Online for now - planning migration soon

[Frank Hagan]

While I'm watching things, I have the forums up now. I will be doing a transition to Xenforo software, as the current software is EOL this year (and very flakey). 

 

My plan is to install and configure Xenforo, which may take a few hours to a day or two. During most of that time, the forums will be up if the software will behave that long. It may be down periodically as I make the transition. 

 

I'm hoping everything makes the transition. One possible issue is the Member Galleries; there are only a few of them, but they may not make the transition. I will back up the photos there for anyone that misses this notice (just in case they do get nuked in the transition). 

 

I'm sorry for the disruption. 

[Frank Hagan]

I will be letting the forums run during the day while I can watch them while I make the transition. At night, from about 9 PM to 9 AM Pacific time, I'll be shutting them down. At least until I'm comfortable with the CPU usage on the old software.

[Frank Hagan]

Things have been stable all day so I'll try leaving the forums up and operational. I may check them around 2 AM (prior issues have happened at about 1:30 AM). 

[Frank Hagan]

So far so good tonight. The upgrade to the server seems to be keeping us within bounds. 

[Andy B]

I have no idea what any of this means, other than a lot of work for you--so thanks for the work you do for this great place!

[Frank Hagan]

Thanks, Andy. It's like baby sitting a three year old that is usually very good, but every now and then ...

 

I think it's stable now. Fingers crossed.

[Hirilonde]

Best forum ever, thanks again for your attention to detail Frank.

[Frank Hagan]

2 hours ago, Hirilonde said:

Best forum ever, thanks again for your attention to detail Frank.

 

Thanks. I'm hoping the new software will work out. I've had this software since 2011, so at least I got more than a decade for my "lifetime purchase" before they decided my lifetime was over. 

[Brucel]

I'm up here in Shaver Lake near Fresno CA on my cell phone. The software seems to be working fine in light of the previous sentence. Texting a forum is a PITA but I am able to follow the forums on my celly so all is good considering my limited connection. Back online in 2 weeks, see you then.

[Frank Hagan]

Update for those following this thread:

 

The database problems may have been induced by AI "scraper bots" hammering the forums and "training" on our content. In other words, they steal what you have written to then sell that information back to us when we do an AI guided search. The current software doesn't do a good job of filtering these out, but I have blocked about 250 of the bots using server-level tools, and it seems the worst offenders are being blocked. More to come later when I move to the new software, but you should see better performance without the 5,000 or so "guests" online scraping our content. At one point I had 1,500 "meta" (Facebook) bots clicking every link on the site to "learn" our content. The new software has some options to limit guest viewing to help with this. 

 

The timetable is most likely to be this coming Friday, Sept. 25th, 2026 for the forum conversion, or starting it on Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. 

[Brucel]

You are the Hagan family computer guru. Thank you for all your past work and keeping us connected.

[Oyster]

Thanks for your on going effort to maintain the forum. But with I guess the on going work, ads are now flooding my screen, even though I had paid my yearly subscription.

[Frank Hagan]

1 hour ago, Oyster said:

Thanks for your on going effort to maintain the forum. But with I guess the on going work, ads are now flooding my screen, even though I had paid my yearly subscription.

 

Yikes! That shouldn't happen. I reset your primary membership level to Supporting Member so let me know if that worked. I'll go through and do the same for everyone else if that fixes it.