SERVER MAINTENANCE COMPLETE

[admin]

If you are reading this then the server migration has completed and you are now on the new server. You are now also using the latest version of the forum software.

I had to upgrade the forum software because the PHP version was upgraded on the new server, and the old forum software no longer worked.

I have upgraded the styles too, so they should all still work pretty much the same. If you notice anything odd though, please post it here.

Thanks, and Happy Christmas!

[admin]

One issue I have seen is that posts with youtube links now just show the link, rather than the film. If you edit the post, or create a new one with the link, it works properly.

[Maverick]

Webcams out... except the old ones that nobody looks at...

[admin]

Webcams out... except the old ones that nobody looks at...

Where are you based? UK or Cyprus? I ask because Cyprus DNS seems to be a lot slower at propagating than elsewhere.

[cyprusmax47]

Your webcams are not working also for me

Max

[Maverick]

Webcams out... except the old ones that nobody looks at...

Where are you based? UK or Cyprus? I ask because Cyprus DNS seems to be a lot slower at propagating than elsewhere.

Gloucester - UK

[John Fisher]

No webcams yet

[Dominic]

I've got the Polemi camera working by pointing it to the ip address of the new server, rather than paphoslife.com. So when the DNS propogates properly the other two cameras should automatically kick in.

[trevnhil]

It does seem very very quiet on the forum

[jagwheels]

Ok here in the UK Trev but perhaps many are preparing for Christmas day. From experience server migration can be a nightmare as many organisations have found so well done Dominic. Seasons felicitations to you all

[Firefly]

I cannot see posts that I saw a few hours ago. No red flags either.

[Dominic]

For most of today there have been two copies of the website running. One on the old server and one on the new one. Each server has a different address. When you go to paphoslife.com your computer looks up the address, and goes there for you.

With me so far?

When the server IP address changes, it has to tell other servers that the address has changed. It doesn't have to tell every server on the internet. Instead, it tells a few servers that are dedicated address stores. These are called DNS servers. DNS stands for Domain Name Services.

So, until the propagation is complete (and it can take up to 48 hours or more) you will either be seeing the old server or the new one.

I could have shut down the old server beforehand, but I chose instead to leave it open. So people could at least have something to read while they waited.

The reason I had to do this was because the Operating System the server runs on had reached the end of its life, and needed upgrading. The easiest way to do that was to provision a new server, which they did.

Now, the new server came with new software, including a new version of PHP. The old forum software didn't work on it, so this morning I had to upgrade the forum. I first started doing this a year ago, so this time I knew pretty much what to do, and it went smoothly. The only hiccup has been waiting for the DNS to propogate. It worked fine for all the servers apart from Paphos Life itself. This site took a lot longer. I think it is due to its popularity, compared to the other sites. Because of that, its address is cached in lots of places, and it takes longer to update them all.

Something like that, anyway.

And if you want to know how big the Paphos Life site is now, this is the Facebook reach of publish content for the last 28 days: 1,077,428

Yes, in the last four weeks, over a million different people (facebook accounts) have looked at something on the site via Facebook alone.

So I am glad that the upgrade is nearly complete, but will be fully happy when the webcams are fully sorted. Polemi is lovely, but most people want to see Paphos.

[John Fisher]

Web Cams back on for me

[memory man]

It seems to have disappeared.

[Dominic]

Yes hopefully the like button will be back, but when I activate it it crashes the forum, so I need to look at it.