View topic - Stillers.com Changes Coming - Outages Expected

[trenches Profile]

All, in the coming days, our site will be moving to a new web host and at the same time, undergoing an upgrade.

We apologize in advance for any disruption and hope to minimize any downtime and inconveniences.

Thanks.

[Pump-N-Iron Profile]

Thanks for the heads up!

[trenches Profile]

Sure, Pump-N-Iron.

Note that I'll provide more specifics when ready.

Some changes coming include:
- overhauled look and feel for the main site (although that will be a work in progress)
- updated schedule view with enhanced data
- improved viewing of the site on phones, tablets and smaller resolutions
...to name a few.

[Still CA Still Profile]

Thanks for the hard work, Trenches.
Will these outages occur on game days or are we looking at mid-week/late night down times?
Thanks again.

[trenches Profile]

No chance of a game day disruption, Still CA Still.

I'll target an off hours move like Friday evening or Saturday. As stated previously, I'll announce specifics after I'm done with the updates and ensure everything is functional in "offline" mode before making the cut over.

[StillMill Profile]

well done, Trench !! Looking forward to the updates and changes. (And remember, the keywords for the '12 season....)

[PGHeaven Profile]

Great job stiller dudes! Content has NEVER been a problem here, but the technology has, so kudos for your hard work. I expect there will be some bumps in the road. For those of us who work IT we all know that "cutovers" or "go lives" NEVER come off pefectly, but once we are there, life will be much better

Am I to assume that game day posting will be more stable - more rampable - more robust? After all, that plus downtimes, were the main issues

[trenches Profile]

PGHeaven,

The main objective of this upgrade is to put us in better position to stabilize and scale out the site. Unfortunately I've been a limiting factor in recent years not having time to support the guys really adding value to this site. As a result, we've had many issues as you pointed out and that blame falls largely on my shoulders. I apologize to all for those inconveniences.

As part of the series of upcoming upgrades, I hope to put a better underlying platform in place so we can reduce our downtime. After the upgrade and change of hosts, I hope the boards will be more stable out of the gate (based on using a new host) but in reality I'm evaluating a ground up rewrite of the boards to improve stability, improve performance, create a (more) mobile/tablet friendly edition and to add better integration with the main site. Since this is a large endeavor the main site is being handled first then the boards will be addressed thereafter. I don't want to have a disruption with the boards so even if a rewrite happens, I want to be able to migrate posts, logins, etc. to the new platform so it's seamless to anyone using them.

Thanks for your post.

StillMill, as I texted you, the article publishing is being completely overhauled. I almost done with it and I think you'll find it pretty slick (new tagging scheme is functional and includes 2012 items ). I optimistically expect the changes to be completed sometime Saturday although that's admittedly aggressive. If you're available it would be great if you could test the new site out Sat/Sun. If that goes well I'll schedule the cutover for mid-next week.

[Crucible-steel-kid Profile]

Will we have to re-register with our user names or will those migrate into the new site? I don't want to have to re register my nic into the new site if I don't have to. Please advise. Thanks!

[trenches Profile]

Crucible-steel-kid, you will not have to re-register.

[thesteelhammer Profile]

can you PM me some details?

[trenches Profile]

FYI: I've worked through almost all conversions and I'm just working through a final set of minor issues and testing. I still don't have a hard fast date but I'm hoping for Saturday for the cutover.

[trenches Profile]

Ok, continuing to make progress. Mill is starting to put eyes on things but as some of you know, he's the cantankerous sort so I'll have to plug and chug through his issues next.

[trenches Profile]

FYI:

I'm expecting to migrate the site in the next night or so (Friday night/Saturday morn).

There will likely be some downtime and unexpected behavior while the migration occurs and any final wrinkles are smoothed out.

Thanks in advance for your patience.

Trenches

[trenches Profile]

Ok, all, I think the forums are functional. I expect I may have missed an item or two during the migration so let me know if anything is out of whack.

Your login information should remain the same as should your avatars, etc. If anything is missing, let me know and I'll look into it.