Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreamcazman
So what actually went wrong? I was waiting for a few PM's to come through and then BAM, site down. I must've been the only one who contacted you through Facebook as apparently you guys didn't know anything about it.  |
So these are the details of what actually happened
our previous host had a size limit on the database. about a month ago I noticed that the database for the forum was over the limit. Between that and the fact that the site was running slower and slower I started looking into other hosting options...
shortly after that I received an email from the host saying we were using too much of their resources so we had to upgrade or get out or they would shut us off.
After much research I decided to go with a private server (as opposed to shared hosting which is what we were on before) it's a lot more work to setup but it would be worth it.
After about a week and a half I had the new server up and running with a copy of the site to test and make sure everything was functioning properly... everything was working except outgoing emails. I was planning to move to the new server as soon as I got that working.
Monday morning around 10AM EST our previous host decided to shut off the database for the forum... my email box blew up with (literally) about 3000 emails from the forum with error messages that the forum was not running. everytime someone tried to access the forum I got an email telling me something was wrong.
It didn't take me long to determine what had happened, the only viable course of action was to move to the new server ASAP. Unfortunately the only computer authorized to log into the new server was at home and I wouldn't be able to get back home until later in the day. In the interim I disabled the forum main page and replaced it with a message explaining that the site was down, that way people at least knew what was going on. Thankfully I kept the main page on a separate database so it was unaffected.
I tried to get a head start on some of the migration tasks but attempting to do administrative tasks on my phone ended up causing more problems than it solved, the site went in and out a couple of times because of this so I just set it back and decided to wait until I had access to a real computer.
Monday Evening around 5:30PM EST As soon as I got home I went to work moving the site to the new server, this meant backing up the databases, restoring them, setting up the server to receive the collectorsedition.org domain, and then pushing a DNS update that told the internet that collectorsedition.org was now on a different IP.
the database backup and restore went smooth, but the forum wasn't coming back up on the new server... it took me a while to track down the reason (there was some corrupted cache files that needed to be refreshed), I setup the server to receive the new domain (or so I thought) then pushed the DNS update.
Monday Evening around 7:15PM EST at this point I thought I was done, I'd have no idea if the DNS update worked until my own ISP updated their records.... Unfortunately I had an error in the setup file on my server that told incoming requests for collectorsedition.org where to go. this is why some of you may have received a box asking for a username/password.
I had no idea this was happening until Dreamcazman messaged me on facebook
I found a few public DNS Servers that I could connect to and kept trying different ones until I found one that had been updated to point to our new server. at this point I was able to figure out what I had done wrong in the settings and correct it.
and now the site is live on our new server! ... except we still don't have email
...but I'm working on it.