Glad to have you all back! For those of you who have not been following along on Facebook, an explanation is in order, so here it is:
About two weeks ago I received an email from Godaddy, the host of our forum, telling me that our hosting was being moved to a new forum. I didn't think much of it, I just figured they were upgrading their hardware.
After the move you all noticed that the forum was running extremely slow. I figured this was a teething problem with the new server and that Godaddy would straighten it out. They straightened it out all right... They disabled our forum, with no notice to me whatsoever. I called their tech support and was talked in circles until I hung up in disgust. They refused to admit there was no problem with the forum itself and that their new server was at fault, I refused to admit otherwise. In the end they said they were not going to re-enable the forum until I fixed it, but they had a very key file "locked" which preventing me from even viewing it, much less fixing it (if there was a problem, which there was not). They essentially claimed our forum was using up too many CPU resources, even though we only use a fraction of our allocated web space and bandwidth (not to mention the fact that the forum worked fine until THEY moved it).
About CPU cycles: Every hosting service offers a certain amount of web space (in Godaddy's case, 150GB - we only used something like 4GB) and unlimited bandwidth. These sound like massive numbers, but the third factor they don't advertise is CPU cycles. It takes very few CPU cycles to display a normal website, but a forum like this, which must constantly access a database and draw countless unique web pages for each individual viewer (every time you click on a link on this forum it generates a web page just for you) takes some computing power.
Picture it like this: An old computer with, say, a Pentium IV processor running at, say, 2GHZ. Imagine stuffing a brand new 2TB hard drive into it and conneting it to the internet via fibre optic. You've now got almost unlimited storage and very high bandwidth. Now imagine installing Windows Vista on that machine. It will run, but it will be painfully slow. You've still got all that storage and bandwidth but your CPU can't handle the load. This is what Godaddy was claiming our forum was doing to their server. Now, a very small forum like this with few active members should not take very much computing power to run, but unfortunately even the little bit we needed was more than Godaddy was willing to give us.
With that in mind a decision was made to move the whole shebang to a newer, better host more optimized for forum hosting. A quick (and spectacularly successful) fundraiser was held, the hosting services were bought, the forum was moved, and now, here we are on our new host! This new host should have CPU cycles to spare.
As I said, the fundraiser was quite successful. More than enough money was raised. We're paid up on our hosting for two years in advance. I would've done more but the host wouldn't do three years. I intend on spending the rest of the money raised on doing some upgrades (latest vBulletin software, adding some functionality, etc). A special thread will be opened very soon for those who gave to discuss what to do with the money.
In the mean time, enjoy!
I notice our cars don't show on the top anymore. Not a big deal though.
I noticed that too - our new host says that they may disable some scripts during the move. Perhaps Alex, who wrote the script to begin with, can troubleshoot and get it back?
was the forum freshly installed on this server? or was everything literally copied over?
I believe everything was literally copied over (all of our custom smilies are still there, for example)
Again, thank you. :bowdown:
And thanks as well to those who chipped in, I was going to, but didn't get paid till last thursday, and by then, the amount had been met...i hope to be able to contribute something worthwhile soon..
Thanks again, and again!
ok let me look into it.
carm have you changed my admin level at all? because in the admin control panel I only see like 10% of the menus I used to see.
I am so glad this site is back, I was having some major withdrawals! To all of the mods here, thanks for being so dedicated to the site, it really is a home away from home.
Don't click on it. Brings you back to the Godaddy server. Found out the hard way.
Whew! Glad the forum is back up. Having withdrawl jones over here.
One of you hackers should send godaddy a bullet, and Danica is a no-driving c*#t.
I don't think I've changed your status. A few of the aftermarket plugins were disabled (they were causing problems) but nothing to do with your status or the banner...
*EDIT* I just checked and yes, you were limited. I've changed it so you have full permissions now...
Well, there's that TAINT again. Kinda forgot what it looked like. :mullet:
Glad the site's back up, I certainly missed it. :D
Good to be home!!!!!!!!
wow, i went to go light up a smoke while waiting for the site to load like usual and noticed it loads super quick now.
it looks like one of those wooden cutout things you see on old ladys lawns(the old lady bent over showing bloomers one) :P
So glad the forum is back! Thanks to everyone who chipped in to make this happen. I was all set to make a contribution after my payday last friday but the contibutions were already made enough in excess. You guys rock! You can count on me the next time we need the help to keep this forum alive.
you jerks who donated money;). I see a message before I go to bed about the forum needing money so I figure I'll donate the next morning. You jerks beat me to it:hick:
you, don't make me go get out my jigsaw:sawzall: (think that would slow down traffic?:evilgrin:)
...oh, and we didn't come through completely unscathed. Before the move I ran a cleanup on the forum and deleted all users who hat not logged in for more than two years (about 95% of these were people who joined, posted an ad in the FS section, then disappeared). This was done in an attempt to get the database down to a more reasonable size in preparation for the move. Chances are the people that this will affect will never read these words, but if you're one of those who was deleted, now you know why...
No car pics are showing up on the banner for me?
Where are
my permissions :beatyoass:
LOL just screwing with ya
Home at last .......HOME AT LAAAAAAAAAASSSSST !!!!!!!!
Oh,do we get the $$ SUPPORTER $$ status?
Workin' on it right now, Vinnie
Just being on the user side here, I believe it's because the way you're currently accessing the site: http://64.57.210.240/~foxtbird/index.php
The random banner is being called from the following address:
http://64.57.210.240/random.php
See the problem? This is why the random.php (banner) is not being loaded.
This will work itself out when your DNS provider updates the IP address of the site.
Members can get around this by editing their HOSTS file, generally located in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC and add the following line:
64.57.210.240 http://www.foxtbirdcougarforums.com
You may then need to open a command prompt and type in:
ipconfig /flushdns
You should then just be able to type in http://www.foxtbirdcougarforums.com and the HOSTS file will direct you to the proper IP address of 64.57.210.240 When it does, you'll notice the banner up top works because the path is now correct:
(http://www.tbirdheritage.com/miscx/foxtbirdcougar110110.jpg)
I thought it was my computer running slow , Glad to find out it wasn't and that the site is back up and running smooth so far !!
Yeaaaa we be back...
Good job Carm, she's flyin' on this end...
Thanks for all the effort on this, Carm.
Glad to be back.
thanks for not deleting me ;)
I'm all for that having been done.
Thanks for getting us back up man. I just spent like 2 hours posting on here....:toilet:
/addict ?
cvar [addict] = true
Yeeeeee Haaaaaa! Thanks Carmen.
Thanks Carmen for all the hard work. I now can get my daily FTBCF fix. I wondered off to some other forums and it just was not the same. This is a nice little forum we have here.
So in our user profiles, are we able to have albums, or will that be disabled like last time?
I am considering getting an add-on app that will give up albums (better albums than vbulletin's built in feature). Haven't had that conversation with the supporting members yet...
On that, I was late to the support party, like some others, but if there's still a place to donate, let me know.
I don't post much, but thank God we're back! :clown:
Amazing. And yea I wanted to help out too. I can't believe how fast people reacted. We take care of our own, that's for sure.
great job !!!
Seems like the site didnt miss a beat.
(http://cdn.moneyfunk.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/home-sweet-home.gif)