Forum Upgrades / Moving Hosts

[firebirdflys]

Thought about setting up a discord server instead?

what's this?
I hear ya Corbin, sometimes I surf through my daughters facebook and am shocked at the many folks I am missing.. it's tempting
With Witchvox switching to facebook as well, it feels like an all the eggs-in-one-basket scenario.
I can't even imagine loosing all these lovely folks I've met here and like Snow said, this place has been a source of support though some dark times.
bb, Frettingbird

[Hazel Moon]

This is some sad news. I just found this place a little while ago, and all of you are so nice and helpful. Really a wonderful place with lots of kind and knowledgeable people. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of everything that's here, copying things down and taking notes. And I still have many more things I wanted to ask about and discuss.

Is it possible to move the posts to a place like Proboards? There are places that offer free forum hosting, and I've been a member on a Proboards forum for years without any problems. I'm also the admin of a forum hosted on Tapatalk, and we have forum migration options, which I'm pretty sure you can use that when you want to move your forum somewhere else that won't charge you a fee to host it.

Either way, I hope the information here won't be lost. Guess I'll have to copy as much as I can while it's still available.

[nightshroud]

this is sad news indeed this site has been one of my favorite sources for information on
the witch corner of the web
it's been an honor knowing all of you

[stormofwind]

There are free web hosting sites.. maybe let someone take over the boards who's willing to
do it. This board helped me alot. more than other board I have been.

[Corbin]

Discord is free and was [originally] designed to allow gamers to chat [text, audio and eventually even by video webcast].

The easiest way to familiarise yourself with it is to use it - it works by issuing invites (or setting a perminant link). Set up well it allows the owner/admin to regulate it. You would have to tweak the notifications though - I don't have notifications at all unless I'm visiting.

It's just a thought.

https://blog.discordapp.com/parents-gui ... 7d91793e9c

https://disboard.org/servers/tag/pagan

[Starwitch]

I apologize... My lack of focus in general and lack of interest in this forum means that I wandered off after posting that and now there are too many responses to read them all. But the gist of the responses is... wow, this sucks. What else can we do?

Okay, here's what's up. I finally looked at my hosting account to see what's going on. (I have a tendency to avoid website-related stuff because it's so depressing.) Apparently, I renewed for 3 years in Nov 2018. So, assuming I don't ask for a pro-rated refund, we have until Nov 2021. Looks like I closed the VPS (virtual private server) back in 2015 and I've been on a large shared hosting account with extra backup since that time. I'm about half-senile anymore, so it's hard for me to keep up with this stuff. I'm not kidding. I have a brain problem, so I'm sorry I said a bunch of stuff that may not be accurate before I bothered to see what the hosting situation currently was. (For that reason, I'll remove this thread as a global announcement and leave it in the Announcements forum, probably with an adjusted title.)

So here's what $632 bought us for three years. (Basically, we're better off than I was thinking, so that's good!)

I'm sure I can get this down a bit too. I think the "Level 3" added charge has to do with adding additional space because this forum is massive. I occasionally look through it for things I can delete, because there are loads of posts that are just junk, such as the entire "Fun Things" forum. I was cleaning up the Free Readings forum the other day, but I mean, you have to open every single thread and glance through to see if it's worth keeping. Considering there are 215,000 posts, it's a very slow process.

[SapphireRoad]

I'm about half-senile anymore, so it's hard for me to keep up with this stuff. I'm not kidding. I have a brain problem, so I'm sorry I said a bunch of stuff that may not be accurate before I bothered to see what the hosting situation currently was.

Oh I pray for your health.

I can also relate... with air being more and more polluted by tech signals, my concentration is decreasing every year.

[Starwitch]

Thanks SapphireRoad.

You know how I said the forum is always having problems and then I have to hire someone to fix it? Well, I thought it had been doing alright for the past few years, but I had almost completely ignored it during that time. When I went to download a fresh backup today, the file I downloaded was corrupt in some way, so I went to GoDaddy to see if they had a backup (since I'm paying a separate fee for special backups!), but, as it turns out, the Godaddy backups have failed every night for months (maybe years, but I could only see a couple months back), so I don't have a current backup of the forum. The support guy said there was probably malware or something in the database. So, f*ck me... I need to hire someone to try to figure this out and get it working again or else we'll won't have any way to keep all this information - we'll lose all 315,000 posts from the last 15 years or so. GoDaddy offered to sell me a security package for $79/year that would keep an eye on my forum and let me know if things weren't right. Of course, they'll probably let me know through email, which I don't check. Oh, but they did say that they'd fix the problem within 12 hours. So that might be worthwhile. I'd love to get the size of this huge thing down some too. Get rid of some of the junk posts. If anyone wants to help with that, I can set you up as a moderator, but I'm not sure how you'd know which posts were worth keeping. Maybe I'd need to set up a quiz to make sure you understand what's valuable and what's junk.

[Starwitch]

I meant to say 215,000. That's what I mean about my brain and memory. I couldn't remember that number for even a few hours.

[SnowCat]

I think the current moderators can probably weed out some of the clutter. Firebird, Yana and I have been in the trenches for a while, and can probably sort a lot of it out.

[Starwitch]

Please do that, if you get the chance to work on it. I'll be doing the same. Thank you.

[Starwitch]

We want to delete useless stuff. Whether something is deleted should be based on the content, not the age of the content. If something was helpful or true 10 years ago, it's probably still helpful and true now.

[SnowCat]

I understand the flaky brain thing. Age and two closed head injuries play games with mine.

[firebirdflys]

I occasionally look through it for things I can delete, because there are loads of posts that are just junk, such as the entire "Fun Things" forum

I don't know if that would include the Travel section which is a sub forum.
I have a few stories there I would prefer were not deleted. Please, please! do not delete them until I can back them up some how. thank you!
bb, Firebird

[YanaKhan]

We can definitely do that. Please set the rules and we'll clean up.