Scheduled Forum Outage for Site Move

[the sensible celiac]

Because of reliability, security, and performance concerns, we will be moving this website to a new dedicated server within the next few days.

When we do the move there will be changes in the DNS records for this website. Depending on a number of factors, especially how often your ISP updates their DNS records, it may take between 2 and 48 hours for the change to propagate to your computer.  In the meantime, some users will reach the new site while other users will still connect to the old site.

Since this discussion forum relies on a MySQL database, and the database will need to be manually edited in order to work in the new environment, what we will do is close the discussion forum here on the old site so that nobody posts messages that will never appear on the new site.  Once we've finished the edits to the database we'll install it on the new site and turn on the forum again. I expect the database edit and reinstallation to take much less than an hour.

The new server is already running, and some of the other websites I operate are now moving to the new server. This will reduce the load on this server, allowing it to be faster.

If the other site migrations go according to plan, and no problems are noted on the new server, we'll probably turn off the forum here at about 7PM Pacific time on Monday March 28th, 2005. As soon as we can get the database repaired and reloaded we'll cut the DNS over to the new server and most people should automatically connect to the new host by Tuesday morning.

I hope that these sorts of interruptions will become few and far between. Thanks for your participation here, this site has had tremendous growth in the last month, and we hope we are laying the groundwork for an even larger community of people helping each other with issues around celiac disease.

Thanks!
Steve

[tksmom]

Since I am very computer illiterate, I have just one question.

Will your web address change? I have you listed in my favorites and just click on it when I want to come to the site, will I still be able to do this?

My fear is that I won't be able to find you once you switch!

[the sensible celiac]

Short answer: your favorites will work again after a delay of 1 to 24 hours. You'll be able to tell you have reached the new site when it is much faster and you see a message from me like "Welcome to our new server" or some such.

The name of the site, sensibleceliac.com, will not change.  That is what your favorites entry saves - the domain name. The DNS address that this name resolves to will change, but that won't break your favorites, or bookmarks as some web browsers call them, because each time you ask your computer to connect to sensibleceliac.com it asks your local ISP to translate that name into an IP address. That is what DNS is used for, it stands for Domain Name Service, and it translates domain names into IP address.

When a web site moves from one server to another server the IP address changes.  The administrator changes certain records for the domain, and this changed information starts to propagate across the Internet.  These changes can take up to 24 to 48 hours to take effect, but for most people using large service providers for their Internet connection it will take a lot less time than that.

Almost all of my websites have now been moved to the new server. It is much faster, we have created extremely tight security policies and configured a firewall, and it is located in a large, new data center run by one of the largest hosting providers in the world.

Once we start the move, if you connect to the old server you'll see a message that we are moving when you enter the forum, but you won't get the forum itself because I will put it into maintenance mode.

As soon as we get the database installed at the new site I'll change the Name Server entry at my domain registrar, and the change will begin to propagate across the internet.

I can force my computer to connect to either the old or the new sites by tweaking certain system settings, so I'll be able to tie up any loose ends.

People with slower connections to the Internet, like with dial-up modems, may not see a difference in speed, but the reliability of the site should also improve after the move.

I'm not just a celiac, I'm a geek too!

Steve

[tksmom]

Ah, thank you.  

Don't know if I understand all of it any better but thanks for trying to help explain it again!

[the sensible celiac]

Everything seems to be going well with the new web server, so we expect to begin moving this site as planned at 7PM Pacific, 10PM Eastern time tonight, Monday March 28, 2005.

Steve