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DCFC Fans - The Current Situation, Known Issues & Server Move


David

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This will be a long post but some of it is important so please take the time to read it.

Now let me put this out there first actually, I have a set of awesome moderators that help with moderating the forum on a day to day basis however behind the scenes, keeping the forum online I'm a one man band keeping things ticking along (most of the time), the bigger the forum gets the more time consuming it becomes.

It's not uncommon for me to be up past midnight or up at 4am dealing with hackers, I can be shopping in Tesco when an email comes through with "sort the ******* forum out you ****" now I'm not a violent person but come and say that to my face when I'm in the vegetable section and you will get a turnip rammed so far up yo.....well you know.

I have become frustrated recently and it's probably shown, partly because of the emails, the tweets, direct messages, if the forum goes offline for 30 seconds my phones going off like a mobile disco. It's also not helped having to repeat myself on the forum day after day and reading comments like this is *****, the forum is on it's arse.

Maybe I'm getting sensitive in my old age but when you put so much time into trying to make this forum the best it can possibly be, it really can wear you down so much so I've barely spent much time actually reading the forum recently. The "fun" has been taken out of it, now it feels like 24/7 job. 

Don't reach for the violin, I'm not looking for sympathy, just a little understanding.

.uk and Androidgate

As regular members will have noticed we have been running into issues with the forum now for the last couple of months, first of all the move from .co.uk to .uk which wasn't really an issue however it did for some unknown reason affect a few Android users logging in.

Not being able to replicate the issues having only Apple devices to test on I couldn't do a thing, what made it odd was that some on identical Android phones were logging in fine.

I did put it down to a cache and cookie problem, for those effected will know it wasn't this and I did contact the support early on and was told the same. After a couple of weeks I went back to them and begged them to take a further look. 

At first tho I was told this was a server issue, and changing servers would fix this. Talking to the server people they were adamant this was a software issue and that the server was no way responsible for the issue.

I had no choice but to try a new server, on doing so it was like waiting for the results of a Jeremy Kyle lie detector test. Turns out the software developers were telling porkies, the issue was escalated even further and was fixed a few days later leaving me with a server that costs twice as much and on monitoring is much slower. (Half way note, we're moving server again)

During Androidgate we was attacked by Mr Zero, the fix was to lose several months of posts, this was probably the biggest low of the forums history, why target us I'll never know. 

Googlegate

Next up was Googlegate, as you will be aware the forum runs on ad revenue, in the early years it was all paid for out of my own pocket, I did it as a hobby, a way to get away from the DET forum which later closed and our members sky rocketed...as did the work load and the costs.

Google in November took exception to an image of the barmaid in lingerie, sexual content will not be tolerated, remove or have your account shut down. Knowing that this image was posted quite a few times on a  forum with over 700k posts is like looking for a needle in the haystack so I had no choice but to disable images.

We have received a further two warnings from Google, one as recent as last week. Even tho the image code was disabled so that the image didn't show it was seen as being linked to, you would have had to highlight the link to copy and paste but that's linking to in Google's eyes.

I have since gone into the database and broken all images posted since last week, Cisse's classic watches are gone which is one positive I guess.

Current Issues / New Forum

Next up is what you see today, a brand spanking new forum, code has been totally rewritten and designed for the future. Problem is it's riddled with bugs and making it unusable for some whilst others like myself running perfectly fine 99% of the time.

I need to stress again as I have been doing so that the current issues are totally out of my hands, there is literally nothing I can do about the bugs, nothing at all, I can't downgrade, I have no magic wand, nothing, zip, nada. The forum speed however I can and hopefully will do something about and I will go into later.

The software developers have identified the bugs, they are working on fixing not just mine but several other forums that are experiencing the same and other bugs. They are pushing updates out which I'm installing as soon as they come out. I'm checking the support forums daily for the update announcements and following the bug trackers where they are fixing by uploading a single file.

I'm also aware that some don't like the new layout, it's hard to please hundreds of members and there has been a mixed response mostly positive which is great. There is a few little tweaks I can make to improve based on negative feedback but with the current issues I really don't want to touch the code and make any changes.

With the forum code being as it left the software developers it's much easier for them to work with.

Forum Speed / New Server

Now this is where you all groan, please remember all the above, I'm a one man band doing the best I can to bring the best possible forum to you boys and girls. When I make changes I'm doing them because I firmly believe they are for the best.

Servers are a pain in the arse, you never quite know what you're getting until you're on it. Imagine buying a car without being able to take it for a test drive or look under the bonnet.

I could duplicate the forum and allow members to test it however you never really know how it will perform until it's live with all members, guests, search engine spiders all over it.

Unfortunately I've landed on a duff one, twice the cost it's running like an old dog. 

To improve the forum speed I can either pay more! with the current host and hope that does the trick or return to where we came from, the people that passed the Jeremy Kyle lie detector test. 

We're going back, I'm taking them back, handing them my money and hope we can rebuild our relationship.

When is the server move happening?

Traditionally I have done these at night to reduce as much downtime as possible, the problem is I just can't do it anymore, I get in trouble with the missus and it knocks my sleep pattern out of whack.

When moving a site you have to redirect the domain name to a new IP address, this can take upto 48 hours to go through for some users. There is things you can do to get back on much quicker and that is to change your DNS to Google, see link below

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using

*Please note this can only be done on a wifi connection, you cannot change DNS on a 3G/4G connection

8am Sunday 8th March 2015

With the server move taking a potential of 48hrs to go through I don't want to do this before Saturday, I'm choosing to do this on Sunday morning as it gives me the best possible time to be online. Monday morning I'm in court for being a naughty boy in the laws eyes (don't panic, nothing serious and I'm fully expecting to be in the pub by 10am) and then the missus is off for 4 days and I've been ordered no forum work. When a woman orders you, you do as you're told.

What to expect

8am you will see an forum offline message from me, this will show for a few hours, if you are using Google DNS much less time.

You may see a blank white page, you may see a 500 server error, as the internet gods do their thing all kinds of errors can happen and thrown at you.

Around afternoon time you will see the forum online if you are using Google DNS, if not you may not see the forum online till Sunday night or even Monday morning, afternoon.

If you are still not seeing the forum by Tuesday morning try clearing cache and cookies, sometimes those pesky things can stop you from seeing the forum.

My recommendation 

On Sunday go out, don't sit online hitting F5, take the missus out, play with the kids, go on POF if you have neither. National DCFC Fans holiday if you like. 

Don't expect

When we're back online the same bugs will still be here unfortunately unless they are fixed before then which I doubt as they don't work weekends. The forum should be quicker tho although you may not notice this until everything settles down in a day or two.

If you're still reading at this point

Thank you, I needed to get all this out and into one post that I can link to when the abuse all starts by email and social media.

I won't be putting anything out on the official DCFC Fans twitter or Facebook pages, I'm expecting you all to take my advice and take Sunday off. I will no doubt be on my personal twitter @_daveo however please please please don't ask when the forum will be back up.

Change your DNS to Google tho, it's really easy, Google it!

Numero Uno x

 

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I knew I'd forget something, the new Chat hasn't been released yet by the software developers, it is coming tho and I don't expect it to take much longer. The day they release it I will install, I'm really hoping it's sometime next week.

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This will be a long post but some of it is important so please take the time to read it.

Now let me put this out there first actually, I have a set of awesome moderators that help with moderating the forum on a day to day basis however behind the scenes, keeping the forum online I'm a one man band keeping things ticking along (most of the time), the bigger the forum gets the more time consuming it becomes.

It's not uncommon for me to be up past midnight or up at 4am dealing with hackers, I can be shopping in Tesco when an email comes through with "sort the ******* forum out you ****" now I'm not a violent person but come and say that to my face when I'm in the vegetable section and you will get a turnip rammed so far up yo.....well you know.

I have become frustrated recently and it's probably shown, partly because of the emails, the tweets, direct messages, if the forum goes offline for 30 seconds my phones going off like a mobile disco. It's also not helped having to repeat myself on the forum day after day and reading comments like this is *****, the forum is on it's arse.

Maybe I'm getting sensitive in my old age but when you put so much time into trying to make this forum the best it can possibly be, it really can wear you down so much so I've barely spent much time actually reading the forum recently. The "fun" has been taken out of it, now it feels like 24/7 job. 

Don't reach for the violin, I'm not looking for sympathy, just a little understanding.

.uk and Androidgate

As regular members will have noticed we have been running into issues with the forum now for the last couple of months, first of all the move from .co.uk to .uk which wasn't really an issue however it did for some unknown reason affect a few Android users logging in.

Not being able to replicate the issues having only Apple devices to test on I couldn't do a thing, what made it odd was that some on identical Android phones were logging in fine.

I did put it down to a cache and cookie problem, for those effected will know it wasn't this and I did contact the support early on and was told the same. After a couple of weeks I went back to them and begged them to take a further look. 

At first tho I was told this was a server issue, and changing servers would fix this. Talking to the server people they were adamant this was a software issue and that the server was no way responsible for the issue.

I had no choice but to try a new server, on doing so it was like waiting for the results of a Jeremy Kyle lie detector test. Turns out the software developers were telling porkies, the issue was escalated even further and was fixed a few days later leaving me with a server that costs twice as much and on monitoring is much slower. (Half way note, we're moving server again)

During Androidgate we was attacked by Mr Zero, the fix was to lose several months of posts, this was probably the biggest low of the forums history, why target us I'll never know. 

Googlegate

Next up was Googlegate, as you will be aware the forum runs on ad revenue, in the early years it was all paid for out of my own pocket, I did it as a hobby, a way to get away from the DET forum which later closed and our members sky rocketed...as did the work load and the costs.

Google in November took exception to an image of the barmaid in lingerie, sexual content will not be tolerated, remove or have your account shut down. Knowing that this image was posted quite a few times on a  forum with over 700k posts is like looking for a needle in the haystack so I had no choice but to disable images.

We have received a further two warnings from Google, one as recent as last week. Even tho the image code was disabled so that the image didn't show it was seen as being linked to, you would have had to highlight the link to copy and paste but that's linking to in Google's eyes.

I have since gone into the database and broken all images posted since last week, Cisse's classic watches are gone which is one positive I guess.

Current Issues / New Forum

Next up is what you see today, a brand spanking new forum, code has been totally rewritten and designed for the future. Problem is it's riddled with bugs and making it unusable for some whilst others like myself running perfectly fine 99% of the time.

I need to stress again as I have been doing so that the current issues are totally out of my hands, there is literally nothing I can do about the bugs, nothing at all, I can't downgrade, I have no magic wand, nothing, zip, nada. The forum speed however I can and hopefully will do something about and I will go into later.

The software developers have identified the bugs, they are working on fixing not just mine but several other forums that are experiencing the same and other bugs. They are pushing updates out which I'm installing as soon as they come out. I'm checking the support forums daily for the update announcements and following the bug trackers where they are fixing by uploading a single file.

I'm also aware that some don't like the new layout, it's hard to please hundreds of members and there has been a mixed response mostly positive which is great. There is a few little tweaks I can make to improve based on negative feedback but with the current issues I really don't want to touch the code and make any changes.

With the forum code being as it left the software developers it's much easier for them to work with.

Forum Speed / New Server

Now this is where you all groan, please remember all the above, I'm a one man band doing the best I can to bring the best possible forum to you boys and girls. When I make changes I'm doing them because I firmly believe they are for the best.

Servers are a pain in the arse, you never quite know what you're getting until you're on it. Imagine buying a car without being able to take it for a test drive or look under the bonnet.

I could duplicate the forum and allow members to test it however you never really know how it will perform until it's live with all members, guests, search engine spiders all over it.

Unfortunately I've landed on a duff one, twice the cost it's running like an old dog. 

To improve the forum speed I can either pay more! with the current host and hope that does the trick or return to where we came from, the people that passed the Jeremy Kyle lie detector test. 

We're going back, I'm taking them back, handing them my money and hope we can rebuild our relationship.

When is the server move happening?

Traditionally I have done these at night to reduce as much downtime as possible, the problem is I just can't do it anymore, I get in trouble with the missus and it knocks my sleep pattern out of whack.

When moving a site you have to redirect the domain name to a new IP address, this can take upto 48 hours to go through for some users. There is things you can do to get back on much quicker and that is to change your DNS to Google, see link below

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using

*Please note this can only be done on a wifi connection, you cannot change DNS on a 3G/4G connection

8am Sunday 8th March 2015

With the server move taking a potential of 48hrs to go through I don't want to do this before Saturday, I'm choosing to do this on Sunday morning as it gives me the best possible time to be online. Monday morning I'm in court for being a naughty boy in the laws eyes (don't panic, nothing serious and I'm fully expecting to be in the pub by 10am) and then the missus is off for 4 days and I've been ordered no forum work. When a woman orders you, you do as you're told.

What to expect

8am you will see an forum offline message from me, this will show for a few hours, if you are using Google DNS much less time.

You may see a blank white page, you may see a 500 server error, as the internet gods do their thing all kinds of errors can happen and thrown at you.

Around afternoon time you will see the forum online if you are using Google DNS, if not you may not see the forum online till Sunday night or even Monday morning, afternoon.

If you are still not seeing the forum by Tuesday morning try clearing cache and cookies, sometimes those pesky things can stop you from seeing the forum.

My recommendation 

On Sunday go out, don't sit online hitting F5, take the missus out, play with the kids, go on POF if you have neither. National DCFC Fans holiday if you like. 

Don't expect

When we're back online the same bugs will still be here unfortunately unless they are fixed before then which I doubt as they don't work weekends. The forum should be quicker tho although you may not notice this until everything settles down in a day or two.

If you're still reading at this point

Thank you, I needed to get all this out and into one post that I can link to when the abuse all starts by email and social media.

I won't be putting anything out on the official DCFC Fans twitter or Facebook pages, I'm expecting you all to take my advice and take Sunday off. I will no doubt be on my personal twitter @_daveo however please please please don't ask when the forum will be back up.

Change your DNS to Google tho, it's really easy, Google it!

Numero Uno x

 

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Fair play Daveo, I don't think anyone really understands anything you've written in that post but we appreciate all the graft and personal sacrifice so a load of grumpy men can argue with eachother day in day out. Top man, buy yourself a sausage as a reward.

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