• Feedback
  • Forum Moved! (was "Upcoming Forum Move")

As some of you may have seen, DAHLIAaddict moved to a new server a couple weeks ago.

This is DahliaAddict's third move, the first was from a shared host to a more robust shared host. This time it was from that shared host to a virtual private host. All of the moves have been to improve site performance as traffic has increased. With the VPH we'll have more control over the installed software, including being able install software we couldn't on our previous shared hosts. We'll also be able to purchase additional virtual hardware as needed without having to move again.

Since we have full control over the site's content, we did it as a hot swap -- copied the site and database and then updated DNS (domain name system), the internet's address book. As that update propagated through the world's DNS, the site's users continued to go to the old site host until they started routing to the new one as their internet service providers' DNS servers updated. Most didn't see any downtime as the change rolled out.

Now it's time to move DahliaAddict's neighbors, including your Growing Dahlias forum. Since you all control the content on this site we will be handling the move a little differently. We'll copy the site over and will be putting the old site into "maintenance mode" while we move the uploaded images and database to the new live host. That way we won't lose anything during the move. You'll know your ISP's DNS has updated when you see the familiar forum instead of the maintenance mode screen.

Normally DNS updates happen in just a few minutes. Sometimes, as long as a few hours and, in very rare cases, may take a couple days or, in even rarer cases, as long as a week. The latter are very unlikely.

Expect the move within the next few days.

Forum usage is at it's lowest toward the middle of the week and the later it is on the west coast. We're planning to move it tonight, the evening of Tuesday, the 16th.

Since we'll already have a nice fresh backup, I'm planning to go ahead and update the forum to the latest-greatest, too.

Forum is moved and up. (Yay!)

Sorry it took a little longer than expected. DNS was a little flakey last night -- sometimes resolving to the old server and sometimes to the new, which made it difficult to get the security certificate updated and start testing. So, I let it sit overnight.

That seemed cleared up by this morning. For performance reasons, part of our new setup on this server is replacing the Apache webserver with the Nginx webserver. It is newer and faster but I'm also less familiar with it (About 19.5 years less experience.) and encountered a problem getting it to "see" a critical file. Once that was resolved, the site popped right up.

I'm still testing, and am seeing an issue uploading files over 2MB. (PHP's default file upload limit.) I've increased the limit but, so far, am still seeing the error. 🙁 I need to step away for an appointment now but will return to troubleshooting when I return.

Thank you for your patience!

Edit: File upload size bug swatted. Enjoy this >2MB test image. This is how Byron was "helping" move the site last night.

    mr_blown_dry changed the title to Forum Moved! (was "Upcoming Forum Move") .

    Forum updates are complete. Flarum, the forum software we're using, did not have an update -- it's still on version 1.8.5. The devs are working on v2 for release sometime next year, so there are unlikely to be anything but bug fixes on the v1 codebase.

    41 of the code libraries Flarum relies on had at least minor version number updates, including four of the forum plugins we're using.

    By virtue of the move our backend is updated to PHP 8.3 and MySQL 8. These are things that make me happy. And now I'll be able to update them myself as new versions are released, instead of waiting for the server host to do it.

    The archive of old Cubits threads was moved last weekend.

    As always, let me know if you encounter any problems.

    Have fun!

      blown_dry He IS the best!! Thank you so much. The forum is so easy to use and I really enjoy it. It’s nice to know it’s getting such good care “under the hood.” 🙏🏻

      Teddahlia I hadn't thought about that, but it would make sense that the performance upgrade would be in effect here as well. 😊

      12 days later