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Forum moved to new server

Posted: 05 Mar 2011, 16:39
by DanTheMan
For the last couple of years this forum has been hosted on a private server connected to a rather good residential link. The server is getting quite old by now and hardware doesn't last forever. To prevent certain disaster I have moved this forum to a proper web host run by Webfaction. I already have an account there where I host various other sites so I just bumped up the service plan a notch to make room for this forum.

Webfaction is located in the US so response time to Europe will be a bit slower compared to the old server, but the hardware is much faster. The user experience should be about the same for people in Europe, and quite a bit snappier for people in North America.

I also upgraded phpBB to the latest version ( v3.0.8 ). Please let me know if there are any problems!

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 05 Mar 2011, 17:51
by Bilbo
Other than a couple of old posts showing up as new (one from 2008, the other from early 2010, maybe I did miss them at the time), no problems at all for me. It does appear snapppier to me (Canada) but that could be just because it's Saturday morning... :P

I had no problem with the previous host but thanks a lot for your continuous support of NAR through the years!

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 05 Mar 2011, 17:57
by DanTheMan
Looks like I've managed to trigger CPU throttling for my Webfaction account by rebuilding the search index (going through all 38000+ posts). It is a shared host after all, and I'm not being a very nice neighbor by munching up all the CPU and IO resources. Expect the forum to be a bit sluggish for the next couple of hours.

Indexing speed went from 100+ posts per second to ~5 posts per second when the CPU throttler caught me. :)

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 05 Mar 2011, 18:00
by DanTheMan
Hmm, looks like a few smilies are missing. :D :) :( :o :? :wink:

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 05 Mar 2011, 18:02
by DanTheMan
Fixed...

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 06 Mar 2011, 02:20
by SteveB
Thank you for your ongoing support to the web site and with NAR DAN.
We couldn't be here enjoying racing year after year without you.

ALL looks good here (Canada)

Just a question, with the upgraded phpBB to the latest version ( v3.0.8 ) is there only 1 board style?

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 06 Mar 2011, 07:08
by Steve
Thanks a lot Dan, you are definitely THE MAN !!!

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 06 Mar 2011, 10:08
by DanTheMan
Steve B wrote:Just a question, with the upgraded phpBB to the latest version ( v3.0.8 ) is there only 1 board style?
phpBB comes with the "prosilver" style enabled by default, and also "subsilver2" that can be enabled. I've made that available now. There are countless other styles, if you have one you like just let me know and I'll install it.

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 06 Mar 2011, 14:19
by SteveB
Thank you DAN :)

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 06 Mar 2011, 16:03
by DanTheMan
Now you have 7 more styles to play with. Go crazy! :)

absolution
black_pearl
proFormell
rainbow_pearl
avalon
milky_way
proglass

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 07 Mar 2011, 01:34
by SteveB
DanTheMan wrote:Now you have 7 more styles to play with. Go crazy! :)

absolution
black_pearl
proFormell
rainbow_pearl
avalon
milky_way
proglass

Sweeeeeeeeeeet !!!!!!

Black Pearl and Rainbow Pearl very nice :D :D

Thank you very much DAN :D :D

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 05 Dec 2011, 16:22
by DanTheMan
On Thursday night I moved the forum from a server in Houston (US) to a server in Amsterdam (EU). The forum was only down for half an hour or so. If I did it correctly (and I think I did) everything will work just like before. I did upgrade PHP from 5.2 to 5.3, MySQL from 5.0 to 5.5, and the OS from 32-bit Centos5 to 64-bit Centos6. Let me know if you notice anything strange!

I still use Webfaction, but I moved my account to this side of the Atlantic since most of the websites I host are targeted at SE.

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 05 Dec 2011, 18:01
by Bilbo
Still works fine from this side of the Atlantic. Good work, Dan! :)

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 07 Dec 2011, 03:45
by SteveB
Indeed It is working perfectly.
I don't know if it's just me but the pages seem to open almost instantly. :D

Thank you Dan :)

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 07 Dec 2011, 16:51
by DanTheMan
Maybe the response time is better because the server is not yet fully populated?

But even after it has been filled up with customers I expect more consistent response times because the new server uses cgroups to prevent one user from hogging all the CPU.

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 09 Dec 2011, 15:14
by carrera
Wow.way faster for me as well.
Thanks for the upgrade dan.works great.
Carrera 8) 8) :D

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 20 Feb 2017, 12:37
by DanTheMan
Once more the forum has moved. This time it moved from Webfaction to DigitalOcean.

This was a significant change:
  • from shared hosting in Amsterdam to VPS in Frankfurt
  • from CentOS to Ubuntu Server
  • from Apache to Nginx + PHP-FPM
  • from HTTP to HTTPS (SSL cert from Let's Encrypt)
  • from PHP 5.3 to PHP 7.0
  • from MySQL 5.5 to MySQL 5.7
  • from phpBB 3.0.10 to phpBB 3.2.0
I know the forum is mostly dead, but if I can keep it around without too much hassle I will try.

Re: Forum moved to new server

Posted: 20 Feb 2017, 18:44
by Bilbo
Thanks a lot, Dan! 8)