Wordforge's forum software (Xenforo) will be updated on March 1st February 13th, which means the board will likely be closed most of the day, possibly even the entire day. The upgrade will add a number of security patches, performance fixes, and possibly even a new feature or two. I don't anticipate any major issues, though if things take longer than planned, I will keep you all updated on the Wordforge Facebook page. If you've never been to the Wordforge Facebook page, or didn't know we had one, congratulations, now you know, and knowing is half the battle. You can see (or join it) here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wordforge/ Questions, comments, yada yada yada, leave them here.
The Wordforge facebook page is a secret group for people from Wordforge. They have to be approved for them to see anything. Plus, it's the only other site for people to check the board status when it's down, so it's not like we have a lot of options, unless I decide to make a new Wordforge facebook page, and there's really no need since that one already exists.
@Larry: The link that @Colaratura posted probably only works if you are a member of the group. It is, unfortunately, a page that is run by people not involved in running Wordforge, and who don't even post here. They made a decision to hide it at some point, and lock it down. If you want access, you can try contacting @BearTM, but I don't know that he logs in here all that often. Probably the Twitter feed (@word4ge) is a safer bet, as we do control that one.
I did a quick test and everything looked solid, so I'll be moving things up and doing the upgrade this weekend, sometime in the morning as not to conflict with when the board is busiest. The add-ons will likely not work for a day or so as I update all of them for compatibility. Otherwise, inside of a day or so, everything will be back to normal once the upgrade is complete.
For the record, I sent Bear a FB message about it, so he's aware. The group was closed off specifically to keep one member from posting (one who is just as wary of WF knowing their business as Bear and Tamar were of them, so it was a moot issue anyway) but none of the new members after 2009 have been able to sign up there.
This will be the procedure for Saturday's upgrade: WORDFORGE UPGRADE CHECKLIST 1. Backup Database 2. Confirm Security Data 3. Disable Add-ons 4. Upgrade (This may take several hours)* 5. Test Add-ons, Upgrading where necessary 6. Open Board 7. ??? 8. Profit If Step 4 fails, proceed immediately to Step 4(a): *4(a): Panic. Then Step 4(b). 4(b): Ban @Packard. ----- Anyway, so tomorrow evening (my time, which is Eastern Time), anyone on the board may experience significant slowdown, as I'll be backing up the server, and praying to Crom for a successful upgrade. So, you know, heads up.
Hmm, considering that comes after profit, I see no likelihood of bitching and moaning. No, wait, that's out of order, it should be item 1, 3, 6, 8, and 10.
I think we might have lost a couple of the most recent threads. I had posted a SC debate thread shortly before it went lights out.
There are a few threads that were lost, yes. I had made the backup about 8 hours before the upgrade began, so any threads made after that weren't in the backup itself. That said, a round of applause for @The Exception, who helped me get everything back on track. So, you might want to know what happened. Well, in a nutshell, it was this: I backed up the website, uploaded the files, disabled the add-ons, and proceeded to upgrade the board, just as I had planned. Everything was going smoothly for the first 20 minutes or so, but then the system flagged about a dozen errors out of nowhere. I thought "that's not good," and tried to dismiss them, intent on checking out the issue later once the install was complete. Nope, as the software wouldn't let me dismiss it. So I thought, "okay, I'll roll it back and we'll come at it from another angle." Nope. The software doesn't allow rollbacks, even if the upgrade fails. "Okay," I thought, "I'll just re-install the previous version and overwrite the old software with the original. Nope. The software insisted that I complete the upgrade to 1.4 that couldn't be completed. Knowing that this was quickly becoming a giant pain in the ass, I figured I'd go ahead and scrap the upgrade, and restore the site to its previous state. So I logged into the server and began the restore process. The restore file for Wordforge is about 4 GB in size, so I had to upload the 4 GB file and then wait for the server to do its thing. Nope. When the file was completely uploaded, the server returned a dozen errors. I checked the cpanel and found I couldn't get in. There was an internal service error, which is all nice and vague when shit is going down and no one around to help you wade through it. So I went to the server control panel and was kindly told to fuck off, and oh by the way I was out of disk space. Buh? Yep, out of disk space. So I contacted @shootER, and the other admins, let them know what was going on, and got through to @Ancalagon, who got me the information for the board's host provider. I contacted them and said "Hey, no disk space? WTF?" to which they replied "lulz, no disk space." It took over a day to get the issue sorted out. Once it was done, though, I figured it would be best if I called in someone whom I knew could help me get things up to speed quickly. Hence, @The Exception. I shot the full backup over to him, and he cleared out some room on the server, and then the file was uploaded. And so here we are, back from the brink, all hale and healthy. My only regret is that I forgot to ban @Packard.
