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Notice Web Server Move this week

Discussion in 'Website Items, Issues & Feedback' started by Bud, Jun 13, 2017.

  1. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    Our multi-year contract with GoDaddy finally expired a few months ago and we've burned up our "credit" left over from the transition off of the old dedicated Windows server (that's what the old forum was running on), so we are transitioning the website away from GoDaddy this week. The month-to-month package we currently have expires on Sunday 6/18.

    I've already done a test transfer to the new server, and it went extremely smooth - the actual transfer only took about an hour.

    There will be some intermittent access for at least a few hours post-transfer after the nameservers get changed to point to the new host. This takes time to propagate through the interwebz, usually it's just a few hours but for total completion this generally takes 48-72 hours. In that timeframe, if you try to go to the site, you might end up getting directed to the old server, then the new one, etc, until all the DNS updates have propagated fully. Tapatalk may also act glitchy during this timeframe.

    Transferring away from GoDaddy should improve site performance and should solve some email deliverability issue that GoDaddy simply would not do anything about, but most importantly, drastically reduce hosting costs (by over 60%).

    To ensure enough time to tweak the new server after the transfer and have access to both the old and the new server for a few days, this transfer will initiate on Wednesday evening, probably sometime after 6pm. The current site will resolve to the "Board is disabled" page until the transfer is complete, then once the nameserver change has been initiated, the message will be updated so that you will know you are looking at the old server. The new server will resolve to the live/active board.

    Between now and then, I will be performing a few forum updates that are overdue, so there might be some short spurts of downtime - probably tonight (but possibly this afternoon). I would rather perform these now instead of after the server transfer

    Some users may need to flush their local DNS cache to "break the link" to the old site. Such instructions (if necessary) will be posted on the old site post-transfer.

    If anyone has any issue throughout this transition, please post a visitor message on the GIRS Facebook Page: Greater Iowa Reef Society

    Thanks
    Bud
     
  2. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    A few additional notes:

    1) Passwords will be retained during this transition. This transfer is quite literally a copy/paste operation, followed by flipping a virtual pointer from one spot to another.

    2) You may or may not be logged out (you probably will be) after the transition. If you forgot your password, you can reset it by following the steps outline in the thread Tip - Accessing your GIRS account (you can ignore the big/bold text at the top of the 1st post, and just skip down to "To access your account")
     
  3. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    Site has been transitioned to new server.
     
  4. testaccount

    testaccount

    27
    Ratings:
    +1 / 0 / -0
    test
     
  5. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    Test post from Tapatalk
     
  6. testaccount

    testaccount

    27
    Ratings:
    +1 / 0 / -0
    test
     
  7. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    test
     
  8. testaccount

    testaccount

    27
    Ratings:
    +1 / 0 / -0
    test using standard email delivery
     
  9. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    This morning at home (on Centurylink) it was still resolving to the old site, but at work (edit: MediaCom), it's resolving to the new site

    If you were able to make it here using the standard URL (not the IP address I posted on Facebook) please go ahead and post here and let me know who your service is through so I can track propagation!

    Thanks!
    Bud
     
    Last edited: Jun 15, 2017
  10. Roman Experienced Reefkeeper

    Cedar Rapids, IA
    Ratings:
    +321 / 3 / -0
    I made it here through my iPhone via us cellular. I put in the site manually. Can't access site through my laptop on century link
     
  11. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    when you say manually, do you mean the IP address or the actual URL?

    Centurylink is rather slow at updating DNS when it changes. I've seen this in the past. It might actually take them 72 hours.
     
  12. Chief Reef Well-Known ReefKeeper GIRS Member

    445
    Cedar Rapids
    Ratings:
    +123 / 0 / -0
    not sure who provides internet at Kirkwood but it's working here
     
  13. Working here, using media come and iphone
     
  14. ERG

    ERG

    97
    Ratings:
    +22 / 0 / -0
    Good to go
     
  15. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    Centurylink in WDM is still behind...
     
  16. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    Finally, centurylink has caught up.
     
  17. yankieman Well-Known ReefKeeper

    576
    Monmouth, IL
    Ratings:
    +156 / 0 / -0
    Looks good here I am using Hughes net satellite internet here
     
  18. vikubz Well-Known ReefKeeper

    734
    Cedar Falls
    Ratings:
    +8 / 0 / -0
    Made it with CFU. Our Coin Club has been using Hostgator with very few issues for 8.95 a month on their basic package. Who is hosting us now if I may ask?
     
  19. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    It's on a VPS with mygoto.com, which is Dave Barrick's company (he is the former MASNA president). The VPS package is mine actually, I use it for several sites I already host including my office and business and a few other sites.

    Hosting isn't really all that complicated, so you can do pretty good for $10/month in many cases, but you usually will end up with very limited control and support. But if you don't need it, that's OK. But you risk not having things configured correctly and fighting an uphill battle to get it right.

    When we were on the dedicated Windows server, that was like $160/month, I think the rationale with going to that was that post-MACNA we 1) had the money and 2) the "live sales" crashed the cheap hosting.

    When we switched from the Ded to the VPS, we had so much credit left it bought us 2 full years on the 2nd highest VPS package they had (which has come down in price). That allowed us cPanel, WHM and full root (SSH) access, which is a lot of control. But, GoDaddy pipes all their outgoing email through one set of servers, so even with that level of package and a dedicated IP address for both the VPS and the site, our emails were still going to spam because they were incapable of making the corrections needed due to the way they are set up.

    Now we have cPanel, WHM, full root access, backups, fallback servers, and a host admin that knows his stuff (and has gone above and beyond for me) for half the price of the current "comparable" GoDaddy package, basically (1/3 of the price of the one we were using)

    People love and hate Hostgator, but if you are on it and don't have any issues, more power to you. They are now owned by EIG (Endurance International Group) who have an absolutely horrible track record of gobbling up fledgling hosting companies and then train-wrecking them. Some people don't have issues, but I'm on a few forum and website admin forums/groups and EIG is like a curse word :vamp:. The most common complaint I hear is when something does go wrong...they don't really do "backups" so you end up losing all your data if there is a corruption. Not with every EIG-owned host, but many of them...

    Email deliverability is the #1 issue anymore (for just about any company or active website that sends a lot of emails). Unless you have the ability to configure things correctly (or have a host that knows how to do it) you will inevitably get stuck having to deal with emails getting treated like junk/spam due to configuration, once you get above a certain level of activity, forcing you to use a 3rd party system...which typically requires a zone file mod and possibly a subdomain to really work right, then you're back to bugging the host again if you don't have the ability to do that yourself
     
  20. blackx-runner Administrator Website Team Leadership Team

    Cedar Rapids, IA
    Ratings:
    +738 / 5 / -0
    I'm through IMON and it loaded to the new site just fine yesterday evening.
     

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