Hey Guys!
We just ate a bit of downtime. Given what all died I'm happy with how it all turned out. The story goes like this. We had a planned migration to our new database server tommorow night, as our existing database was pounding on one poor hard drive (a temporary measure). That drive was rumored to die some time in the next 2-6 months by manufacturer specs. It died yesterday morning. :-\ I had to do a little dancing to recover the data, move it to a new server, and configure the new database server. Thankfully about half my configuration work was done in advance so the downtime took about as expected.
I'm going to keep my eyes out for new bugs, but I think this was a fairly solid transition (and I even finished early this time ).
Now unfortunatly, I still have to eat some downtime either tommorow night or wednesday night. We need to move over to our new load balancer, and when that happens there will be much rejoicing.
I mean, seriously, this website goes down so goddamn often it's ridiculous. You should re-open ClubPA so you can actually afford to buy some decent hardware.
It's BS. We shouldn't have to put up with this crap so often. I want a full refund, and I want it immediately. I'm sick of this.
[spoiler:8212820390]Hehe. Good job, Alpha. Thanks a million![/spoiler:8212820390]
All the more hearts and blinkies to the one responsible for keeping it up and running smoothly.
I was set to send off an e-mail during our last outage telling Alpha and anyone else involved with the forum's upkeep how appreciative I was, but I figured I would just make post instead.
All the more hearts and blinkies to the one responsible for keeping it up and running smoothly.
I was set to send off an e-mail during our last outage telling Alpha and anyone else involved with the forum's upkeep how appreciative I was, but I figured I would just make post instead.
All the more hearts and blinkies to the one responsible for keeping it up and running smoothly.
I was set to send off an e-mail during our last outage telling Alpha and anyone else involved with the forum's upkeep how appreciative I was, but I figured I would just make post instead.
All the more hearts and blinkies to the one responsible for keeping it up and running smoothly.
I was set to send off an e-mail during our last outage telling Alpha and anyone else involved with the forum's upkeep how appreciative I was, but I figured I would just make post instead.
If you check the PA forum page on there, and look at the sort by page views or online users, we're in the top 30.
Yeah. Those numbers are a bit skewed because we don't play well with their scripts. I have some anti-spamming things enabled which messes with their numbers. I'm supposed to talk to Quentin @ big-boards about it, but I'm lazy.
All that being said, we are no where near the largest, and I'm fine with that. #1 is GaiaOnline, and there is a special circle of hell that Lanzer and the tech guys over there have entered into. I was invited to join that a while back, but I like the feel and size of our boards.
We may not be the biggest, but we're one of the most fun and mature.
By mature I mean grammar and spelling usage, not "cox dix lol" of course.
Very true. And for the most part, "cox dix lol" just adds to our already immeasurable charm. That and the pictures of SHARKS and BEARS.
Yeah, I should have figured that GameFaqs (with it's siren call to twelve year olds the world over) would have a larger userbase. I was surprised to see that SA was number seven, though. Unless I'm mistaken, don't Goons have to pay to register? I thought anytime you asked people for money for anything on the net (that wasn't porn) you were doomed to failure.
Anyway, I like that fact that while we have a large userbase, the threads still stay mature and don't degrade into GF style "pwnfests". I guess we can thank both Alpha and the mods for that.
Definitely. They do a great job of keeping order on such a huge forum, through really good mods and custom VBulletin stuff. Plus making people pay a paltry amount to register makes them value their accounts a little more than usual.
Definitely. They do a great job of keeping order on such a huge forum, through really good mods and custom VBulletin stuff. Plus making people pay a paltry amount to register makes them value their accounts a little more than usual.
That makes sense. I could see people being much more hesitant to get jailed or banned (or create an alt) if each account cost money.
Speaking of money, how much does it cost to keep these forums up and running? I know we've had some hardware issues lately, so equipment upkeep/replacement costs plus bandwith plus man hours must add up. I'm assuming ad revenue from the main page pays for it? I've always been kind of curious about the complexities of running a gargantuan website or webforum.
Posts
i think PA is a very visual crowd and I for one would appreciate seeing what all this crazy stuff is you talk about.
seriously! - well if it feels like an extra bother/work then dont - but I'm just curious.
show me some tangled wires behidn server racks or hard drives on fire
Dual AMD 64 Opterons
RAID 10 - 8 x SATA II Drives
4GB RAM
Hotness.
I'll take 2.
So....much......everything.
Rowr. :winky:
Me likey. Very nice setup. Thanks for the update Alpha, and I look forward to those pictures.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
We love you for it.
Thanks.
Unofficial PA IRC chat: #paforums at irc.slashnet.org
I mean, seriously, this website goes down so goddamn often it's ridiculous. You should re-open ClubPA so you can actually afford to buy some decent hardware.
It's BS. We shouldn't have to put up with this crap so often. I want a full refund, and I want it immediately. I'm sick of this.
[spoiler:8212820390]Hehe. Good job, Alpha. Thanks a million![/spoiler:8212820390]
I warned you fools they were coming!
Thanks much for the work you do Alpha.
Dual Cyrix II processors
RAID 0/1 - 12x10mb SCSI drives inside a Compaq Proliant RAID array.
4x 32MB PC100
The good part is the raid array had wheels, so they didn't have to get 6 guys together to take it off of the rack when the new one came.
All the more hearts and blinkies to the one responsible for keeping it up and running smoothly.
I was set to send off an e-mail during our last outage telling Alpha and anyone else involved with the forum's upkeep how appreciative I was, but I figured I would just make post instead.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
No where near it.
We're still relatively big, though.
If you check the PA forum page on there, and look at the sort by page views or online users, we're in the top 30.
well, if i remember right we don't have the bigboards stattracker activated anyway, so who knows
Plus we prune pretty frequently.
All that being said, we are no where near the largest, and I'm fine with that. #1 is GaiaOnline, and there is a special circle of hell that Lanzer and the tech guys over there have entered into. I was invited to join that a while back, but I like the feel and size of our boards.
By mature I mean grammar and spelling usage, not "cox dix lol" of course.
Ayliana Moonwhisper Ecksus Cerazal
Very true. And for the most part, "cox dix lol" just adds to our already immeasurable charm. That and the pictures of SHARKS and BEARS.
Yeah, I should have figured that GameFaqs (with it's siren call to twelve year olds the world over) would have a larger userbase. I was surprised to see that SA was number seven, though. Unless I'm mistaken, don't Goons have to pay to register? I thought anytime you asked people for money for anything on the net (that wasn't porn) you were doomed to failure.
Anyway, I like that fact that while we have a large userbase, the threads still stay mature and don't degrade into GF style "pwnfests". I guess we can thank both Alpha and the mods for that.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
Definitely. They do a great job of keeping order on such a huge forum, through really good mods and custom VBulletin stuff. Plus making people pay a paltry amount to register makes them value their accounts a little more than usual.
That makes sense. I could see people being much more hesitant to get jailed or banned (or create an alt) if each account cost money.
Speaking of money, how much does it cost to keep these forums up and running? I know we've had some hardware issues lately, so equipment upkeep/replacement costs plus bandwith plus man hours must add up. I'm assuming ad revenue from the main page pays for it? I've always been kind of curious about the complexities of running a gargantuan website or webforum.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral