Website Server Move and Downtime
 

All,

This week I am beginning work on the long awaited website server move away from our current hosts to a new host. This is mainly in an effort to reduce the website overheads as we really don't make full use of what we pay for, and it will save the club a good chunk of money every year.

The idea is that I'll get the new website up and running and use one of our daily backups to copy the forum content across. We can then take some time to test everything, and make sure that all the functions work.

Once this is done, I will put a notice up on the website with the expected date and time that I will make the forum inactive. I need to do this so that I can make a full backup of the forum posts and copy these over to the new server knowing that we won't lose any posts made on the old server if it stays up and running. Once the copy is done, we'll switch the DNS so that the domain name points to the new website and the forum will be back up and running again without losing any posts.

I'm expecting the new server build and test to take a couple of weeks as I'll be doing this in my spare time (what little I have!) and I want to ensure that everything works. Last time we lost the server when a network card failed, I managed to rebuild the server from scratch in about a week with some late nights, but that was only because the site completely disappeared! I think I can remember everything I did, so it should be pretty painless this time...

Hopefully the DNS switch will be pretty quick and everyone will see the new site within a few hours of it happening, and even the stragglers shouldn't be without the site for more than 48 hours.

So no need to panic just yet! Things are happening in the background and it should all be pretty seamless, and I'll give plenty of notice, but the website will be down for a bit when we switch and we'll try to keep disruption to a minimum!

If anyone gets the jitters if/when the site goes offline, there is an option to see SOME archived pages here:

http://web.archive.org/web/

LOL, highly unlikely Frank :)

BUT I might rope you into a bit of testing of the new site as it's up and running ... so I'll drop you a PM ;)

No problem - PC & Laptop are warming up :D

UPDATE: so the website move is actually going a lot easier than planned! If anything it proves that the backup system that we put in place last time we had a server crash and rebuild have been working!

So far I have a copy of the website up and running and it all seems to be functioning correctly from what I can see. It has copied across all the forum posts and uploaded files, and I'm able to post to it including adding upload files, etc. The blogs are working along with the Online Shop. The last steps are to get the mail server setup correctly - it's up and running and sending email from the website, and redirecting email to the correct accounts, but we also have a few POP email accounts that the ROs use and these need to be duplicated and tested.

I am hoping to finish off the last bits sometime this week (when I've finished writing / final edit of Pronto mag!) and then we'll switch over.

In all I'm hoping that the forum will be unavailable for about 2 hours at the most, although the site will stay up, so I'll do this late one night to keep disruption down to a minimum.

Sounds good, just let us know when as I'll be putting up a DD update at the end of this week,

Will do! I also need to update the DD mini-website info bit, but given that I wrote out all the race dates for Pronto the other night I've got all the info I need :)

Saturday 5th March Pembrey ACU Training, Assessments & General Testing
Sunday 6th March Pembrey ACU Training, Assessments & General Testing

Friday 18th March Brands Hatch Indy (Keep an eye on the
website for a test day)
Saturday 19th March Brands Hatch Indy NG Championship Road Races Round 1
Sunday 20th March Brands Hatch Indy NG Championship Road Races Round 2

Friday 15th April Cadwell Park NG Test Day
Saturday 16th April Cadwell Park NG Championship Road Races Round 3
Sunday 17th April Cadwell Park NG Championship Road Races Round 4

Saturday 7th May Donington Park NG Championship Road Races Round 5
Sunday 8th May Donington Park NG Championship Road Races Round 6

Friday 10th June Oulton Park NG Test Day
Saturday 11th June Oulton Park NG Championship Road Races Round 7

Sunday 2nd July Castle Combe NG Championship Road Races Round 8
Sunday 3rd July Castle Combe NG Championship Road Races Round 9

Friday 12th August Anglesey (Coastal Circuit) NG Road Racing Test Day Anglesey
Saturday 13th August Anglesey (Coastal Circuit) NG Championship Road Races Round 10
Sunday 14th August Anglesey (Coastal Circuit) NG Championship Road Races Round 11

Friday 16th September Pembrey (Keep an eye on the circuits website for a test day)
Saturday 17th September Pembrey NG Championship Road Races Round 12
Sunday 18th September Pembrey NG Championship Road Races Round 13

Saturday 8th October Thruxton NG Championship Road Races Round 14

UPDATE:

The website move is planned for the weekend of Sat 6th / Sun 7th February - that's this coming weekend.

I will put the forum into "read-only" mode so that no new posts can be made. We'll then backup the forum and all the files and copy these to the new webserver and repoint the DNS to the new server.

As the DNS setting propagate you will see the new webserver and this will be running as normal, so it will appear as if the forum has been turned back on again.

Once we're happy that everything has moved across I can shut down the old web server and archive the backups.

If you have any problems or questions just drop me a pm.

Welcome to our new website server!

Everything should be up and running and hopefully you didn't notice any downtime :)

If you do spot anything that is wrong or not working, please let us know either via PM or by reply to this thread.