Important Announcement
I'm sure that everyone has noticed what we have (un)fondly dubbed the "site burps" we have. The current server has become quite flaky and we've made the decision to move to a different server.
Why has this decision been made?
Frankly, because Tech Guy said it was a good idea and we trust him. The site burps are getting worse not better and there is nothing that we can do about them - there's also been two instances of unexplained crashing in the last few months - and we don't get communication about them.
Tech Guy has scoured the interwebs and found a new host provider which gives us much better performance analytics, allows us to use memcache, CDN and opcache (I have no idea what they are, but TG tells me they're good!) at no additional cost, and performs much better. To give you an example that even I can understand - when comparing the current server with the new one:
Current Server
Half of the time we take over 1.7 seconds to return a page,
the longest time to return a page was 7.2 seconds.
New Server
The new server is currently running on a lower spec than we'll pay for (it's a free trial) and when the same test was run:
Half of the time, it took less than 0.3 seconds to return a page.
the longest time to return a page was 0.5 of a second.
So, long story short. We've been testing a mirror version of our site on there for the last week and we're at the point where we have things up and running.
When is this happening?
The time frame we have is as follows:
1) The Live Site (this site) will go offline to all on Friday 24th June @ 6pm UK time! (world clock if you need to know what time / date that is where you are! . )
2) TG will copy the current DB to the new site.
3) We will update some configs
4) We will smoke testthis is what TG calls it when we do "broadly checking that it's working" sorts of tests the new site to make sure the copy went OK
5) Re-launch ( this could take a day or so as the DNS changes will take a while to propagate, but there's nothing we can do about this due to the limitations of the control the existing hosting company give us)
I will keep Discords informed - but I am aware that not everyone uses Discord. So, therefore, if you want to be kept informed but don't use discord, please PM me before Friday with an email address to contact you at.
If you have any questions, please do let us know. Make sure that you've saved everything and, if you want to write over the weekend, save some posts.
Best
Pegs.