RadioRob

I made a post about this in the Announcements section about new forum software that I'm experimenting with. You can check it out at: https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/ Be sure to read the announcement here first so that you have some background about what's going on.

When I setup this test board, I had a few different goals in mind: Get some experience in testing the Xenforo conversion process. (This includes getting an understanding of the time it takes convert the database.) Let users get experience with the new software and see the benefits of it. Have a period of time where both forums were online so that there would not be a "shell shock" from the change. Document what is changed during the beta process so that I can do it again when we do the "real" conversion. You'll notice I tried to stay true to the legacy look and feel of these forums, including preserving the primary colors, logo, etc. At the same time however, I wanted to add some fresh/modern touches to it. Hopefully it feels somewhat familiar to everyone and is not something that feels totally out in left field. Regarding storage, what is happening is that when a file is uploaded... it is not actually put on OUR server. It's stored on a 3rd party service called Wasabi (https://www.wasabi.com). Uploads are simply taken, put on the remote host and then embedded into the post. We can store 1TB (meaning 1024GB) of data for $5.99 a month with no extra cost for bandwidth.

Somewhat of the opposite of paying a provider...

UPDATE 5/13/21: Given the positive feedback from members, I'm going to look at plans to move forward with changing the forum software. My goal is to do this in approximately 2-3 weeks, most likely on a Friday or Saturday evening. (Once I know the specific date, I'll post it.) In order to make the transition, I will need to take the boards offline for approximately 6 hours. Once the initial conversion is complete, I will need to manually set group permissions and start configuring various features. I anticipate this taking another 1-2 hours... at that point, I'll be able to unlock the doors and let everyone back in. Once the forums are re-opened, legacy posts may look funny and some posts may appear to be blank. Given the sheer size of the forums, it will take around 24 hours for all posts to be reindexed and rebuilt. This will naturally straighten itself out as the posts rebuild in the background. (This may also mean the site is a bit slower for the first day since a lot of resources are going to be dedicated to the rebuild/reindex process.) ----------------------------- Now that the migration of the forum to it's new long-term server is complete, I'm starting to look at slightly longer term stuff for the site. One of the biggest challenges I'm running into is the software powering the site itself. Our Xenforo license is expired. As a result, I can't download security updates/patches. Xenforo itself is software I don't fully know and understand. When problems occur, I can try to figure it out... but it can take significantly longer to do. If we ever want to do anything with the review site later, Xenforo does not have capabilities of supporting it. As a result, I want to look at switching the forums from Xenforo to Invision Community. In a nutshell, Invision provides not only forum software but a full suite of software designed around helping webmasters build virtual communities. This includes forums, image galleries, blogs, software downloads, e-commerce (donation support), etc. I realize most people most likely don't understand the full implications of what this means, so I've setup a demo that you can actually take for a spin. Take a look at https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/ You can login with the same username/password you use here on this site. I've basically imported a COPY of our existing board into the new software. (This is from a backup I earlier so anything that happens on that test site will NOT happen here and has no chance of breaking anything here. This test instance will eventually be deleted and anything on it will be lost. So don't post anything there that is important!) Some features I think that are worthwhile to mention include: Improved text editor for easier posting of messages. Ability to attach files. (No need to restrict images to remotely hosted files.) Clubs... ability to have a sub-group within the site that can be managed by individual members. (These can be public, semi-public, or private/invite only.) Ability to accept donations directly via the website. Calendars/events... we have a number of different events that the community tends to attend/support such as the DC Meetup, Palm Springs Get Together, MAL Weekend, etc. Whomever is organizing an event can have an area for people to RSVP, post messages about the event, etc. Ability to pick their own photos from their computer, or find stock photos to insert. Ability to pick how content should be viewed. (If you don't like the "card" view of the forum list, you can switch it to the classic grid view, or a topic display view. It remembers your setting per member. So your view does not interfere with how another person views the site.) You will not lose your password, avatar, or signature. Feel free to login to the test site and play around! Make posts and in general kick the tires. I'm going to note a couple of things: There are many areas that are still unconfigured. It does not make sense for me to spend days tweaking the software yet as I'm going to lose all of the changes when we do a final "live" upgrade. If you use the beta site to harass other members or break our normal rules, we reserve the right to take action against the behavior on the "live" board. If/when we do migrate the site to Invision, it will take several hours to fully convert. I will need to take the live site offline while the conversion takes place so that we don't lose posts while everything is moved. In my test import, it took about 5 hours to get the data converted. I'll be able to turn the site back on after the initial conversion completes, but some individual posts may look a bit weird or show up as having no content for the first 12 hours or so as almost 2 million posts have to be rebuilt in the background. I don't have any sort of plan or ETA for if/when we would actually make a change. In terms of the Invision license itself, it would be my donation to the community since I had an extra unused one from another site I managed. It's cost is annually around another $50 per year, but includes a lot of features not available today and includes our ability to support a new review site if we're so inclined.

The boards themselves don't have a Private Message viewer. While I could technically view the messages themselves from the raw database, it's not very easy to do. (I would have to figure out the user ID of the person, run a query on that field, then take all of the results and sort them by age. Each individual reply is its own message record in the database. So unless I have a reason to need to do something, it honestly does not make sense. Instead of worrying about individual messages, I like to look at the trends of the data. You'll notice I've posted some stats from time to time as it is helpful to understanding the community at a macro level. What times are the most popular for the site? What type of device do people use? What sections of the site receive the most views? Being able to answer these types of questions is important to helping grow the community. By the way... in terms of new user registrations... it looks like while COVID put a hampering on many hirings, it did not dampen the interest. Starting in May of last year, we have seen a significant increase in user signups. (These do not include registrations blocked/denied to spammers.) [TABLE] [TR] [TD]01/01/2020[/TD] [TD]48[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]02/01/2020[/TD] [TD]67[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]03/01/2020[/TD] [TD]43[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]04/01/2020[/TD] [TD]32[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]05/01/2020[/TD] [TD]103[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]06/01/2020[/TD] [TD]83[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]07/01/2020[/TD] [TD]97[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]08/01/2020[/TD] [TD]124[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]09/01/2020[/TD] [TD]149[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]10/01/2020[/TD] [TD]144[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]11/01/2020[/TD] [TD]131[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]12/01/2020[/TD] [TD]196[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]01/01/2021[/TD] [TD]131[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]02/01/2021[/TD] [TD]173[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]03/01/2021[/TD] [TD]208[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]04/01/2021[/TD] [TD]220[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

Creation of topics under Site News is limited to moderators/admins only in order to keep the noise down. I've set the permissions to allow replies, but initial postings are limited. The best place to post would be The Lounge.

SOME of you have rather large private message boxes. There are private conversations going back to 2002 saved!

Not with Xenforo. But that's a topic I'll be posting about soon! I have a proof of concept I'm working on now and close to showing off to the rest of the forum.

If I'm in Dania Beach, I'll typically grab a car. No parking and it gave me the ability to hit other locations outside of FLL easily such as Adventura, Haulover Beach (nude beach), or to just head down south to MIA. Dania Beach hotels are literally off of I-95 (Griffin Road or Stirling Road). Free parking, easy access to the cruise terminal, lots of food options nearby. Firebirds is a decent mid-tier restaurant that is not crazy expensive with good food and friendly people. Even if you did not have a car, it's literally a 10 minute Uber ride to Wilton Manor.

It’s a really nice area. I enjoy it a lot. Super convenient to Uber or walk around. If I’m on a cost conscious trip, I’ll stay in Dania Beach right next to FLL. There are several Marriott properties that are generally super cheap. My trip in January was 65 a night. Even per-COVID I generally was under 100 whenever I went.

Los Olas Blvd is awesome. I actually have an office a few blocks from the hotel so I ended up staying there quite a bit pre-COVID.

Some highlights from the transfer earlier... 1,938,517 reactions 1,728,290 posts 447,782 private messages 344,871 thread watches 194,094 news feed notifications 123,789 threads 28,962 user trophies 16,360 user follows Those were just some of the things ya'll see/use on a daily basis. That does not include the IP logs, the warn logs, all of your individual profile settings, avatars, etc. In total... 10.2 MILLION total database records 4.86 GB database 25.61 GB worth of files/logs

Welcome back! Migration complete! We're no longer running on my personal server.

A quick update… our nightly backups are still running. As a precaution, I’m going to wait until the backup completes before taking the site offline and moving data. I expect this should complete somewhere around 1:30-2:00 am. Once it finishes, I’ll take the boards offline and begin the migration.

Passwords are stored locally on your computer, so it should still be remembered. The reason it was not remembered before was because the domain name itself changed.

Our new permanent home is ready and I'll be migrating this site and the review archive later tonight sometime after 12:01 AM Eastern. During that migration process, I will need to disable the forums in order to prevent posts that are made during the migration from being lost. (I will need to export all of the data, and if you're busy adding more content, anything new from the moment I start the export will not make it over to our new home.) There is nothing that you need to do once the forums are locked. Once the migration is complete, I'll update DNS to point users to the new server and unlock the boards on that new server. So you'll know you've reached the new location when you see the forums online again.

As posted in New Forum Organization thread, I have completed the reorganization of the forums. I hope this change will help make it a little easier to navigate the site!

As posted in New Forum Organization thread, I have completed the reorganization of the forums. I hope this change will help make it a little easier to navigate the site!

Update complete.

Update complete.

Update: 5/6/21 I plan to start reorganizing/creating new forums tomorrow. Based on popular request, I'll leave Opera as just itself. (I thought about calling it "Not Until the Fat Lady Sings", but I thought might be pushing it.)

It's possible it's a Xenforo defense mechanism being triggered by server load. The server is under a heavy load while I run repairs on the database tables in the background. That's why the website has been sluggish most of the morning. I'm batching the requests so they're throttled, that way I don't have to do a longer "big" full outage, but it means while the task is running... the website is fighting the databases for available CPU/memory.

Most regular maintenance will happen in the background transparently. My challenge if I set a dedicated window is that I can’t do anything until then. This can delay getting the things needed to stabilize the site. Eventually I’ll need a few one-time windows to actually move the site so we don’t have people posting while data is copying and then get missed. But that would not be a regularly scheduled thing.

From looking at activity on the site, this looks to have started around 11PM Eastern and ran for just a little over an hour. Being able to view the site looks to have been restored around midnight and write access around 12:15ish.

The problems that occurred over the last few hours are my fault and I apologize to the community. As I've noted earlier, in order to recover the site quickly when Daddy's server failed... I migrated the site to my personal server. I'm in the process of preparing the site to move to it's permanent home. In order to make sure things transferred correctly, I had to export a copy of everything into the equivalent of a big ZIP file. Because this site is so big, it takes a LONG time to generate. (It takes about 5 hours to export the database and then compress it into a ZIP file.) While this process was occurring, I went out with friends to dinner since it was going to take a while to complete. While I was gone, the server ran out of disk space. As a result, the server could not read/write from the database. I fixed the issue as soon as I got home. I've also fixed a few mySQL database tables that crashed as a result of not having sufficient space. So long story short... my bad. This one was on me. Sorry for the problem.