Site Downtime - 3 Sept 2007

[Darren]

Not sure if anyone has noticed, but this site is actually served up from the USA at present.

Over this weekend, the site is being moved. A new more powerful server based in London will be its new home. With any luck there wont be any downtime.

This should mean the site is significantly quicker and enables us to expand the site in the future.

Moving ADUK to a new server is bound to have some problems. The new server will have latest database and scripting software versions and although we have tested as much as we can, we hope nothing breaks during the move.

Watch this space and please be patient should things not go according to plan.

[Renny]

Hope it all goes well.

See you on Monday morning I hope

[mzje]

Good luck

Matthew

[TripleS]

I hope everything goes well, Darren.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[martine]

Sounds like a sensible move - I'll be patient - I know what it's like

[Mr Cholmondeley-Warner]

Good luck! Hope it doesn't take your whole Bank Holiday weekend!

[ROG]

every seems to be as it should - i have not noticed any difference

[Darren]

lol, it hasnt happened yet.

After quite some time conflabbing with the hosting provider yesterday there is going to be a 2 stage move and this has caused some serious rethink of how this site operates in the future. Mainly for maintenance purposes.

Firstly, the site will move to a new server with PHP4 installed in the UK. Hopefully nothing should break during that move.

(PHP is a software language not doo dissimilar to the likes of C and Perl and is the scripting/interpreter engine the site uses to access databases, run the forum etc).

Secondly, PHP4 will be end of life I believe at the back end of this year. Therefor, the site code needs to be migrated to the newer PHP5. This may, or may not prove to be very problematic given alot of the code on this site was written for PHP4 approx 2 years ago.

To do this the site will be migrated to a test server with PHP5 installed so that I can assess the damage and the work to update and go through the few thousand lines of code.

Although it has come to mind that as I have been thinking for quite some time I would like to put a new site together this major migration might be a good time to do it. To simplify it's structure significantly, new design and layout. The forum layout may change slightly for a short period of time during this process, but hopefully I'll manage to keep all the content and usability.

[ROG]

so, when is the removal truck coming?

[ROG]

This site is very quiet today Darren. I think they are all waiting in anticipation of the big event - or they all decided to enjoy the sunshine

[nuster100]

Had some DNS fun this morning, I would imagine the move is taking / has taken place now.

Jay

could be wrong though

[Darren]

After quite alot of discussion with the ISP, the move will now take place on Sat 8th Sept.

This will be to a UK based server running PHP4 for the time being. Then over the following weeks, I will be looking to develop a site that runs/works on PHP5 and will transfer the forum database in.

[Darren]

OK, the site is being moved to the UK based PHP4 server today. There may be some downtime or problems due to the DNS system update required. This is out of our control.

Once this has happened, I will be looking at the more important move to the PHP5 server which will cause more problems than I would have liked, but I will be using the move as an opportunity for an overhaul.

Darren

[Darren]

OK, the site is now being served up from the UK....I think. It should be alot quicker for most users.

The transfer seems to have gone ok. Not too many hickups so far. Still checking though.

[Renny]

Seems OK to me.

Let's hope the next bit goes as smothly.