Forum Migration

[Anmer]

Since its launch in 2012, the forum has been hosted by a company called LCN.  The service and support has been exceptional, until the beginning of September 2020 when LCN migrated to a new platform following its purchase by a competitor.  Unfortunately things haven't improved and LCN's Trustpilot reviews and ratings have plummeted.

Consequently the forum will be moving to a new hosting provider later this week - Krystal Hosting.   This will fix a number of background issues and provide a more stable service.  During the cutover period, a day at most, the forum will be in "view only" mode.  New posts and new members will not be possible to ensure a clean cutover state.  This will be announced at the time.

Migrating to a new hosting provider has been time consuming and will result in some unavoidable outcomes, albeit minor.  For example, there are over 40,000 post attachments and some will no longer display correctly. Unfortunately adding each one again isn't a viable option.  At the same time, the less used download files will be culled.

Thank you for your continued patience and understanding.  Hopefully the forum will be more reliable in future.

If anyone notices unusual performance or any issues, please post here.

[mhm]

Thanks for the update Mike.
You work very hard at keeping the forum going. I hope your move to another provider works out.
Praise also to Martin and your son for helping out during the the years the forum has been running.

Stay safe and keep isolating during this pandemic. We need you on the forum.

[gonzalu]

In my 30+ year IT career, I have likely made thousands of these moves at various levels including an entire datacenter migration between two US states. While I expect nothing but smooth sailing these days, best of luck with the move and a successful migration. I know the challenges well. Cheers!

[Anmer]

In my 30+ year IT career, I have likely made thousands of these moves

Mine spanned nearly 50.  Consequently, I expect the unexpected!

[Anmer]

Be alert to phishing messages requesting validation of your Radarspotting email address.

They're not from the forum.

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[Anmer]

As expected, we hit a few unexpected issues during the forum migration.   Consequent;y it took longer than expected.

Unfortunately there are some unresolved issues.

Some message attachments haven't migrated or are corrupted.  Try as I have, I can't resolve this.  There are nearly 40,000 attachments and updating each one, manually, is not a viable option.

And Avatars haven't made it either and will need to be setup again.  But, at this time, uploading an Avatar isn't working even though it was prior to migraing the test site to Live.  This is still Work in Progress.

If you spot anything else please report on this message thread.

[Smudger98]

Keep it up Mike.. you doing a great job...

[rikgale]

Thanks for all the hard work Mike, and for sorting out all the niggles that will come with a migration.

EDIT: - two other small things I have noticed.

1) The Members online under the Stats section the left of the screen at the bottom does not appear to be working... despite knowing other users are online I can only seen the latest user and not who is logged in (Not a show stopper or even a problem to me, but different from the old way)

2) The text which shows which SDR I used which used to appear above signatures in each forum post no longer shows either. I have double checked that this test box is populated (it wasn't post-migration, but I have re-populated it), but it is not appearing. Again not a show stopper or even a problem, but different.

[Anmer]

Avatars now fixed. 

[jakems]

Hi

Glad to see the Forum back, good job.

The difference I have noticed is if you look at a chain of posts the newest one is at the bottom of the page, before the newest post was at the top. When I look at the Topic Summary while I am making this post the latest essage is at the top.

Also before I posted this I tried to do a preview and it did not do anything.



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[Anmer]

There's a sort option in your Profile settings under Look and Layout.  Does this fix it for you?

Also before I posted this I tried to do a preview and it did not do anything.

Can you elaborate please?

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[jakems]

Hi

Found the option now and it is back to how it was.

The preview option worked this time when I tried it with this post, must have been my mistake. Sorry.

[IanH654]

Good afternoon Mike,

One issue I have come across since the forum migration.

I have downloaded a couple of tail logo's. On clicking on them, it gives the name of the file (For example CS-TSI.bmp) and then a message of 'It appears we do not support this file format' . The pictures of the logo on the forum pages also looks slightly slanted/distorted.

In my SBS Logo's file, it doesn't show the logo, just a larger computer default type image. I have deleted them, tried again with the same result. I haven't tried to see what shows up on the Basestation screen.

Not sure if anyone else has had the same issue but I thought I best mention it as it looks like there is a problem.

Many thanks,

IanH654

[Triple7]

Hi Mike,

Not wishing to add to your workload, but I noticed the "Links & Files" in the top right of the forum are not all working, see image. The URL's look a bit odd, some links work, others don't.

Thanks,

Tim

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[Anmer]

The pictures of the logo on the forum pages also looks slightly slanted/distorted.

Hi Ian

As I've posted, some attachments are corrupted.  They haven't made it from the old forum to the new one unscathed.  With 40,000 attachments I can't replace each one manually.  All I can suggest is you ask the authors if they can upload them again?

Can you give me an example of one that shows:

'It appears we do not support this file format'