29 replies to this topic

[FUS News Robot]

As many of you know FUS costs a ton to run.  With life, other expenses, my dog blowing another ACL (cause that is only a 3 thousand dollar surgery..) and having a almost 7 year old daughter doesn't make things much cheaper either.   Also with the Canadian dollar dropping again (yes I am Canadian) paying a US server bill hurts.  I almost cried when I paid this month off.
Seeing as FUS really pulls in no money of its own besides the random donation here and there (and by one awesome guy who keeps tossing a bit my way each month..You know who you are) I just can't stay on the same server.    Which.. Really isn't a bad thing.. I just hate having to pull up the site and move it (by e I mean I have 2 guys Bakuda and Kef doing that for me) but still.  Horrible!

Anyways I'm pretty sure I have found a nice host that offers basically everything FUS needs plus still a bit of room to grow.  I'm still not fully sold, but basically.. Its going to happen.   The new host offers a bit less of a processor but I am hoping that won't make any noticeable difference to you guys.  I'm also still going to be keeping a VPS server configuration as there are a few sites that FUS members have and I'm just a nice guy who hosts those for free (You also know who you are)

 

As the move goes on (between now and end of the month) you guys should probably not notice a thing.  The only noticeable part will be the forum going down...And I'm hoping that it will only be down for a few hours at tops.  Just enough time to shut it down on this server, download, then re upload it.  And of course do a quick check to make sure nothing buggered up in the process (nothing ever goes smoothly)   I'll also be sure to give you guys a day or so warning on roughly when we will be shutting down.   Just so everyone knows whats what.

 

 

On other news...I know S3 has been down for...months.  But I did announce Sami as our new artist a while back.  Well where is that new page?!!!  Well chatted with her recently and she has been practicing hard on the S3 characters and such.  As it has been some time since she has drawn them.  Also she said she has been working on a few pages at once just so updates can start picking up like normal.  Those pages are just taking a bit due to her trying to get use to the proper feel for things again.  So..I'll keep you updated on that as well but I am hoping to start updating S3 again soon.

 

 

If you do wish to donate there is a donate button on the main page.  It will link to my paypal and I will use that money to help server costs plus other additional costs.  Like S3 and yadda yadda.

 

Cheers,

Paul

[furrykef]

Guess who has the responsibility of moving all the stuff over and making sure everything works?

I'll try to blow everything up. I mean, I'll try not to. Yeah, that's the ticket.

[Captain Sorzo]

Guess who has the responsibility of moving all the stuff over and making sure everything works?

I'll try blow everything up. I mean, I'll try not to. Yeah, that's the ticket.

 

*Begins frantically backing up data*

[Arekkisu]

I take it I need to backup everything also for the transfer...

[RedAuthar]

*Twiddles thumbs next to self-destruct button*

[chief]

I take it I need to backup everything also for the transfer...

 

 

Be a wise idea

[furrykef]

It wouldn't hurt, but there's really no reason that anything should irrevocably go wrong. We're not switching our main domain over to the new site until we are 100% sure everything is in working order.

[SonicAaliyahFan]

As many of you know FUS costs a ton to run.  With life, other expenses, my dog blowing another ACL (cause that is only a 3 thousand dollar surgery..) and having a almost 7 year old daughter doesn't make things much cheaper either.   Also with the Canadian dollar dropping again (yes I am Canadian) paying a US server bill hurts.  I almost cried when I paid this month off.
Seeing as FUS really pulls in no money of its own besides the random donation here and there (and by one awesome guy who keeps tossing a bit my way each month..You know who you are) I just can't stay on the same server.    Which.. Really isn't a bad thing.. I just hate having to pull up the site and move it (by e I mean I have 2 guys Bakuda and Kef doing that for me) but still.  Horrible!

Anyways I'm pretty sure I have found a nice host that offers basically everything FUS needs plus still a bit of room to grow.  I'm still not fully sold, but basically.. Its going to happen.   The new host offers a bit less of a processor but I am hoping that won't make any noticeable difference to you guys.  I'm also still going to be keeping a VPS server configuration as there are a few sites that FUS members have and I'm just a nice guy who hosts those for free (You also know who you are)

 

As the move goes on (between now and end of the month) you guys should probably not notice a thing.  The only noticeable part will be the forum going down...And I'm hoping that it will only be down for a few hours at tops.  Just enough time to shut it down on this server, download, then re upload it.  And of course do a quick check to make sure nothing buggered up in the process (nothing ever goes smoothly)   I'll also be sure to give you guys a day or so warning on roughly when we will be shutting down.   Just so everyone knows whats what.

 

 

On other news...I know S3 has been down for...months.  But I did announce Sami as our new artist a while back.  Well where is that new page?!!!  Well chatted with her recently and she has been practicing hard on the S3 characters and such.  As it has been some time since she has drawn them.  Also she said she has been working on a few pages at once just so updates can start picking up like normal.  Those pages are just taking a bit due to her trying to get use to the proper feel for things again.  So..I'll keep you updated on that as well but I am hoping to start updating S3 again soon.

 

 

If you do wish to donate there is a donate button on the main page.  It will link to my paypal and I will use that money to help server costs plus other additional costs.  Like S3 and yadda yadda.

 

Cheers,

Paul
 

 

 

 Ah man, i pray your dog gets better Paul. I'm a softie when it comes to dogs, cats and other furry animals. And i understand about being a parent when it comes to finances and tending to their needs and wants. My 12-year old daughter's in her school's colorguard. And it costs money for her to be a part of it haha,   especially the uniform and her trip to Disneyland to perform there in a couple months. Yea, times are hard these days, so i totally support whatever you have to do. It's a big responsibility to keep an awesome Sonic fan site active,   and i thank you and the staff here so much for keeping it running for all us FUS members. I did my 1st donation for FUS a few months ago, it was only $10 but i'm sure it helped a little bit during that time. Now that i'm out of my friend's house and moved into an apt with my brother, all my extra income goes on bills and food. But i'll donate again eventually.

 

I pray the site transfer goes smoothly and that things will be still awesome.  

[furrykef]

We've chosen our new host and just had our account there activated. We're going to be using Bluehost. I was rooting for something like tortoise.es, myself, but chief's the boss.

Anyway, what this means for you guys is I'm aiming to have the process complete within a week; I'm currently aiming for three days or less. FUS won't be affected until the very end of the process, when we start deploying the new site. At that point, the main site and forum will both go into read-only mode so that everything can still be read, but new comments and forum posts cannot be made. This is the ideal case; IP Board wasn't specifically designed to allow this and we may have to bring the entire forum down instead. Whichever way we do it, I only expect the site to be down or read-only for a few minutes. It may be a few hours, but I'm aiming for minutes.

That said, switching the site will involve changing the domain name to point from the old site to the new site, and it can take hours for a change to the domain name to propagate (which is completely out of anyone's control), so it's possible you'll be seeing the old site for a couple of hours even after we've finished the switchover. We may have a temporary alternate domain you can use during this time, but I can't promise that.

In any case, I'm going to try to do this at valley hours (opposite of peak hours ), so most of you will be in bed or at work or something anyway.

[Uncle Ben]

So whats gonna be the changes? Anything noticeable?

[furrykef]

We hope not.

[ILOVEVHS]

Guess who has the responsibility of moving all the stuff over and making sure everything works?
I'll try blow everything up. I mean, I'll try not to. Yeah, that's the ticket.

 
*Begins frantically backing up data*

  

I take it I need to backup everything also for the transfer...

  

*Twiddles thumbs next to self-destruct button*

RANDOMLY PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS!

[randomizer]

That said, switching the site will involve changing the domain name to point from the old site to the new site, and it can take hours for a change to the domain name to propagate (which is completely out of anyone's control), so it's possible you'll be seeing the old site for a couple of hours even after we've finished the switchover.

 

It may not actually be out of your control. If you are able to change the Time To Live (TTL) values for the DNS records you could have the switchover effective in seconds (though minutes is probably better to save your DNS servers from being pounded with every new page load). Note that the time between when you make the change to the TTL and when you change the DNS records to point to the new host must be at least as long as the current TTL. You will also want to change it back later.

[furrykef]

Thanks for the tip. I'm looking into it and some (many?) DNS servers ignore TTL, so it's not a sure-fire solution, but it may help.

I was going to have the switchover done by now, but my chair decided to break. Stupid chair. Oh well, hopefully I can do it tonight.

[randomizer]

Well you can't do much if they don't behave how they're supposed to, but you might as well improve things for those that use DNS servers which do respect TTL.

 

Non-compliance with standards is why we can't have nice things. Any web developer will agree.

[furrykef]

Yes, I've set our TTL to 1 hour and when it's an hour to switchover I'll reduce it further to five minutes, or something like that.

[randomizer]

That sounds like it will work, providing that you allow for however long it was originally, since it will take that long for the 1h TTL to replace the old cached value.

[furrykef]

I ended up breaking the forum for a couple mins when I tried putting a global message box on the forum. It worked on the Warrior theme but not the FUS theme. Oops.

Anyway, we're going to be initiating the switchover within the next 30 minutes, hopefully sooner. When that happens, the forum will be read-only or possibly down entirely, but only for a few minutes. Likewise for the rest of the site, but hopefully I won't have to bring it down. Then once the process is complete, any traffic that hits the old server will be redirected to new.sonicsatam.com. This will be automatic and you don't have to do anything; it's just that if you see new.sonicsatam.com in your address bar, you'll know why. Our website's real URL is just sonicsatam.com and will be for the forseeable future.

[randomizer]

inb4 readonly

[furrykef]

Actually I can't find a quick and easy way to make IP Board read only, so chances are I'm gonna have to bring the whole forum down for a few minutes. But only a few!