexpensive.

When we move to a virtual dedicated host, that cost is going to rise to ~£300 a year (we will most likely move to a host in Canada for cost reasons, a host in the UK would cost us significantly more).


Given what we have in club funds that may mean you all have to chip in a little more regularly (clearly what we have would last us ~2 years, assuming we did not fund any national meets, treasure hunts etc as we have done in the past).


A cheaper solution could be to move to a hosted board solution like IP.Board (ala SpyderChat) - but I must say that personally I'm not overly keen on that - I don't like IP.Board as a user, largely because it's search functionality seems.. abysmal.  Of course it does that to keep database size down - which is phpBB's achilles heel.


We'll look at all the options, but I think that sticking with phpBB is likely to win out - cheaper options seem less functional, and more expensive options (like VBulletin) are - well - more expensive.



Stay tuned, folks.

[spit]

Aaron. On behalf of everyone, thanks yet again for giving up your free time to turn this around. You're a star.  s8) s8)  

I've emptied my sentbox - does that help?  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:  

Trying to keep this host limping along isn't an option any more, so lets go for that switch.

If anyone has immediate business on here (sales/events etc) that need sorting in the meantime, I suggest you secure alternative contact details for the time-being.

[rmowbray]

Aaron. On behalf of everyone, thanks yet again for giving up your free time to turn this around. You're a star.  s8) s8)  

Yeah, what he said   s8) s8)

[StuM]

What they said... Thanks Aaron.

I've just made a donation - it seems a small amount to pay for the potential savings gained from the wealth of information on here.

Cheers,
Stu

[Liz]

Indeed - thank you so much Aaron, I truly appreciate how much of your own time you give to keeping this club online. And thank you to anyone who has given a donation to the club on the back of this.

[wbarrwebster]

Hi,


As above, thanks Aaron


Regards,

B

[northernalex]

again, as above.. thanks aaron.

Liz,
whats the paypal email address for dontations again?

Alex

[spit]

whats the paypal email address for dontations again?

Surely its already listed in your Paypal dropdown menu Alex?  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:  

But thanks for asking the question to allow us to state it again....

 e mailto:donations@mr2roc.org">donations@mr2roc.org e

[uktotty]

Aaron
I am paying £79 per year for UK Totty
We have 7GBYTES yes GIGABYTES of storage and 150Gbits per month!
CHANGE NOW!!


Russ

[alancdavis]

Am I correct if we all control our mail box items this will help ?

[Tem]

You all post too dman much!

It wasn't me, honest!

[enid_b]

Aaron. On behalf of everyone, thanks yet again for giving up your free time to turn this around. You're a star.  s8) s8)  

Yeah, what he said   s8) s8)

as i've mentioned several times before, but i reiterate it

THANKS AARON

[Anonymous]

Thanks Aaron, Thats one heck of a job, i promise to keep my texts shorter and not post big ones   s:oops: :oops: s:oops:  
Ps; you can delete the chili red bed bug if you like   s:oops: :oops: s:oops:

[Anonymous]

as i've mentioned several times before, but i reiterate it

THANKS AARON[/quote]

CREEP!   s:wink: :wink: s:wink:  
Behave ya self Enid!  s:lol: :lol: s:lol: