diyAudio will be down this Sunday/Monday for upgrades

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Short version:

diyaudio.com will be unavailable for several hours at a time from 10PM GMT this Sunday 10th July 2017. Best to make Sunday evening / Monday (depending on your timezone) a "build day" :)

Long version:

Our server has experienced several periods of downtime over the last year, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes a few hours.

Usually this has just been a hiccup and our ageing server just needed a little pat on the back to get things moving again. However last week we did experience our first database corruption and had to restore from backups (which thankfully worked perfectly according to plan).

We have been running the same software (vBulletin 3) for the last 10+ years, and the very final version of vB3 was just released. There will be no further patches from the developer.

Our particular setup relies on a number of other pieces of software, a great many of which are now also at EOL (End of Life) or long since dead and buried. In order to avoid the database hangs and crashes we've recently been experiencing, it's imperitive to maintain all the system OS software and servers (Apache/PHP/Nginx/MySQL/Etc). Over the last week I've done a lot of preparation work for the upgrades, maintaining older code that's now EOL or incompatible with the latest version of PHP, to make it compatible. As a bonus, the latest version of PHP is twice as fast and uses half the memory, so we should see a modest performance boost as well.

I had hoped that our current setup would get us through though until we moved to an entirely fresh new platform (XenForo) later this year, and could start with a clean slate. However, it looks like that won't be completed for another 3-6 months or so and we can't wait any longer to perform various necessary upgrades to the servers and software. These upgrade will start at around 10PM GMT this Sunday 10th July 2017 and continue for I'm estimating 24 hours. It could be as little as 6 hours. Apologies in advance, but I am making this post to give advance notice.

Regular patrons of diyAudio will have noticed that not much has changed in terms of the software in a long time. Most could consider that a good thing! For me, it's been a case of "if it aint broke don't fix it". However, it's now "broke" and it's time to fix it. We (like many vBulletin forums) will be soon migrating to a new platform called XenForo (XF). It's written by a small dedicated team, the original authors of vBulletin. They don't release buggy software, they release it when it's ready and not when the marketing team says they need a new version to sell to make more money. It "feels" a lot like vBulletin because it's the spiritual successor, written by the same authors. It has a lot of excellent new features (such as drag and drop image uploads into posts) and is very fast. I'm sure it will provide a great platform on which to build a stable, fast, and feature rich home for diyAudio that will last the next 10 years and more. There is some question as to whether we will move to XF1.5 or XF2 (which has been in development for 3 years now), but that question will be answered at a later time.

There's a lot of work to be done in the future to migrate us to the new platform, and I'll be starting to post more regular updates about that progress soon. I will publish a clear roadmap and try my best to keep everyone informed. We'll be trying to achieve a "less is more" approach where we try to create as much of a familiar feel and as small a learning curve as possible. Choosing XF will help with that - it has the same spirit as vB and shouldn't feel entirely foreign, though with any total platform change, some new things will have to be learned. I believe we have a solid plan to mitigate these issues however.

I would like to thank everyone who has been a part of the last 17 years. Firstly a special thanks to everyone who has donated their time and effort selflessly helping others learn about DIY. Secondly to those who have dug deep to contribute with a membership, or indeed any other form of support. We spend around $10,000 a year on hosting and every little bit has helped. I've been asked recently if we'd like donations to help with the development and migration - I would ask anyone to hold off for now. When we start to get more heavily involved in the development of the new platform, we'll do a fundraiser raffle/auction/giveaways and there should be some great prizes and swag, and that would be a great time if you should feel so motivated.

I'm really excited about the next year, and have BIG plans for new additions to the community and website that have been difficult to do with the ageing platform we're currently running. I've personally had a lot of other commitments over the past few years as well, such as running The diyAudio Store which supplies hard to find bits and pieces to the community. Now that the forum itself "is broke" though, it's absolutely the right time to refocus on diyaudio.com and take it to the next level - free from the vestiges of the past, with a fresh platform, technologies and opportunities.

Once we move to our new platform, the sky is the limit. I look forward to existing members such as yourself enjoying the new and improved features, as well as seeing a new generation of audiophiles getting the do-it-yourself audio bug and enjoying the hobby.

Thanks, and see you Tuesday hopefully with a more stable, and more responsive website :)
 
XenForo

@ Jason

Hi, vB is what https://www.wilderssecurity.com used for years. Three years ago they moved over to XF. At first a lot of people didn't like it, including me. But, the Admin LWM was able to make several options available to members, including a number of styles to choose from. One looks similar to how it did in vB. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/can-we-get-the-old-vbulletin-skin-back.362400

LWM is an expert on XF, as he now mainly works on it for others too. Why not PM him & see if you can get any useful tips etc from him ;) https://www.wilderssecurity.com/members/lowwatermark.1169

Regards,

ZD
 
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Jason - many thanks for your good and hard work!

Best regards,

Toni

Actually, part of the upgrade is to allow us to use Let's Encrypt's certbot, which is not compatible with older systems. So, yes, definitely we'll have HTTPS via Let's Encrypt shortly! :)

Hi Jason,

Just to be sure, you mean Sunday 9th of July, not 10th, right?

Jan

Yes!
 
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The first pass of upgrades has now been completed. You shouldn't notice anything different - there are no visible changes to see.

Due to various issues, the Gallery is now beyond upgradability. It is now be closed for uploads, and will have limited functionality, however existing uploaded images and media will still work. This will get totally upgraded by XF's own media gallery when we move to XF in the future.

There is another round of upgrades to be performed in a few days, which should create some small performance boost in the forum in general.
 
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Thanks for the bug report. The Wiki software was causing all images to break. I have lodged a bug report with the Wiki author. Unfortunately, this Wiki software is one of the most buggy, terrible pieces of software I've ever worked with. Every single version I've installed has been plagued with issues... I'll be very happy to move on to a new Wiki platform in the near future.

So, until further notice, the Wiki will be unavailable.
 
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