Finally, back online again!

[Pale.Ink.Tom]

Thank you, and thank you once more! An incredible feat of engineering, Wim and the extraordinary team beside you. I have followed the posts over the last weeks and I'm sure I wasn't the only one just 'willing' you ever onward to success.

Automated registration has made it possible for me to finally join and participate in these conversations and subjects that have become so much more than mere 'pastime'.

Congratulations on your magnificent work and my very best wishes to all.

 

[twigletzone]

14 hours ago, wimg said:

😂

Fortunately I am very persistent.

Is that a mini opossum in your avatar, BTW?

 

Warm regards, Wim

 

No it's a fancy rat - specifically a "dumbo", who have ears on the sides of their head rather than the top. Fancy rats were bred from brown rats in the 19th century in the UK and come in tons of coat colours and marking patterns - there are even rats with curly "rex" coats and curly whiskers. Dumbo rats don't happen in the wild because having your ears in the wrong place is really not an aid to survival, but pet owners love them. I had rats for a while but can't at present because I live in rented accommodation.

[fountainbel]

Thanks for the great  job Wim !

Unfortunately I can't see anymore who is looking at a certain topic , hope this will be restored?

best,

Francis

[wimg]

2 hours ago, twigletzone said:

 

No it's a fancy rat - specifically a "dumbo", who have ears on the sides of their head rather than the top. Fancy rats were bred from brown rats in the 19th century in the UK and come in tons of coat colours and marking patterns - there are even rats with curly "rex" coats and curly whiskers. Dumbo rats don't happen in the wild because having your ears in the wrong place is really not an aid to survival, but pet owners love them. I had rats for a while but can't at present because I live in rented accommodation.

Ok, thanks!

Warm regards, Wim

[wimg]

1 hour ago, fountainbel said:

Thanks for the great  job Wim !

Unfortunately I can't see anymore who is looking at a certain topic , hope this will be restored?

best,

Francis

Thank you Francis!

 

I will check. It is possible to see who is online at the moment, but I did not check whether than can be done per forum or topic, TBVH.

 

Warm regards, Wim

[AndWhoDisguisedAs]

Didn't realize how much I missed the site until I couldn't access it!

A tremendous undertaking. GREAT job.

Thrilled you're/we're back!

 

Stay safe, fountain penners!

[Uffuffa]

So pleased to be able to dip into FPN again - I’ve missed it and glad it’s back

 

I have noticed an issue though, which is that some old posts have lost their photos that were uploaded by users back the . Is there anyone I can inform of this and is there any way these old photos can be retrieved and returned to their original locations...? I ask because the ones I’m interested in were of significance to collectors like me. 
 

Please let me know  

[wimg]

56 minutes ago, Uffuffa said:

So pleased to be able to dip into FPN again - I’ve missed it and glad it’s back

 

I have noticed an issue though, which is that some old posts have lost their photos that were uploaded by users back the . Is there anyone I can inform of this and is there any way these old photos can be retrieved and returned to their original locations...? I ask because the ones I’m interested in were of significance to collectors like me. 
 

Please let me know  

Please do list any of those in Community Feedback, and I will attend to them.

 

This is either because the system is still catching up - the conversion for images effectively is still running -, or the images were externally hosted, and have urls beginning with http. The latter can be converted, but that means those images have to be available on a site with SSL, otherwise it breaks completely. In the former case: I am afraid we have to have some patience, as I have no control over the speed at which they are processed, or the order for that matter.

 

HTH, warm regards, Wim

[ArchiMark]

Hi Wim,

 

A BIG THANK YOU to you for all your diligent and persistent efforts to get FPN upgraded and back online!

 

Like the new, more modern, clean look so far.

 

Noticed the feedback is gone, both on the home page, right side, where the top ranked members were listed and on an individual member level when you check on a member or yourself.

 

Will the feedback function come back at some point?

 

Also, recently got several email notifications about renewals, but when I clicked on the button to see invoices, not there. Was this just a glitch due to setting up new website?

 

Best,

 

Mark

Edited December 7, 2020 by ArchiMark
Added info about renewals

[jde]

Bravo, Wim & team! Welcome back!

[wimg]

11 minutes ago, ArchiMark said:

Hi Wim,

 

A BIG THANK YOU to you for all your diligent and persistent efforts to get FPN upgraded and back online!

 

Like the new, more modern, clean look so far.

 

Noticed the feedback is gone, both on the home page, right side, where the top ranked members were listed and on an individual member level when you check on a member or yourself.

 

Will the feedback function come back at some point?

 

Also, recently got several email notifications about renewals, but when I clicked on the button to see invoices, not there. Was this just a glitch due to setting up new website?

 

Best,

 

Mark

Thank you, Mark.

 

Trader Feedback is temporarily gone, we are waiting for a fix so we can import the old feedback databse tables. The alternative would be to start from scratch again, which we thought was not a great idea, unless it is not possible to do so at all. However, I have been told this option is coming soon :). It is not so much a problem with the Trader Feedback add-on, as with the forum software right now - it only allows for "nstalls" for add-ons, which are essentially fresh installs, deleting and overwriting everything that is already there (for add-ons that is).

 

For Classifieds that did not matter, as the version we are using now is completely different from the old version, and they were totally incompatible. There was no other option IOW. The author of the old version quit developingand upgrading that add-on about 6 years ago or so, IOW, we did not have an alternative yet. Actually we do, to a degree, still losing all classifieds already present, but that will take a lot fo time to set up. Once everything is workign again as it should, I will look into that again :).

 

As to the emails: that was a by-product of the server migration I am afraid. These very likely originated from our test sites, for which normally all email sending is completely switched off. During the 4 days or so of the actual migration this may have been temporarily switched on again. It is one of those things ....

 

HTH, warm regards, Wim

 

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Unfortunately, for me, only reachable from my office or my tablet:

 

My "Bionic Desk Lamp" iMac at home can't deal with the SSL (I also lost access to Wikipedia when they upgraded their SSL about a year ago), while the browser on my clamshell cell phone (I categorically refuse to own a full-blown smartphone) can't handle some of the HTML from the new board software, so I can barely read, and can't post at all.

[wimg]

47 minutes ago, hbquikcomjamesl said:

Unfortunately, for me, only reachable from my office or my tablet:

 

My "Bionic Desk Lamp" iMac at home can't deal with the SSL (I also lost access to Wikipedia when they upgraded their SSL about a year ago), while the browser on my clamshell cell phone (I categorically refuse to own a full-blown smartphone) can't handle some of the HTML from the new board software, so I can barely read, and can't post at all.

Sorry to hear that, James.

 

However, for security reasons alone we had to go with this upgrade, we have been delaying this for over 4 years, due to incompatibility problems with our older content. This appeared to be fixed when I tested it again early November. And then, the database crash really forced our hand anyway - no support for the old version.

We should have a mobile app very soon, however. We are waiting for approval from Invision. We could only request that approval with the site being back online, otherwise we would have had it already. Might maybe be the final straw to give in to a new phone regardless?

 

Warm regards, Wim

 

P.S.: You did manage to post. Was that from your tablet?

 

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I'm not sure whether I've posted from my tablet; I think so. This is from my office.

 

The tablet, BTW, is a total cheap-<E. asinius>, and the only WiFi I have at home is if I turn on the hotspot on my phone.

[wimg]

1 hour ago, hbquikcomjamesl said:

I'm not sure whether I've posted from my tablet; I think so. This is from my office.

 

The tablet, BTW, is a total cheap-<E. asinius>, and the only WiFi I have at home is if I turn on the hotspot on my phone.

That explains a lot.

 

I'd really suggest you invest in a fixed web connection and a little better tequipment to surf the interweb ....

 

Warm regards, Wim

[sdbruder]

19 hours ago, wimg said:

I will, I will.

 

The big problem with thsi one is despite reassurances, the newer database versions were not compatible with the old software control panel, which complicated things for fixing the database, especially as we could not downgrade database versions on the old server. So we had to migrate to a new server - fortuhnately Black Friday deals were on already :).

 

That alone took two weeks to fix, however, apart from the (relatively) minor stuff over the next few weeks.

 

Since this was such a big step, we decided to go ahead with the software upgrade as well ....

 

Warm regards, Wim

 

PEN-WISE OFFTOPIC WARNING: I don't have the slightest idea about your cost and server sizes you are using but Infra is my line of work. I cringe listening about a single hardware server (single point of failure and so on). Depending on your cost, perhaps something cloud-based is feasible and more secure?

[danalgesic]

I am SO excited to finally get to become a member here.  I've been trying by emailing admins and registration for 6 months or so, but the new system finally allowed me to simply register myself.  Woohoo!!  Looks fantastic.

[Vintage Razor]

4 minutes ago, danalgesic said:

I am SO excited to finally get to become a member here.  I've been trying by emailing admins and registration for 6 months or so, but the new system finally allowed me to simply register myself.  Woohoo!!  Looks fantastic.

 Welcome to FPN!

[wimg]

19 minutes ago, sdbruder said:

 

PEN-WISE OFFTOPIC WARNING: I don't have the slightest idea about your cost and server sizes you are using but Infra is my line of work. I cringe listening about a single hardware server (single point of failure and so on). Depending on your cost, perhaps something cloud-based is feasible and more secure?

Well, if you are prepared to contribute significantly for a cloud-based solution that allows for a server cluster, we will gladly accomodate you.

 

We currently have a decent sized server, with raid-10 SSD disks for data and applications and and another raid-10 SSD setup for databases, so that is all fine. However, a database crash would not have been possible to avoid with a cluster either, it would just have propagated to the entire cluster.

 

The main problem after the crash was that we could not easily go back to an earlier database version to do repairs,. The only way was to migrate to a new server, they told me, so I did. And even then, I ended up downgrading the database myself. Note that there is no documentation on how to do this. Two articles on the entire interweb, and neither are correct.

 

Repair was easy enough when all that was done.

 

Effectively, the migration and database fix took about two weeks to do, the upgrade and conversion of the forums software and issues around upgrading the old add-ons, or replacing them, etc., and configuration of everything (literally thousands of items), took another 2 weeks.

 

This compares to the last conversion and upgrade we tried a little over a year ago, which took 9 full days to do, just for the main forums software, and we actually lost a lot of content in the process as well. The latter was fixed when we tested early October, so we were planning to do an upgrade anyway, and part of that was to upgrade the database versions too. Just that for the latter there was no way back when we started doing that, and we could not get into the admin control panel anymore either, despite assurances to the contrary.

 

We actually lost nothing from the moment we brought FPN offline, and from that point it really was as good as it gets.

 

Generally, you get what you pay for, but as with most things, we are budget limited. The cost for running FPN, and that is everything included, is about 17,000 euro on a yearly basis right now, and this is all financed from funding by donations, premium accounts, and advertising. Do note that income has been going significantly over the past 3-4 years, because people use ad blockers despite us always asking not to do that (unless they contribute in another way).  Currently not an issue yet, as we still need to bring our ad server back online and get the ad display add-on we use to work for the new version, but it will get critical I epxect in the second quarter of next year.

 

Now, the short answer to your question is that we actually are running quite a big dedicated server in de cloud, which is cheaper than a non-dedicated solution, and we can't afford a cluster. That is about 3x as expensive, if not more.

 

Anyway, so far my ramblings.

 

Warm regards, Wim

[jhsd1124013561]

Thanks so much for updating the system, it is much more convenient and user friendly!

 

However, when I submit a classified ad, the system shows error message, then my ad is duplicated by 3 times in the classified system....