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Forum downtime


Erin

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  • 2 years later...
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  • 2 years later...

A couple of quick updates on the latest server move:

 

This move was the most difficult one we've had to do; we ran into a number of problems, some of which will need to be fixed manually. I'm not aware of any data loss, however, so that's good.

 

Some of the functions or features that are now different:

  • URLs are now different; it is quite likely that we will NOT return to the previous system, since the plugin we were using before (vBSEO) has stopped development.
  • Some of the plug-ins have reverted to their default behaviors; customizations that we have made are gone.
  • Some of the customizations we made to the forum skin are gone.

 

All of these issues are relatively minor and are fixable with time. However, I may go ahead and make some other changes I have had planned as long as I'm working on these changes.

 

Thanks for your patience.

 

- Erin

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi Erin,

 

Just want to see if you might reconsider the changes? They have absolutely decimated the Econ forum. URLs don't work rendering all stickied threads useless as they contain many many links to now non-existent URLs. I don't have the time to fix them all, there are literally hundreds.

 

Bookmarks are also rendered useless. In fact, I thought the forum was down for 10 days before eventually just googling to see if anyone had mentioned the issue elsewhere and then found new links to the site.

 

I think if people were told before the changes, that this could all have been smoothly done, but I'm sure there are many folks who will not bother with the econ forum as they may think it is "down" if they haven't fixed their bookmarks and even if they find the site it is basically useless in its current state for new members with all the broken URLs. I can't see any way for the forum to go on successfully with all of the links to its valuable information broken in one fell swoop.

 

I don't think your intent was to render the site useless but the changes have done so, traffic is down dramatically and those who are on the site can't use it.

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A couple of quick updates on the latest server move:

 

This move was the most difficult one we've had to do; we ran into a number of problems, some of which will need to be fixed manually. I'm not aware of any data loss, however, so that's good.

 

Some of the functions or features that are now different:

  • URLs are now different; it is quite likely that we will NOT return to the previous system, since the plugin we were using before (vBSEO) has stopped development.
  • Some of the plug-ins have reverted to their default behaviors; customizations that we have made are gone.
  • Some of the customizations we made to the forum skin are gone.

 

All of these issues are relatively minor and are fixable with time. However, I may go ahead and make some other changes I have had planned as long as I'm working on these changes.

 

Thanks for your patience.

 

- Erin

 

Please see above post.

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Hi Erin,

 

Just want to see if you might reconsider the changes? They have absolutely decimated the Econ forum. URLs don't work rendering all stickied threads useless as they contain many many links to now non-existent URLs. I don't have the time to fix them all, there are literally hundreds.

 

Bookmarks are also rendered useless. In fact, I thought the forum was down for 10 days before eventually just googling to see if anyone had mentioned the issue elsewhere and then found new links to the site.

 

I think if people were told before the changes, that this could all have been smoothly done, but I'm sure there are many folks who will not bother with the econ forum as they may think it is "down" if they haven't fixed their bookmarks and even if they find the site it is basically useless in its current state for new members with all the broken URLs. I can't see any way for the forum to go on successfully with all of the links to its valuable information broken in one fell swoop.

 

I don't think your intent was to render the site useless but the changes have done so, traffic is down dramatically and those who are on the site can't use it.

Wow, sorry about that. No, I didn't intend to make the changes in the way that they occurred--my host told me that the hard drive on the server was failing, and I should move the data ASAP. We have changed servers several times in the past, and while it goes as planned, this one was the roughest-going yet. It took a lot of manual work to get the data in the right places, and some things still may not be back to normal.

 

The biggest problem with the links is that the software that we were using before to generate the URLs (vbseo) is no longer in business; they stopped updating the software and replying to support requests, and now even the website is down.

 

I'll take a look again to see whether I can get the vBSEO running again so that the links work in the same way they did before.

 

So sorry about any trouble! =/

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  • 4 weeks later...
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  • 9 months later...

Hard drive is failing again. =(

 

I'll be migrating the server as soon as I get backups. (It looks like I got one already, so it's looking good.)

 

Edit: My host said that the server was getting 'attacked', which was using all the resources. I've installed some brute-force mitigation software to help.

 

Edit again: We're on a new server (with upgraded software) now. Still squashing some bugs, such as this one:

 

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /home/urchmaku/public_html/forums/vbseo/includes/functions_vbseo.php on line 1891

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /home/urchmaku/public_html/forums/vbseo/includes/functions_vbseo.php on line 1910

 

I will most likely need to upgrade the forum to the latest version to fix that. Fixed! Figured it out. :)

 

On the off chance anyone happens upon this thread looking for a fix, just open vbseo/includes/functions_vbseo.php and change this:

 

$newtext = preg_replace ('#(]*?)(?:'.$r_tattr.')\s*[=\(]\s*["\'])([^"\'>\)]*)(.*?[\>])([^)?#ise',
"vbseo_replace_urls('$1', '$3', '$2', '$4', '$5', '$6')",
$newtext
);

 

to this:

 

$newtext = preg_replace_callback ('#(]*?)(?:'.$r_tattr.')\s*[=\(]\s*["\'])([^"\'>\)]*)(.*?[\>])([^)?#is',
"vbseo_replace_urls('$1', '$3', '$2', '$4', '$5', '$6')",
$newtext
);

 

and this:

 

$newtext2 = preg_replace ('#(value="(?:\[.*?\])?)('.preg_quote($vboptions['bburl2'],'#').'/?)([^'stripslashes(\'$1\').vbseo_replace_urls("", "$2$3")',
$newtext
);

 

to this:

 

$newtext2 = preg_replace_callback ('#(value="(?:\[.*?\])?)('.preg_quote($vboptions['bburl2'],'#').'/?)([^'stripslashes(\'$1\').vbseo_replace_urls("", "$2$3")',
$newtext
);

 

Worked for me. Too bad vBSEO is no longer supported.

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  • 1 year later...

Hi, all. I'm working on updating a feature of the forum that rewrites URLs to a friendlier format. However, you may have noticed that there have been some problems.

 

I have deactivated the feature for now; in the meantime, you should still be able to access the forum, but the URLs may be different from what you're used to.

 

This should be temporary; I have someone working on it, and hopefully it'll all be fixed quickly (within a day or two I hope).

 

Sorry for the inconvenience!

 

Edit: This URL works: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/index.php

This URL does NOT work: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/

 

2017-09-17: All seems to be working properly now.

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