DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Testing. 1, 2, 3... => Topic started by: Mysterious Benefactor on March 28, 2024, 08:39:16 PM
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I received this notice in my email:
Web Hosting will soon be migrated.
In the upcoming weeks, your services will be migrated. The following services may be affected during migration:
dsboards.com
We do our best to run our updates with no disruption, but we may need to take things offline.
Oh joy - not! And I say that because when they migrated us in September of 2017 they managed to lose parts of the forum's database and without those parts the forum wouldn't run correctly, which is why everyone was getting a fatal error when they tried to visit. Let's hope to hell that nothing like that happens this time around! Also, last time they didn't even provide a heads up before the migration took place. At least this time they have provided a heads up email, plus the email also provided a link to a migration FAQ that promises:
We'll send you an email before your migration begins.
Let's hope they give me enough notice to make sure I've backed up everything beforehand so that if something goes wrong on their end, I'll have a copy of everything so we don't lose anything like how we lost 18 days of posts the last time. [angry6]
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Oi vey!
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[easter_rolleyes]
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Does that mean we won't be on this forum anymore ? [easter_huh]
Anne
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No. *Hopefully* after our host migrates the forum everything here will still be the same. What will be different, and probably something we won't even notice, is that the forum will be hosted on an updated operating system...
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Hi MB thank you for answering my question,
Anne 😊
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Good luck - hopefully it will all go smoothly this time! And, at least that you'll be able to have your backup. [easter_smiley]
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Hey, MB and Midnite, while we're on the subject, can you take us down memory lane for a minute? What was that original host for our beloved board long, long ago, before the turn-of-the-millenium? I can still remember what it looked like.
Gerard
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Horray! The migration took place at some point between 4:43 am ET and 7:49 am ET this morning and seems to have been completely successful. [thumbleft] [clap]
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Hey, MB and Midnite, while we're on the subject, can you take us down memory lane for a minute? What was that original host for our beloved board long, long ago, before the turn-of-the-millenium? I can still remember what it looked like.
We've always used the same basic software for the forum. Originally it was written in the Perl computer language and that used up a huge amount of memory, which is why during the first year of the forum we kept getting shut down so often. But thankfully the software developers switched to PHP in 2003 and there is nowhere near the memory overhead with it that Perl had.
But so far as hosts, companies that store our software on their servers, goes, we've had many, some a lot better than others. I can't even remember the names of any of our previous hosts, probably because I love our current host so much. For the most part (apart from that 2017 incident) we hit the jackpot when we moved the forum to their services.
As for the various looks the forum has had through the years, those were all of my design, also some better than others. But it was a big learning curve when the forum first started because I was learning things by the seat of my pants, mostly because I had to learn the Perl language because I'd never worked with it before (though thankfully it's similar to languages I had used). I'd created other Web sites previous to the forum, but nothing as complicated as the forum is. And interestingly enough the forum's look will be evolving again before too long because the software developers have released a perfected 2.1 version of their software but I just haven't gotten the time to upgrade the forum to it. Once I do, we'll have a new look. Though how different a look will depend on how differently the upgraded software works...
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CONGRATULATIONS!! Glad for all of us that it worked!!!!! [easter_smiley]
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Hey, MB and Midnite, while we're on the subject, can you take us down memory lane for a minute? What was that original host for our beloved board long, long ago, before the turn-of-the-millenium? I can still remember what it looked like.
Vantagenet [easter_cheesy]
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[pointing-up] Oh, is that what you were talking about, Gerard! [6184] With the migration I was strictly thinking of the services that hosted our software in the past. But, duh, how quickly I forget Vantagenet. [easter_embarassed]
And speaking of Vantagenet, in 2022 I shared some of the posts that were made to that version of the forum soon after the NoDS' 30th Anniversary showing at the Vista Theatre. They begin with this post:DARK SHADOWS: General Discussion Forum - 10/27/01 2:00:43 AM (http://www.dsboards.com/VantageNet/$C366.HTM)
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Yes! Yes! That was it! I was still living in Anchorage when I found it and swiftly signed up! What some memories! I still remember what it looked like. The time - where does it go?
Gerard
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I still remember what it looked like.
The above link will really get your memory going because I recreated the Vantagenet forum for the posts I shared.
The time - where does it go?
We would have probably used their services a lot longer than we did had they not gone out of business. But that prompted us to go out on our own and create a whole new forum from scratch. So sometimes bad luck turns into good luck in the end...