Scheduled maintenance for Tuesday 23rd June
Posted: 21 Jun 2020, 13:56
Hey folks
Heads up that I will be doing some maintenance on the Heartland servers on Tuesday 23rd June 2020.
The maintenance includes moving the site onto a new webserver, which means there will likely be some downtime while this happens.
One thing to note is that I will need to change the url "myheartland.co.uk" from pointing at the old server to the new one. This involves changing something known as "DNS settings".
Once I've changed these DNS settings, all your internet service providers (Sky, BT, etc etc) should pick the change up over the course of a couple of hours and folks should gradually start to see the new server instead of the old one.
Why am I doing this?
- The main reason is to move the site back onto a server hosted in the UK. It's currently located in the US, and given the current political situation over there I'm not entirely comfortable with this.
- A secondary reason is that I'm moving it onto a newer version of the Ubuntu OS. It's currently running on Ubuntu 12 (stop laughing at the back!), which is super old and creaky now. I've been working on the basis of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", but this can't last forever... The "repatriation" of the site has prompted me to install the forum on a newer OS ( Ubuntu 18 ) while I'm at it.
- Sadly there will not be any update of Heartland’s underlying forum software - I (still) won't be upgrading to phpBB v3, mainly because Heartland's version of phpBB2 is so heavily modified that any move would likely break all manner of things. Sorry folks.
When will all this start?
- I will be taking the site offline at approximately 11am on Tuesday 23rd June.
- I expect maintenance to be complete by 8pm that evening.
What to do if you have any problems
When it's all complete you shouldn't see any change, but there may be a few quirks and bugs pop up that I hadn't spotted...
- First up, if you can't get on, just wait. It may be that your ISP is still rolling the DNS changes out and you're still seeing the old version of the site.
- Once you are able to log back on the site, if you spot any bugs please log them here in this thread.
- While the maintenance is happening, keep an eye on our twitter feed for updates: http://twitter.com/heartlandforum
- Likewise, if you are having any trouble getting back on after the move, drop us a message @ the above Twitter account
Hope this all makes sense, and sorry for any inconvenience.
I'll pop another post in this thread just before maintenance starts, to give you a few mins warning.
Thanks in advance for your patience.
Heads up that I will be doing some maintenance on the Heartland servers on Tuesday 23rd June 2020.
The maintenance includes moving the site onto a new webserver, which means there will likely be some downtime while this happens.
One thing to note is that I will need to change the url "myheartland.co.uk" from pointing at the old server to the new one. This involves changing something known as "DNS settings".
Once I've changed these DNS settings, all your internet service providers (Sky, BT, etc etc) should pick the change up over the course of a couple of hours and folks should gradually start to see the new server instead of the old one.
Why am I doing this?
- The main reason is to move the site back onto a server hosted in the UK. It's currently located in the US, and given the current political situation over there I'm not entirely comfortable with this.
- A secondary reason is that I'm moving it onto a newer version of the Ubuntu OS. It's currently running on Ubuntu 12 (stop laughing at the back!), which is super old and creaky now. I've been working on the basis of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", but this can't last forever... The "repatriation" of the site has prompted me to install the forum on a newer OS ( Ubuntu 18 ) while I'm at it.
- Sadly there will not be any update of Heartland’s underlying forum software - I (still) won't be upgrading to phpBB v3, mainly because Heartland's version of phpBB2 is so heavily modified that any move would likely break all manner of things. Sorry folks.
When will all this start?
- I will be taking the site offline at approximately 11am on Tuesday 23rd June.
- I expect maintenance to be complete by 8pm that evening.
What to do if you have any problems
When it's all complete you shouldn't see any change, but there may be a few quirks and bugs pop up that I hadn't spotted...
- First up, if you can't get on, just wait. It may be that your ISP is still rolling the DNS changes out and you're still seeing the old version of the site.
- Once you are able to log back on the site, if you spot any bugs please log them here in this thread.
- While the maintenance is happening, keep an eye on our twitter feed for updates: http://twitter.com/heartlandforum
- Likewise, if you are having any trouble getting back on after the move, drop us a message @ the above Twitter account
Hope this all makes sense, and sorry for any inconvenience.
I'll pop another post in this thread just before maintenance starts, to give you a few mins warning.
Thanks in advance for your patience.
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