Forum update

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loboLoco
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Forum update

Post by loboLoco » Fri Nov 30, 2018 12:39 pm

After a lot of investigation, tech support (specifically Dayne) at our web host Liquid Web determined that the server problems we've been having are due to queries to the forum database. With over 2.2 million posts since 2007, there's just an enormous amount of data for these queries to parse. So we took the forum offline so I could (a) prune a bunch of old posts, mostly in the Other Topics area, as well as delete 500,000 posts that moderators had archived over time, but which we never deleted. So now the forum is a bantamweight, weighing in a just under one million posts! I apologize to anyone who had a thread pruned that they cared about, but it was necessary.

After I did that, Dayne started converting the forum database to use a faster querying method. (We tried that yesterday but it bogged down somewhere while processing those 2.2 million posts.) This time it took just a few hours, and so now -- hopefully -- the server won't have any more troubles. Knock on wood!
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DaniBeez
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Re: Forum update

Post by DaniBeez » Fri Nov 30, 2018 3:33 pm

Thanks for the update Dave!

While we're on the topic of the forum itself, I have a question about the security of the forum's connection. I am using Chrome as a web browser, and it denotes the forum as "not secure". The notation goes red when I am on a page where you can enter typed information (posting a comment, or logging in for example).

To my limited knowledge, I'm guessing this means the website's information is not encrypted when transferred. People don't share identifying data like social security or credit information on here, but should users be concerned about their login information being compromised? Or does the site have other security measures in place to protect our information?

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loboLoco
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Re: Forum update

Post by loboLoco » Fri Nov 30, 2018 5:02 pm

We do have the HTTPS security set up on the website, but looks like it doesn't automatically redirect you there if you come in to the old HTTP url. We'll get that redirect working shortly. Thanks for flagging that!
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DaniBeez
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Re: Forum update

Post by DaniBeez » Sat Dec 01, 2018 8:33 pm

No problem! I tried manually adding the https:// to the front, and I noticed it shows the "secure" lock symbol briefly, but then changes to "not fully secure". So better than before when I manually add that into the address bar!

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Bushmeat
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Re: Forum update

Post by Bushmeat » Thu Dec 06, 2018 8:44 pm

Better rap your knuckles against every one of those new trees in Amethyst Mountain! I was wondering where the forums went, so thanks for the explanation :)

Seriously, though, it's crazy to think this community has had so much to talk about over the years! I hope the pruning keeps everything running smoothly with room for all the discussion to be had about the development and eventual release of the game!

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loboLoco
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Re: Forum update

Post by loboLoco » Fri Dec 07, 2018 12:42 pm

yesterday we upgraded the server to the latest version of php (v7.2), and fixed a bunch of errors, but there are still more errors on certain forum actions. And there are other problems, like View Unread not working properly.

But instead of trying to fix those, we're going to try to upgrade the forum to the newest version of the forum software (phpBB), and that should fix everything. We've tried that in the past but the upgrade process stalled out due to the huge size of the database -- but now that I've pruned 1.2 million posts from it, we're hoping the upgrade will work. Aiming to do that later today or tomorrow. The forum will be offline during the upgrade.
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