Forum upgrade scheduled for Saturday, Feb 16

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:56 pm

Just so you know what's coming up...

Saturday night Feb 16, we'll be moving the forums to a new server. The move will give us several improvements, notably a lot better response than we've been seeing for the past few weeks on our current server.

At the same time, we'll be going back to the original "photomacrography.net" domain name.

These changes will be essentially seamless from your standpoint. The forum will simply go offline around 9 pm PST (GMT - 8 hours) and will come back online a couple of hours later with no apparent changes other than improved response.

Behind the scenes, we will have moved a bunch of files and database contents to the new server, and redirected the "photomacrography2.net" domain name to point to "photomacrography.net" instead. That redirection will be maintained for several months, giving ample time to update whatever links you may have created at other places.

We admins are eagerly looking forward to getting moved over to the new server. We think you'll enjoy it too!

All the best, and keep those macro/micro shots coming in!

--Rik

PS. If you're interested in getting a "sneak preview" of the new server, just point your browser to http://www.photomacrography.net. It's up and running right now in test mode, with a snapshot of the forum database as of a couple of days ago. You can even login and post there if you like, but anything you do there will be thrown away when we do the move on Saturday night.

Of course, I would appreciate knowing if you find anything amiss at the new place. Thanks!

Edit: changed from Announcement to an ordinary Topic.

Mike B in OKlahoma · Post by **Mike B in OKlahoma** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:54 pm

Thanks for your work, Rik!

I had just changed my password when I tried to go over to the new forum. I was going to post an attaboy message, and was told my (new) password was invalid. I assume this is because the passwords are as they were a couple of days ago, and not a sign of some other problem.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:58 pm

Mike B in OKlahoma wrote:I assume this is because the passwords are as they were a couple of days ago, and not a sign of some other problem.

Exactly. Your old password should have worked on the test forum.

And if you had trouble accessing the forum here at photomacrography2 for the last couple of hours, it's because the machine went down for some unrelated "maintenance issue". At least, so said the hosting service support people when I called them to find out what was going on.

--Rik

augusthouse · Post by **augusthouse** » Sat Feb 16, 2008 11:02 pm

Nice job Rik... all looks good from here.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sat Feb 16, 2008 11:07 pm

Craig, you're fast!

I was just getting set to post an all-clear message based on my own testing.

It's nice to know there's been a second set of eyes on the thing.

One small thing -- if anyone has been visiting the "Testing" forum for the past few days, you may have to explicitly hit the "Refresh" button on your browser in order to get rid of the "Testing" logo and make the regular one appear.

I'll continue poking around for a bit, but I agree, everything looks good to go at this point.

--Rik

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:12 am

Seems fine Rik. Excellent work and pat yourself on the back.........I can't reach from here. I'll have a beer in your name though

Danny.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:24 am

Thanks, Danny!

BTW, I recommend having a couple. Personally, I'm popping the cork on some bubbly!

--Rik

PS. Nice avatar -- thanks for thinking to test that!

gpmatthews · Post by **gpmatthews** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 2:49 am

...looking good Rik, you deserve those beers, and the bubbly!

Hairyduck · Post by **Hairyduck** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 10:51 am

new forums, looks good and seems to be working well!

I do have an issue however...

I use several other forums that run on phpbb and some seem to use the same default cookie names, this means that I can never remain logged in on this forum, and when I do login and then visit another one it resets it again, in the end I just don't bother logging in any more...

any chance this can be fixed? I noticed on the phpbb knowledge base there's a very highly rated script that can be run once to fix the issue so that it uses proper domain name cookies?

link here: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=228741

Kev

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:13 am

Hairyduck wrote:any chance this can be fixed?

Hhmm...

From the way cookies are normally handled, it seems like there should be a problem only if running two forums at the same domain, which we don't.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie : Cookies are actually identified by the triple name/domain/path, not only the name (the original Netscape specification considers only the pair name/path). In other words, same name but different domains or paths identify different cookies with possibly different values. As a result, cookie values are changed only if a new value is given for the same name, domain, and path.

But if people are having a problem across domains, then I have no problem changing our cookie name to something more specific.

Let me research this a bit and see what the mod you link to does.

BTW, which browser are you using?

--Rik

Hairyduck · Post by **Hairyduck** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:18 am

Thanks Rik,

I'm using IE7

Mike B in OKlahoma · Post by **Mike B in OKlahoma** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:28 pm

I also am finding that "keep me logged in" doesn't work. Oh, the agony!!!!

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 10:41 pm

OK, the forum cookies have now been changed to be specific to this one forum:
Cookie domain: .photomacrography.net
Cookie name: photomac_phpbb (with "_data" and "_sid" appended)
Cookie path: /forum

This should avoid any potential of conflict between this forum and any others.

If "Log me on automatically" doesn't work for you, the first thing to do is check your browser settings. If your browser security is set to not accept cookies from this forum, then it cannot automatically log you in.

Anybody having problems with logins, be sure to let me know. If you can't get logged in at all, just contact me via regular email -- the address is on the front page.

--Rik

PS. For a gory detailed technical discussion, see http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/configu ... -settings/ .