[Kyek]

Howdy Imps!

We've been talking about how to do this for the past couple weeks, and I'm ready to pull the trigger. We now have a brand spankin' new server in Ireland that is about 4 times more awesome than the one we're currently on, and I'm ready to move us over. Here's what you can look forward to!

• Faster/more stable site without the intermittent downtime
  
• No more lost E-mails due to E-mail caps
  
• Upgrading from IPB2 to IPB3! This brings more features than I can possibly name, but a few:
  • Get notified when somebody quotes a post you make -- through E-mail, lightbox, sidebar notification, whatever
    
  • "Watch" certain topics or forums, and be notified however you like when someone posts in them.
    
  • See a list of all your favorite/watched topics, jump right to them
    
  • A +1 button to thank/agree with a poster publicly, without needing to post
    
  • Faster and more accurate forum searching, with a huge reduction in wait time between searches
    
  • Much more kickass spam protection
    
  • More ajaxy goodness
    
  • Other stuff!
  
  
• Upgrading to a more modern IRC server and IRC services

There's been some questions about how I'm going to handle archives and starting a new forum fresh and all that jazz. Here's how the changeover is going to go down:

• Imps WILL BE CLOSED during the transfer process. This may take 4-8 hours because of how much work is involved in doing this cleanly. For updates, watch @TomFrost. I'll post if my progress and any unexpected delays.
  
• When Imps comes up on IPB3, we'll have all stickied threads, all threads that have had a post within the past two weeks, and a few select older threads that the mods have deemed important.
  
• We'll have two archives linked at the bottom of the forum instead of just one: The old phpBB forum archive that we have now, and the current contents of our forum, how it is right this second. So even though our active, new IPB3 forum will only have threads active in the past two weeks (and stickies), you'll still have access to almost every thread on the forum right now. We'll likely clear out some of the really old marketplace threads and such to save space. This archive WILL BE SEARCHABLE unlike the old phpBB archive.
  
• Guild forums, as we discussed here, will sadly be eliminated in the new forum as this add-on is no longer available. All old guild forums and threads will still be available in the archive (still private, so you'll need to log in to read your guild forum's threads) so nothing will be lost, but new posts will not be able to be made and we won't be able to support adding new guild members to see their guild's archive. I hate the fact that the only way for us to upgrade is to get rid of this, but we haven't given up looking for solutions for the future.
  
• Depending on my schedule and how easily this move goes, IRC may disappear for a couple days during the move. I'll do everything I can to keep the outage minimal, but other priorities are definitely higher. Either way, when we move over to the new server, any names or channels you had registered will need to be re-registered, as IRC is starting 100% fresh. It will also be shared with members of my other big forum, webdevRefinery.

I'll do everything I can to make Imps' downtime as minimal as I possibly can, but I'm unable to say for certain exactly what days and times the outage(s) will occur. But this process will happen between Thursday, May 26 - Monday, May 30. Imps will NOT be down that entire time, but fitting this in with a bit of a wicked work schedule has proven challenging enough that I have to give myself a wider time frame ;-). Outages can happen any time in that range of days, but as I've mentioned, I expect them to only total to about 4-8 hours of inaccessibility.

Anyway! I'm pretty friggin' excited about getting us moved over, and I hope you like all the upgrades . Thanks in advanced for bearing with the changes and the rocky server move process, and I'll see you all on the other side ;-)

--Your friendly neighborhood blue-testicled Sadida.

[Bananaquil]

I'm really looking forward to the upgrade. Thanks so much Kyek, you're the best. <3

[Magics]

awesome news looking forward to this
well done kyek and all the staff XD!

[Nomez]

Doesnt look like any downsides, so full steam ahead I say!

[dls4e]

Kyek, on May 25 2011, 10:55 PM, said:

[*]Faster and more accurate forum searching, with a huge reduction in wait time between searches

does that mean there will be no more 3 char. limit when seaching? *-* omg this is the best feature!

[Kyek]

dls4e, on May 26 2011, 03:46 AM, said:

does that mean there will be no more 3 char. limit when seaching? *-* omg this is the best feature!

I'm afraid that will still be the case. But if all goes as planned, you'll be able to instantly search again and again if you don't get the results you're looking for

[Anchie]

I like the idea, always for new stuff and upgrades =)

[Mr-Boombastic]

I will/our guild will definitely miss the guild forums . Oh well. What has to be done has to be done..

Let's hope it's not too different though, change is bad mmmkay?

[Serryl]

Kyek, I currently manage the Imps Village official vent server. Are you planning on implementing Ventrillo or Teamspeak on this new server, or will that still be handled separately?

Otherwise, fantastic news. Just don't kill yourself getting it all done

[Saurus]

Is it at all possible to allow three character searching? Not being able to search for the term used for 90% of the classes 99% of the time is really annoying.

[Kyek]

Serryl, on May 26 2011, 08:58 AM, said:

Kyek, I currently manage the Imps Village official vent server. Are you planning on implementing Ventrillo or Teamspeak on this new server, or will that still be handled separately?

I have no plans for this yet . While the new server has a very high data cap, there's still a cap-- so streaming media is something I'd be iffy about hosting there. Is the current solution ok as-is?

Saurus, on May 26 2011, 12:07 PM, said:

Is it at all possible to allow three character searching? Not being able to search for the term used for 90% of the classes 99% of the time is really annoying.

I'll look into it No promises, though-- search is pretty complex. Every single word of every single post has to be indexed to be searchable. Going through and re-scanning the posts to add every single 3-character word to that index may be more than the engine can handle. But if it's not, I'll certainly do it

[A-G]

Kyek, on May 26 2011, 10:55 AM, said:

[*]Get notified when somebody quotes a post you make -- through E-mail, lightbox, sidebar notification, whatever
[*]"Watch" certain topics or forums, and be notified however you like when someone posts in them.
[*]See a list of all your favorite/watched topics, jump right to them
[*]A +1 button to thank/agree with a poster publicly, without needing to post

Thanks, especially for these! Awesome upgrade, looking forward to it!

[Serryl]

Kyek, on May 26 2011, 12:24 PM, said:

I have no plans for this yet . While the new server has a very high data cap, there's still a cap-- so streaming media is something I'd be iffy about hosting there. Is the current solution ok as-is?

Yep, I was just curious. Thanks.

[Kyrros]

Quote

Hello,

IPB3 supports Sphinx for search, but does not require it. We are not using Sphinx here, for example. If you have a VPS/Dedicated server and a large forum, we do recommend you to use Sphinx if you are able to.

The IPB3 search and IPB2 search are similar functionality and resource-wise, as long as you use 3.0.2 or later. Before 3.0.2, some resource issues were identified (and resolved in 3.0.2).

If you do not use fulltext searching, you can search for words less than 4 characters. Fulltext searching requires 4 or more characters (mysql limitation - you can change this by editing your MySQL configuration file if you have access). Sphinx allows searching of any number of characters, configurable in the .conf file you would need to download/setup. The default is 3, but it's easy to change the limit to 2 if you wanted.

bfarber
http://community.inv...64-ipb3-search/

Quick google search on the issue lead me there, maybe it'll help.

This post has been edited by Kyrros: 26 May 2011 - 04:05 PM

[Kyek]

Kyrros, on May 26 2011, 06:56 PM, said:

Quick google search on the issue lead me there, maybe it'll help.

Yep, we'll be on Sphinx . It all comes down to what the storage requirements for the index are with words that short, and especially how long it takes to create that index. I'll be playing with it

[Frozthax]

so if i understand it correctly..~
the new imps will be ready by tomorrow right?

[Sir Dave]

Will we have to register again, or will our current accounts be swapped over?

[Travern]

Kyek, on May 26 2011, 08:44 PM, said:

Yep, we'll be on Sphinx .

(S.P.H.I.N.X.!)

Good luck with the move,

[Kyek]

UPDATE
I blew a good portion of my morning fighting with the old phpBB archive, which was still working on importing into the new server after four hours and caused all my other sites to crash-- so I stopped it. I still plan to have that archive working on the new server, but I've decided that we'll launch the new Imps forum without it, at least at first. 4.6 gigs is wa~hay too big for a text file.

I was hoping to do the downtime this morning, but that pushed me back a bit. I've updated the first post to say that it could take as long as Monday, but my hope is that the crux of the forum move (not counting IRC and such) will be done either tonight or tomorrow morning. Sorry for the delay!

The archive of the forum you're using right now, though, is up and running and looks great, so that will be available to you immediately upon signing into the new one. All the threads you have access to read right now, you will continue to have access to read for the foreseeable future. It's just a matter of moving the stickies and the latest two weeks worth of threads to the new forum platform, and we'll be good to go.

Sir Dave, on May 27 2011, 10:43 AM, said:

Will we have to register again, or will our current accounts be swapped over?

Your current accounts will still work, no changes needed . We're essentially just cutting down on the number of threads and upgrading the forum software; the only other change you might see (in addition to the many new features the new forum software offers) is that current forum themes are not compatible with IPB 3.1. So we'll likely launch with a stock out-of-the-box theme that might not even have a great IV logo on it, but will work on that as soon as the technical parts are complete

[Kyek]

UPDATE 2
Planning the downtime to start between 11:00am-12:00 GMT on Sunday May 29.