Site Move

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Hi all,

This is an advanced warning of site disruption.

I'm disappointed that more people have not responded to my questions about what users of the site want (there have been more visitors to the site than have replied). Thank you to everyone who took the time to do so, your input is much appreciated, as are the offers of content from a very limited number of people.

It's clear that at the moment I can't justify the cost of hosting the site on a platform that can cope with large volumes of traffic. We've been doing about 17GB per month for quite a while. As I have a bandwidth allocation of 10TB per month on my dedicated server, the site is going to be moved to that to reduce the cost of hosting.

What this means is that at some point this week, the site will be closed to new content and sign-ups whilst I transfer it. There will also be disruption when I transfer the domain and DNS records to point to my server.

So, I'll apologise up front for any inconvenience this will cause, but this is a necessary move which is being driven purely by the finances of running the site.

[SilverWarior]

Hi!

When you will be moving the PGD site to your server do you intent to only copy its file structure and its database to your server or do you perhaps intent to reinstall vBulleting with all currently used extensions first and then do database migration in the end?

I would suggest using the later approach. Why? Because it would allow you to update every component of PGD site to the newest version in the process hopefully without dealing with all the hassle of update scripts not working properly as you complained a few days ago.
Sure this would require more work on your part and probably cause longer nonavailability of PGD site but I think that we could benefit from this in the long run. Maybe we could even get rid of some long lasting PGD quirks like not being properly notified when moderated user posts new post in "Welcome to PGD" thread.

EDIT: I wish I had more knowledge with site hosting or working with vBulettin so I could help you out with the process.

EDIT2: Looking at http://www.vbulletin.com/en/features/ I see there is a new version of vBulettin software available which already offers some of the extended functionality that we use as default like vBulletin Messenger (AJAX based chat) for instance.
Unfortunately upgrading to vBulletin 5.0 Connect would also bring additional costs.

[AthenaOfDelphi]

I'm just going to migrate the site. Time wise, I'm a bit short at the moment.

And yes, I did look at version 5, but cost wise it's not an option right now, plus it add's time that I don't have.

[SilverWarior]

I understand that

[de_jean_7777]

The migration is understandable. My intent is to donate money (50$, at most I can do currently) next week probably. Not enough to cover the expenses of upgrade, but eventually I hope we'll pitch in enough money to cover the expenses.