sufi

lala
The site hit its database quota last night 2am and collapsed, the hosts were not able to simply increase the quota, and insisted on moving the site to a different package, which has not gone well, as you can see some bits seem to have got lost on the way!

The site seems to be usable now, so i have switched it back on, I'm working with the hosts and the Vbulletin people to work out how to get things back to normal,

also i think we're looking for some new home for the site more urgently now.

Everything is backed up, so i hope we won't lose anything, but treat it gently as it may be fragile til we've got it all fixed properly
 

version

Well-known member
So what's the plan then? I think something open source would be cool due to cost, ethics etc, but depends on how good the software is and whether we can get something similar to the current layout.
 

sufi

lala
i restored from a backup from about 1am last night, and the site went down at about 2am, so i guess we may not have lost much/any posts, hopefully?
 

catalog

Well-known member
Yeah i wouldnt worry about them, i dont think there would be much new activity in that period.

What a weird sync, that it should fail just when we were talking about it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Good work Sufi... sounds as though you been working all day to feed our addiction. Didn't realise how much I've been looking at dissensus during lockdown until it had gone.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
big up sufi, happy to chuck a tenner your way if needed.. 🔫

I'm quite happy with this layout for screenreader accessibility it allows me to jump from post-to-post by heading, meaning i can skip all the date/tie/reply buttons unless I want to read them. so for that to be changed would be ashame. Apologies for not having read the forum earlier to realise this was a possibility and thinking that someone had decided to start an ill advised upgrade of the D,, now it all makes sense. ;)
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
U75 uses xenforo for its forum interface and it's usable and all with a screenreader but the new xenforo 2.1 is a bit of a pain in the arse, the classic version was much better (John Eden will know what I'm talking about.) in the old xenforo you could jump from thread to thread via heading and skip any extraneous info, and the reply editor was a nice and uncluttered plane text box which would accept html. I'm with mvuent on this, the more archaic the better, as long as we can maintain tight security, I don't see why that should be a problem, we just need to make sure backdoors aren't open, but most host providers aren't savvy enough to disable root login, oh dear...
 

catalog

Well-known member
Yes i can put some money towards the new server cost Sufi, let us know what would be a sensible amount to donate.

Also (think third has already answered this), is it right that the server migration, whilst fixing the most pressing database issue, does not actually fix what we were in fact talking about? ie the out of date framework of vbulletin?

I hadn't considered the accessibility / screen reader issue that thirdform has raised - that should definitely be a priority (and i'm sure it is).

As I've said before, the Search and Advanced Search are actually very good and the general layout also good. I don't think any changes are warranted there. I love how theres so little css on this site. and also very little in terms of scripts.

couple other things (off top of head) that might be helpful:

1. more space for PMs than 50 - could the number you get access to go up as you climb the posts count? so you 'unlock' more space for PMs?
2. very weird how you can't see PMs you have sent easily. I think someone has explained to me how to do it, but I've forgotten. Sorry.

That's all i can think of for now.
 

catalog

Well-known member
oh yeah, the only thing i don't like about search is that it has a lower character limit. This is sensible but it makes it hard to search for acronyms and the like. So i don't know if that should be removed and replaced with something that has stopwords instead? But I think that would bring it's own issues, like which stopwords etc. I dunno, is there a way to override the search being stopped if you are searching for something like 'TV'?
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
depends what loopholes there are in vbulletin, i haven't heard of any thus far. it would have more to do with what is and isn't locked down. of course a DDoS is always possible if someone hijacks the server.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
amazing work sufi thanks so much!

he was on the phone all day it seemed :-(

speaking to him yesterday - he has a really amazing and elaborate back-up system in place.

also dazzled by his grasp of the technicalities.
 
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