We are back online!

[Scott Greczkowski]

If your reading this then it means DBSTalk.COM's forums are back online! It's been a hectic couple of days, but we're very happy to be back!

Wondering what happened?

Basically we had reached the limits of our old server both in hardware and bandwidth which caused the server to crash. Because of this, we were forced to move to a new server.

When we put in our support ticket with the ISP, they finally noticed that we are using a lot of bandwidth each month (Now serving over 10 million hits a month) and raised our rates to where they should be. (To be honest we knew this was coming only a matter of when) :)

So, our rates are now almost 4 times what we were paying last month for our bandwidth. :( But, in the grand scheme of things, we're still getting a pretty good deal, so we're not complaining. :D

This little fiasco has cost us about $500, and our new ongoing bandwidth costs are expected to run around $200 a month. But, thanks to the generosity of our members we've been able to meet this challenge and come out on top! So a big thank you goes to gold members for their support! Because we are supported by you, our users, we thank you for your support in helping keep DBSTalk an ad-free board for all!

Also you may have noticed our main page has changed, while the board was down I have optimized our homepage which was a resource hog. This new page should load faster for you!

We thank you for being patient while we were offline, we worked hard to get back online as quickly as we could.

Thanks again for your understanding and support!

[James_F]

Welcome back!!!! Let see if we can crash this server... :p

[James_F]

I assume you are "auto reloading" the home.php page anymore huh? ;)

[Mark Holtz]

Welcome back.

What happened to the pull-down list of forums on the right side of the screen?

[TNGTony]

Next time Scott, don't use a Dishplayer as your server box and you won't have these problems! :D

See ya
Tony

[Scott Greczkowski]

No the home.php page still has auto reload. :) Its just not as server intensive. :)

Z'loth are you talking about the pull down on the home.php page? I will see about adding that back in.

BTW how's the speed? :D

[James_F]

Speed seems fine. I never really noticed a problem before. :shrug: I like the simpler home.php page. Looks tighter than before...

[Scott Greczkowski]

Hard to believe I rewrote it (the new home page) from the ground up and it only took me 4 hours. :)

[Mark Holtz]

Originally posted by Scott Greczkowski
No the home.php page still has auto reload. :) Its just not as server intensive. :)

Z'loth are you talking about the pull down on the home.php page? I will see about adding that back in.

BTW how's the speed? :D

Yes, I'm talking about the pull-down menu. But, at least it's back up. :)

As for the speed... it seems like it's faster, but I don't know. Just glad it's back.

[Richard King]

Congrats guys on getting this thing going again. I was suffering withdrawal symptoms and now I can get my fix. :D

[W1CPO]

Nice job on the new home page Scott. It looks good and seems faster... at least to me.

[Jacob S]

Nice work. Glad to be back.

[Mike123abc]

One feature I see that was added was looking at todays posts. This will be good for when the cookies get mixed up and you somehow get them all marked as read.

[Jacob S]

Thats always been on there, new posts and todays posts were on there before.

[Scott Greczkowski]

Yup it's always been there, I just moved it into the Welcome panel which I added as well. :)

Actually yesterday I sat down and rewrote the entire home.php from scratch, the origional took me over 75 hours to make, this new one took me only 4 hours :) (And the old one used 75 Database Queries, this new one takes only 19 with almost all of the same information!) :D

[ibglowin]

Yo Yo Dog,

It's loading in about half the time. Great job Scott. I was going into withdrawls!

[The Old Wizard]

Scott glad that you are back on line. I was starting to have a Space Invaders withdrawals. (LOL) :D

[Scott Greczkowski]

Lew those game work on WebTV? :D

[James_F]

I guess the PayPal link has moved up on the page for obvious reasons huh?

/me runs off to send in a donation

[Chris Blount]

Everything went pretty smoothly today. After working closely with our ISP, we finally got everything moved over without any large problems. Big thanks to Scott for helping me out.

[JohnH]

It even works in Pennsylvania now. :)

[platinum]

I'm glad we're back up, I plan on donating tomorrow. I went through the shakes with no DBSTALK......:D

[Chris Blount]

For those who are wondering, here is the new server information:

Intel Pentium III (Coppermine)
speed: 863.920 MHz
cache size: 256 KB
System: Linux

Memory: 239488k

Physical Drives
Western Digital 40GB Ultra ATA DISK drive

Since we are running Linux, we had to balance our speed requirements, memory, bandwidth and price. I think this was the best way to go to keep our costs down and yet have the speed we need to keep the forums running.

So far, the speed has been great. We are only using about 5% of the CPU during peak times. I love Linux!!!

[Nick]

Chris, just when are the "peek" times? Can you email me the secret URLs for the hidden webcams? Once I am logged on to the webcam page, can I maintain the connection once the "peek" times are over?

Inquiring minds want to know. :)

===========

(This is a test post. I have been locked offline for over a week due to a self-inflicted error in ZA. :rolleyes: )

[Chris Blount]

What are you talking about Nick? :)

[James_F]

Originally posted by Chris Blount
For those who are wondering, here is the new server information:
<snip>
No RAID Array? You rely on one Western Digital hard drive? I don't think I can find enough :eek2: to display my fear. Don't tell me its a eMachines server too... :p

[Mark Holtz]

I know that there are motherboards out there with built-in RAID arrays fpr IDE drives. Mine is one of them. What about a tape backup?

[raj2001]

Welcome back :)

So a big thank you goes to gold members for their support!

You're quite welcome!

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Z'Loth
I know that there are motherboards out there with built-in RAID arrays fpr IDE drives. Mine is one of them. What about a tape backup?

What type of Raid type are supported on those IDE raid arrays (Mirroring, Striping, Striping with Parity?)

[James_F]

Your choice... I have one of these at home. :D

http://www.promise.com/product/product_list_eng.asp?familyId=2

[Kevin]

The page is so much faster! With the old server, it would slow down big time during peak hours...but this one is holding up quite nicely. Good job! :righton:

[The Old Wizard]

Originally posted by Scott Greczkowski
Lew those game work on WebTV? :D

Not that I know of. I now use my Laptop when I come here & my newsgroup too. I had to see what I was missing with Web TV & once I found out I rarely come here with my Web TV. :D

[platinum]

I kept my word, i donated today...:D

[platinum]

when will supporter show up next to my name?

[Chris Blount]

You will get logged in tonight when I do the books.

[platinum]

Originally posted by Chris Blount
You will get logged in tonight when I do the books.

Thanks Chris...:hi:

[Mark Lamutt]

No, thank you platinum! :hi:

[platinum]

Originally posted by Mark Lamutt
No, thank you platinum! :hi:


:D

[Chris Blount]

Hey Platinum,

I have received your donation and thanks! Be sure to join us in the private gold forum. Just look for it on your main forum listing.

[platinum]

I look forward to it.

[Chris Blount]

Well after spending a few hours playing with the server it looks like we have a pretty good backup scheme. The entire web site will be backed up every night around 5am CST so all of you night owls might see a slight slow down for a few minutes.

Since we couldn't afford a second hard drive the web site is being backed up to a separate partition on the same drive. Then on a weekly basis, Scott or I will download the backup files to our home computers. This plan should keep us pretty safe from any catastrophic failures. If we should lose the hard drive on the server, the worst that would happen is that we might lose a couple of days of posts. No biggy.

On our old server, we never really had a good and regular backup scheme so this is a marked improvement.

Thanks again to all of our gold members who have generously donated to keep DBSTalk online. I would also like to extend my gratitude to all of our registered members and guests for visiting. You guys (and gals) are awesome!