Topic: WXforum.net will be moving to a new hoster...

[saratogaWX]

Sometime in the next two weeks, we're going to move WXforum.net to a new hoster, and update the forum to SMF 2 version.

In order to do that, we'll have to turn off posting/PM and new registrations temporarily in order to get a good snapshot of the databases driving the forum and reload them into the new host.  We will let you know in advance when the forum will enter read-only mode.  Stay tuned

Thanks in advance for your understanding.

Best regards,
Ken

[killwilly]

Thanks, Ken, for the great work and good luck with the move.

[corwyyn]

Good luck with the migration Ken, I hope it goes smoothly!

[Farmtalk]

Good luck with the move! SMF2 looks great!!!

[saratogaWX]

I've had some issues with up-converting the forum to SMF 2.0, so I think we'll do this in two parts:

1) move the forum to a new hoster as-is (SMF 1.1.18)
2) convert to the forum to SMF 2.0.4 at a later date.

I do have a working copy of the forum on the new hoster so when Chris is ready, I think we can do the swap to the new host with a minimum of 'offline time'.

Stay tuned for additional info and the schedule for the hosting move.

Best regards,
Ken

BTW.. the conversion to 2.0.5 SMF has a nice script from Simplemachines.org to do that -- the issue is it times out because of the size of our forum, so I have to look at doing some manual conversion instead.  Our forum is about 70Mb gzipped SQL dump (350Mb unzipped) and that's a lot of processing stuff, so it's no wonder the web-based upgrade times out.

[cospringswx]

Thanks for the update Ken and keep up the fantastic work that you do!

[Mark / Ohio]

Thanks Ken, Chris and others for keeping things running for us. 

[WeatherHost]

Our forum is about 70Mb gzipped SQL dump (350Mb unzipped)

How much of that is actual text/posts and how much is attachments and other extraneous stuff?

[saratogaWX]

Attachments are actually stored in the filesystem (261MB) not in the database (only the pointers are stored there).

The actual database occupies 282.08MB on the mySQL server.  Of that, 115.6 MB is messages/posts, 8.9 MB in PMs and 195.4 MB in search words (for quicker searches)

I do have to use a shell mysql command to load the DB from the backup (after a bit of sed filtering to change some file/URL pointers) and it takes about 4 minutes to load the DB from the backup.

[Jean-Robert]

Great job. Congratulations !

Jean-Robert

[WeatherHost]

The actual database occupies 282.08MB on the mySQL server.  Of that, 115.6 MB is messages/posts, 8.9 MB in PMs and 195.4 MB in search words (for quicker searches)

There must be a typo in there somewhere.

That fact that the Attachments file nearly equals the entire DB says something about the image size issue I've been trying to get across to people.

[jgillett]

If it's not a secret, Ken, who is the new host (I'm still looking for a reliable one who can handle my needs)?

Thanks.

[SlowModem]

I think it would be timely to remind folks that they can donate for the operation/maintenance of this forum.

[JACK10562]

I think it would be timely to remind folks that they can donate for the operation/maintenance of this forum.

Greg, how would one go about doing that? I have poked around and was unable to locate any link for making a contribution, and is there a PayPal option?
Thanks!
Jack

[SlowModem]

I think it would be timely to remind folks that they can donate for the operation/maintenance of this forum.

Greg, how would one go about doing that? I have poked around and was unable to locate any link for making a contribution, and is there a PayPal option?
Thanks!
Jack

This is the response I got when I asked in 2010 (I assume it's still applicable):

http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=8330.msg79488#msg79488

[saratogaWX]

If it's not a secret, Ken, who is the new host (I'm still looking for a reliable one who can handle my needs)?

Thanks.

I'd signed up for a separate account with 1and1 for the new wxforum.net so that no other subsite would interfere -- my main 1and1 site is now running saratoga-weather.org + 4 regional network sites, so didn't want that to add to the confusion

I've had a love/dislike relationship with 1and1 since 2006 -- generally, everything works great and the hosting has the tools I need (SSH, direct cron access, etc) and since 1and1 uses their own variety of control panel, it wasn't vulnerable to the cPanel and Plesk compromises that happened in the last couple of years.  The dislike happens with tech support -- first level is generally useless to solve anything, and the real server admins (who do the actual fixing) are isolated in an alternative universe (wrt first level/us mere mortals) and proceed at their own pace to resolve server issues.  Other hosters such as GoDaddy and HostGator seem to have more hands-on/fix-it-now first level tech support, but.. their TOS for the webservers is somewhat more restrictive and their use of cPanel makes them just a bit more vulnerable to hacks against cPanel (a popular sport for some).

I think it would be timely to remind folks that they can donate for the operation/maintenance of this forum.

Greg, how would one go about doing that? I have poked around and was unable to locate any link for making a contribution, and is there a PayPal option?
Thanks!
Jack

Yes, Chris has been faithfully hosting the wxforum.net as a sub-site on his main capeweather.com domain.  Thanks to Chris for doing this since 2006 when the forum was started after the sudden demise of weatherforum.net as the registrar died. 
Chris still has a PayPal donation page.

Once moved, the forum will be hosted at 1and1 (Business Linux package) and so is only $10/month .. not an onerous sum and I generally receive more than that as donations for the templates/scripts. My donation button is on any of the scripts/templates pages on my site.

[jgillett]

I'd signed up for a separate account with 1and1 for the new wxforum.net so that no other subsite would interfere -- my main 1and1 site is now running saratoga-weather.org + 4 regional network sites, so didn't want that to add to the confusion

Many thanks for the detailed info, Ken.

I had signed up with 1and1 a few weeks ago. Spent long hours fighting with their admin panel and did not like the results I was seeing or the extra work/steps involved over my current host (who is rapidly losing their reliability). Cancelled immediately - got a bill from them the following day for $0.23! Duh... Still looking.

[saratogaWX]

I do like GoDaddy (and have the southwestern weather net hosted there) .. great first level tech support.  Only complaint is about configuring cron using the cPanel interface -- to get every-5-minutes requires a lot of effort to achieve.

[WeatherHost]

I bring up ICDSoft again.  For $10/mo you get the business plan with 100,000 MB Disk Space and 1,000Gb Traffic.  They also have their own control panel and most (if not all) of the things mentioned above.  Support is highly efficient in any issue I've ever had.  I can't remember any downtime at all in the 7 or 8 years I've been there.

Renewal years are discounted, so the business plan drops to $8 something/mo.  The one gripe I have about them is that they only allow one Domain Name per account, so, in effect, you can only run one main website although you can add a number of sub-domains and you can park domains.

The Personal plan is less money for less space and less traffic, but all of the other features are still available.

[iomkiwi]

I would give a +1 to ICDSoft as well - had hosting there for 10 years, never had a problem, always been able to do what I need it to, the only time I got anywhere near the data limits they changed the plans to include way more than I needed for the same money 

I don't seem to have any limits on domains there - have three at the moment.

[jgillett]

I bring up ICDSoft again.

Looking at them after seeing your post earlier. Sent them a few questions which they quickly replied to. My current concern is only 3 crons, to which they replied, in part, "You can, however, use one of the cron jobs to execute multiple tasks."

Currently I have 18 cron jobs, 5 of which were put there by the current host and I suspect would not need to be moved over. Was just about to reply to their message about using one to execute multiple tasks. How is this done?

Thanks.

[saratogaWX]

You just have the cron run one job which is a shell script that contains the commands to run each of the (formerly) separate cron tasks in sequence.   I have one cron task that invokes 10 different scripts in turn based on executing the one shell script.

[Jumpin Joe]

Many THANKS Ken for all that you do.

Just donated to Chris via PayPal with THANKS to him as well.

While I'm on a roll ...... there are so many members of this forum to whom I and many others owe THANKS too that I won't attempt to mention names as I know I'd miss several.

So, THANK YOU to all that have made this the BEST forum!

Joe

[n7xrd]

Many THANKS Ken for all that you do.

Just donated to Chris via PayPal with THANKS to him as well.

While I'm on a roll ...... there are so many members of this forum to whom I and many others owe THANKS too that I won't attempt to mention names as I know I'd miss several.

So, THANK YOU to all that have made this the BEST forum!

Joe

  +1 thanks to all!!!

[jgillett]

You just have the cron run one job which is a shell script that contains the commands to run each of the (formerly) separate cron tasks in sequence.   I have one cron task that invokes 10 different scripts in turn based on executing the one shell script.

Thanks, Ken.