Hi All,
Many of you know I've been working on the next version of APUG behind the scenes for a while,. Well now it's finally time to move forward with it. The next version of APUG is on a completely new software so everything had to be rebuilt from scratch. The new system is so vastly superior to the current system that I am super excited for all of us and looking forward to an amazing year for APUG!
The outage could go on for 2-4 days depending on how quickly we can migrate the data (roughly 60 gigabytes of files and millions of database entries) and reconfigure the new system. It's extremely tedious work but with any luck around the 3 day mark we'll be good enough to re-open.
F.A.Q.
What can we do during this outage?
I will have a basic chat room set up for those who would like to hang out and chat during the upgrades. I'll post progress updates at the chat room header.
Why are we doing this? "If it ain't broke don't fix it!"
The current site may seem to run 'ok' from a member's perspective, but has some serious issues:
-Old software running on old server applications (this leaves the site open to major security issues).
-There is no viable upgrade path on the current software, this is why we had to move to a new software.
-Administration of the current system via admin and moderators is frustrating and cumbersome.
-There are countless reported bugs that can't be resolved
-Not viable or logical to invest in this old system which leaves us with a stale environment
-Struggling to cope with spamming.
(to name a few)
What if the migration fails?
We've done two test migrations in our development environment so are fairly confident of the plan. In the event of a failure the original site remains untouched. Also we'll be taking full backups prior to the migration.
What isn't making it over to the new system?
We've done everything we can to get all data to the new system, however some areas simply do not translate and do not have a place to go on the new system (yet).
Currently we are unable to transfer:
-Blogs (there could be a 3rd party blog application out in the near future)
-Portfolios (a portfolio rebuild is in progress ETA 1-2 months)
-Videos (videos will need to be manually re-added)
-Chatroom (a new chatroom will be implemented, not much of an issue)
Everything else is looking good though: Forums, Galleries, Social Groups, Articles, Private Messages, Classifieds, etc.
What happens after the site re-opens?
There will likely be MANY issues to deal with once we re-open. I'll have a coder available to make any code tweaks or styling tweaks. We'll work on issues via the feedback forum and help desk tickets and I'll get to every issue as soon as possible. The main thing is to keep calm and understand we have the ability to alter anything we need to. If something on the new system proves to be annoying, we can change this and if something much loved from the old system is missing we can re-add it. The new system will quickly evolve from your feedback so please be patient the first week or two after we re-open.
---------------
If you have any questions, feel free to post on this thread.
Thanks to all for your support and making this possible!
Sean
Many of you know I've been working on the next version of APUG behind the scenes for a while,. Well now it's finally time to move forward with it. The next version of APUG is on a completely new software so everything had to be rebuilt from scratch. The new system is so vastly superior to the current system that I am super excited for all of us and looking forward to an amazing year for APUG!
The outage could go on for 2-4 days depending on how quickly we can migrate the data (roughly 60 gigabytes of files and millions of database entries) and reconfigure the new system. It's extremely tedious work but with any luck around the 3 day mark we'll be good enough to re-open.
F.A.Q.
What can we do during this outage?
I will have a basic chat room set up for those who would like to hang out and chat during the upgrades. I'll post progress updates at the chat room header.
Why are we doing this? "If it ain't broke don't fix it!"
The current site may seem to run 'ok' from a member's perspective, but has some serious issues:
-Old software running on old server applications (this leaves the site open to major security issues).
-There is no viable upgrade path on the current software, this is why we had to move to a new software.
-Administration of the current system via admin and moderators is frustrating and cumbersome.
-There are countless reported bugs that can't be resolved
-Not viable or logical to invest in this old system which leaves us with a stale environment
-Struggling to cope with spamming.
(to name a few)
What if the migration fails?
We've done two test migrations in our development environment so are fairly confident of the plan. In the event of a failure the original site remains untouched. Also we'll be taking full backups prior to the migration.
What isn't making it over to the new system?
We've done everything we can to get all data to the new system, however some areas simply do not translate and do not have a place to go on the new system (yet).
Currently we are unable to transfer:
-Blogs (there could be a 3rd party blog application out in the near future)
-Portfolios (a portfolio rebuild is in progress ETA 1-2 months)
-Videos (videos will need to be manually re-added)
-Chatroom (a new chatroom will be implemented, not much of an issue)
Everything else is looking good though: Forums, Galleries, Social Groups, Articles, Private Messages, Classifieds, etc.
What happens after the site re-opens?
There will likely be MANY issues to deal with once we re-open. I'll have a coder available to make any code tweaks or styling tweaks. We'll work on issues via the feedback forum and help desk tickets and I'll get to every issue as soon as possible. The main thing is to keep calm and understand we have the ability to alter anything we need to. If something on the new system proves to be annoying, we can change this and if something much loved from the old system is missing we can re-add it. The new system will quickly evolve from your feedback so please be patient the first week or two after we re-open.
---------------
If you have any questions, feel free to post on this thread.
Thanks to all for your support and making this possible!
Sean
