Welcome Back! - Page 2

themidlandmaster · #11 09-26-2012, 03:21 AM

I started to have withdrawal symptoms...

Dreamcazman · #12 09-26-2012, 05:08 AM

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.

Letrico · #13 09-26-2012, 05:10 AM

its server upgrade dreamcazman =D Took almost a day but all good now

Dreamcazman · #14 09-26-2012, 05:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Letrico

its server upgrade dreamcazman =D Took almost a day but all good now

Thank f**k for that.

It's funny how in this day and age when a popular site goes off the air everyone's in dire straits.

Dr_Jengo · #15 09-26-2012, 11:20 AM

Social media my friend... Our lives revolve around it...

twistedsymphony · #16 09-26-2012, 02:04 PM

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.

vhal_x · #17 09-26-2012, 02:25 PM

Still don't have email? I'm getting emails every time something is posted, perfectly fine (albeit some are delayed). This started back up last night (had 50-odd emails this morning) haha xx

twistedsymphony · #18 09-26-2012, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhal_x

Still don't have email? I'm getting emails every time something is posted, perfectly fine (albeit some are delayed). This started back up last night (had 50-odd emails this morning) haha xx

interesting... maybe the problem is on my end then.

themidlandmaster · #19 09-26-2012, 02:39 PM

ITsactually really cooler overloaded the server capacity for bandwidth!

twistedsymphony · #20 09-26-2012, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by themidlandmaster

ITsactually really cooler overloaded the server capacity for bandwidth!

yeah we overloaded memory, processor, and database storage. the old host said they could handle the bandwidth but we were averaging 50,000 hits a day

so far on the new server we're just barely hitting 50% resources at peek traffic so we've got a lot of breathing room. The site seems to be crazy fast now which is really nice