Ummm, Impressive. Agreeing with the others on the move, nice.

Yes it was.

Jase's other post: link to a message in another game

Thank you sir for taking such good care of us!!! :D

I don't think so.  The announcement said this downtime was "due to a requirement from our host", so I'm pretty sure that was just this piece:


...and the transfer to a new server with a new provider is still coming up.

Warn us when you can, please.

In reply to Utsukushi (msg # 19):

I believe Utsukushi may be right.  I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

Very happy to see the server move went well.  Here's hoping for a similar transition to the new hosting service.

To clarify/answer a few questions...

The move that has been completed was the physical relocation of the current server.  As it was a shutdown and power off there was no availability while the server was being moved.

We're still to do the other kind of move which is migrating RPoL to a new server.  Regarding that...

I've done some stress testing and it will eventually be available via http://new.rpol.net.  Currently that address goes to the "old" server (NetDepot) so I want to give people some time to stop using it (if you do, you'll see a warning on the front page).  Once that's done I can make new.rpol.net point to the real "new" server (Colossus Cloud) for people to check out.  Stress testing (what I can do from one machine) shows it can handle the load, though Perl seems to be slow(er) to run for some reason, which I'm currently investigating without much luck.

As we'll be moving from a functional machine to another functional machine the site (well, sites) will be available but will be locked for maintenance while the data is copied across and the domain name pointed at the new server.  Dry-runs give an approximate copy time for 15 minutes, so if I can get everything else sorted at the same time (and that's a pretty big if) then the maintenance will only be ~15 minutes).

As for "premium membership" (a.k.a. subscriptions) I didn't want to put anything in place until I'd gotten a solid perk system in place, but people do seem to want to be able to help out with or without perks... so maybe I should do it sooner rather than later!

Will let you know more with the new server as it progresses.

please forgive  my lack of  understanding  the nuts and bots of this...

 when the change is all said  and done... how will we  be able to access  the new   server?

 will this  old site be open for a while?...

 will we be able to contact players from our  games to get the 'new' link ?

 This site is the ebst site i have played on in all my years of  gamign... EZ boards were nice  until they were hacked and that ended them.. a Friend  suggested this site  and I have been here  ever since.. I  hope   that I..or my players won't get lost in the  shuffle?

If I understand Jase aright - and it would be standard for server migration - the intention is to 'lock' the current system and transfer it lock, stock and barrel (smoking or otherwise) to the new server which would then be opened for business once a) the data has moved and b) the domain is set up correctly so that when you type in rpol.net you are directed to the new server not the old beastie.

Does that make a bit more sense, Don?

yep yep... thanks.  i guess i'm worried  about losing years of work here!

As mexal kindly confirmed you won't really notice any difference, but in the background it'll be a newer server so hopefully it'll be faster for you.  Think of it like getting a new PC/tablet/phone and doing a backup and restore to the new device.

I'll be transferring all 14 GB of data, which most of (12 GB) is text.  That's a lot of text!  The average English word length is 5.1 characters... so that's approximately 2,526,451,351 words.  (c;

wow..you guys are great... to use a D&D term, I am like a gully Dwarf , when it comes to this stuff!..

 thanks to you all for not only the work you put in, but putting up with inane questions!

*** I vote for sooner.

if premium comes out, wasn't there going to be a small 1 time charge just for adult access. I may not play on here much anymore, but I wouldn't wanna miss out because I didn't check in during the offering, perhaps an email to accounts would be warranted?

Sooner.  I won't use Paypal, and a subscription means contributing to a steady stream of support for RPoL.

This was originally the plan, but it was scrapped in favor of adding other perks, such as more storage space.

Not quite.  The other perks were always part of the plan.

If adult access has been dropped as a perk, it is because of difficulty finding an acceptable way of setting it up.

See, for example, the post by horus, who would find PayPal unacceptable as a payment method.

Subscriptions granting adult access was kinda hammered in as a (admittedly flawed but close enough) method of doing age checks.  Subscriptions were a plan, adult was a real issue at the time, so the former was used as a method of controlling the latter.

Years later after nothing much happening I came up with an alternate way which is what we've now got.  Well, I came up with a way that was mostly like what we've currently got, and then it matured into what we've got after user feedback.  I think it works pretty well and is a more refined solution than restricting it to only those who can afford to subscribe.

Anyhoo, subscriptions are probably going to use PayPal as the primary (and possibly initially only) payment method, unless someone's got a better and cheaper alternative?

It may be worth exploring Stripe?

Will check it out, thanks.

http://new.rpol.net points to the new server now.  I think I've checked it's all working.  (c;  Be aware that it'll look very similar to here, it's a direct clone of a few days ago.  Don't get sucked in into forgetting you're on the test site!  If you post there it will not post here (and will eventually be lost).
This message was last edited by the user at 10:05, Tue 06 Feb 2018.

I don't know from cheaper, but the Linux distribution I use runs a forum.  The server that hosts this is funded by a Gumroad subscription, and when the development team needs to fund a special need to support the distribution, they go to GoFundMe to set up donations.

I've never known them to have problems with either of those services.

https://beta.rpol.net is also on the new server.  This has a shiny new SSL certificate as well (new.rpol.net doesn't, and won't until we fully migrate).

I can see people have visited the new site, feedback would be appreciated!

Well, most of the things work correctly and take similar time to generate.

It feel like there is at least 2 databases that are feeding new.rpol.net because of all those things:

• When I created a new game, the game was already populated, including private messages, but not characters. My 3rd created game was empty as usual.
• The number of posts isn't the same as between the main page and game.cgi page. The cast page show the same number of post as main. For example, for the forum General RPoL, the main page is showing 44157 post while the last post is the one from horus just before yours (so the count should be 44198 like it was on rpol.net)
• Sometime, reading a thread did not update the game status in the main page.
• I couldn't add a specific game (another one worked correctly) in "Games You Play In & Peruse" by reading a thread, I had needed to use the "Mark all as Read" before it showed up.

Logging out do not work. And the thread in which I added a post now show up with the unread icon.

I can't test receiving a rmail by myself, but sending one was correct.

Portraits not in cache do not work (I know that this isn't link to the new server just the url being different).
This message was last edited by the user at 06:19, Fri 09 Feb 2018.

Thanks MalaeDezeld.  Those game/thread oddities will be because the files and database from here were copied over separately so aren't in sync (to be in sync I'd have to pause everything here for 30 minutes, which I obviously don't want to do).  Logout issue would have been cos you were still logged in here and it would inherit that cookie.

Besides the expected weirdness it sounds all ok, though I was hoping it'd be faster!  (c;

Oh! So everything is working as expected :D I retest the logout without being login in here and it worked :)

I got a case where the new server is/seems slower (hand-testing multiple time, and using the generated time to compare). When showing all the messages in a big thread, like the "NOTHING but VENTS" one (822 messages), the old server estimate average would be about 2 seconds, with the fastest I saw was 1.7 seconds while the new server average would be closer to 3 seconds, and the fastest never under 2 seconds.

Old server: link to a message in another game

New server: link to a message in another game

And the more I try, the more it feel like the new server is slightly slower than the new. The main page clock at about .008 (with minimum of .006) on the old versus .010 (with minimum of .007) on the new server.