Forumosa's server move - at last!

Kind of like Colonic Irrigation , you mean ?

You probably should use https instead of http, and why don’t you put 301s from the old to the new domain ?

Also, why do you not configure the dns records for www prior to making the changes on the server?

I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t change the domain with 0 downtime…

Thank you for the questions. I will aim to secure the new server with SSL. I will also look up what you mean by using 301 Redirects (I found this! https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/7430/what-is-a-301-redirect-and-why-should-you-care.aspx) although I am unsure how much I can use them since the redirection needed is from the current Discourse.org hosted http://tw forums – I cannot access anything on this server itself and can only manage the admin backend of our Discourse installation.

This is precisely what we decided to do at the last minute. But I also want to move the domain name registration to a new registrar, which is something I have wanted to do for a long time. So, we need to understand what we need to do before proceeding and then find/make the time to do it

Ideally, we do minimize or even eliminate the downtime. Stay tuned :slight_smile:

I just saw this. @GooseEgg, you don’t need access to your current server to do a 301 redirect on your new server. The domain will resolve to your new server, so you do the redirection in your .htaccess file there. It’s actually pretty easy, though I’m not familiar with the Discourse database and it might screw something up. Also, no one uses the Ws anymore and servers are usually set to direct to a site with or without them. Odd jobs like this I usually outsource to tech people in India or the Philippines, usually from Upwork. Discourse looks complicated. I’ve never worked with Rails applications at all. Changing from a app-dedicated managed host to a private server can be a headache, so I hope you are working with good people who know what they’re doing.

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Seamless transitions are one of the beautiful aspects of the Internet.

There’s no need for any downtime at all.

Can you also fix this error in the CSS? Just change http:// to https://

Mixed Content: The page at ‘https://tw.forumosa.com/’ was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure stylesheet ‘http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Cookie’. This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.

Is this part of the new system?

“Body seems unclear, is it a complete sentence?”

Do I have to make sense to the fakebrain before it allows me to post? :eek::runaway:

Yes.

bhla

works great. :banana:

Which part of May is the transition happening? The done part or the shrinking future part?

Thanks for asking. The shrinking future part. I hope.

We ran into hiccups (silver lining: we’ve learned a ton) and hopefully this will mean a greater chance that we shorten or eliminate downtime. We have successfully done a migration, meaning we have restored a back up on a new server at a different URL that is also a root URL, not a sub.domain. Next up is doing the real thing.

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I think the after part.

Gambatte!

Was this ever done?

Screenshot_20190704-085921034_1

nope

The URL was harder to change than anticipated? Does this also mean this site did not move to a new server? Why was it so difficult?

You can move to another server and keep the same URL no problem.

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I’ll be back in Taiwan next week and will be able to focus on this then. I hope it will happen before the end of the month

We ran into problems with moving the backups to Digital Ocean, which is a host we are not used to. We spend hours uploading to it only to find out we didn’t have enough space and had to restart the process. This happened 3x. We think we have set up the droplets with enough space only to be proven wrong – either we miscalculated the size in the first place or settings we thought we made apparently we’re not. Forumosa’s database is now 12GB in size (text only) so running these batches only to see them not happen because we overlooked something has been frustrating. Plus both my tech guy and I have just been busy with travel schedules and new school year stuff (he’s based in Thailand)

I’ll announce when we get this process going and if we decide to shut things down just to play it safe.

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I would like to change the URL to something even simpler, like Forumosa.com or www.forumosa.com if possible

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