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I'm preparing to move FineTunedMac to a new server. This move will speed up the site considerably, and provide more bandwidth as we grow. In addition, the new server will have an SSL security certificate, so FineTunedMac will be accessible with https as well as http. This will increase security and prevent users from having their accounts hijacked if they log in from malicious unsecured WiFi hotspots. It will also improve FTM's Google search rankings.

I plan to do some long-overdue database maintenance during the move as well.

I plan to do the move on Wednesday, March 15. During the move, the site will be unavailable, probably for about two hours. During this time, you'll see a "site closed for maintenance" message if you try to log in or post new messages. I'll be moving the site late at night, to minimize disruption and downtime. Gods of fortune and databases willing, it should be finished by 3AM Pacific time Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

I'll keep everyone updated as the move gets closer.

Thanks for the heads-up; I hope everything goes smoothly and according to plan.

Ditto artie's note…..it's in my calendar.

The downtime lasted a little bit longer than expected, owing to difficulties moving the database and correctly configuring the site to use SSL, but everything appears to be working properly.

Please let me know if:

- You encounter difficulty logging in
- You see any error messages in your browser about security certificate troubles or insecure content warnings
- You notice any missing posts

Also, moderators: the control panel and mod pages should *always* use SSL (that is, it should not be possible to see them over plain http:// even if you try).

When I first checked just before 0300 CST (0900 UTC) the switchover was already in progress. At 0530 CST (1130 UTC) 'twould appear that it is taking a tad longer than anticipated.

There seemed to be some niggling interim glitches (most of which disappeared as fast as they appeared), such as:
Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '/home/fveaux/public_html/finetunedmac.com/forums/libs/functions_forums.inc.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/php5/lib/pear') in /home/tstmmdx/finetunedmac.com/forums/scripts/cfrm.inc.php on line 24

At 1045 CST (1645 UTC), the home page came up only to be replaced by the warning:

YOUR CONNECTION IS NOT SECURE
The owner of www.finetunedmac.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.
www.finetunedmac.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for the following names: franklinveaux.com, www.franklinveaux.com
Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

And when I elected to enter an "exception", HostGator came back with 404 - Page does not exist.

Access now (1100 CST / 1700 UTC) allowed, but ONLY under my allowing the exception to security - the connection is only partially encrypted according to Firefox.

ADDENDUM
Strange behavior: The home page (https://www.finetunedmac.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=cfrm) as well as the edit window (https://www.finetunedmac.com/forums/ubbt...p;what=showflat) show up as fully secured (and verified by Let's Encrypt). On the other hand, the latter's post (https://www.finetunedmac.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=44000#Post44000) shows up as Not Secure with the additional notation that "Parts of this page are not secure (such as images)" with no verification by Let's Encrypt.

Otherwise all seems well ... although I did have to reset my FTM clock from offset of 0 to +2 (so others may wish to check their offsets, given that the new server is 2 hours different from the previous one).

Thanks! I didn't see that "not secure" message, but I've tracked down the cause--a bug in UBB threads caused it to try to continue showing user avatar pictures insecurely if they were uploaded insecurely. That's been fixed. You should now be seeing 'secure' everywhere.

[Edited to add] The funky stuff I was doing to randomly change my avatar was also sometimes breaking security. I didn't feel like modifying my random-avatar script so I'm just using a normal avatar now.

That's weird!

I used to be aware of your constantly changing avatar, but unless my mind is playing tricks on me it's been static for a considerable period of time. (Actually, I can't say with 100% certainty that it's been truly static as opposed to changing, but veeery infrequently, but I'm 100% certain that there are avatars that I used to see that I haven't seen in ages.)

Did you relocate FTM's server to a different time zone?

I just had to change my offset from plus 2 hours to plus 4. (Is 1 hour EDT related?)

Yep, the new server is in LA.

Weird that the avatar wasn't changing for you. Maybe your browser was caching it? I don't know.

I take it that you didn't read the addedum to my earlier post (#44000).

Is that LA as in Los Angeles (PDT) or LA as in Louisiana (CDT)?

Either way that's weird, given that my time zone is always CST (which is now equivalent to MDT) and therefore ostensibly only a 1-hour offset (+ or –) from the server. And yet, as noted earlier, I now require a +2-hour offset to make it jibe with local time.

I just did the same.

Judging from the length of FTM's downtime, that must have been quite an ordeal for you.

Hope you made it through OK!

This, too, is curious, tacit... For at least a month I was seeing one of three screens when I refreshed my FTM Forums page either by navigating to it from elsewhere or with command-R:

1. Most times my screen showed no anomalies.
2. Sometimes it showed a horizontal bar more or less the same color as the darkest color I see on the page (which is in the corners of its very bottom) and about 1" wide across the top, overlaying, but not obscuring, the widget blurb, and the only way I could get rid of it was by refreshing the page.
3. Sometimes the color was restricted to one or the other of the entire "Threads" boxes for the iTunes... and Mac OS X... Forums, but the color faded away in less than 5 seconds.

And since you did whatever you did... I haven't seen a single screen anomaly (and they occurred with more than enough frequency for me to have seen many by now).

Was anybody else seeing what I saw?

While I don't have any difficulty logging in, there has been a change in the process.

Before, I would click on [Log in] and get a dialogue box asking if the process wanted me to retrieve a password. I would confirm, an autofill would occur, and I'd log in.

Now, clicking on [Log in} autofills the Username and Password without any confirmation. It's not a show-stopper (and I'd say even easier than before), however it is a change which may or may not be meaningful.

Edit: This only occurs with my iMac (OSX 10.8.5), not with my iPad (iOS 10.2.1).

The move shouldn't have affected the way autofill works, so I've got nothing on that.

The move involved transferring a 300MB database file, and as it turns out, normal database tools max out at 200MB--above that, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to move a database. I picked up a few new skills, and here we are!

You said that the move "will speed up the site considerably", but my Forums page now takes noticeably longer to load when I refresh it.

Other than that, though, the site does react faster than it did before.

Are you seeing the same thing? Anybody?

I'm not seeing that. Just a thought here: Spectrum (my ISP, aka Time Warner) has some spotty service in my area. They exchanged modems four times for me before determining that faulty modems were not the issue. So far, it has not been resolved.

What I'm seeing is limited to FTM and began concurrently with the server change.

Also, the persistent screen anomaly I mentioned earlier reappeared, but only once, while the temporary anomalies are still MIA, and their changed behavior also began concurrently with the server change.

The persistent screen anomaly has reappeared for the second time since the server move, but the temporary ones are still MIA. (Both reared their ugly heads numerous times every day prior to the move.)

I can't imagine why this would have anything to do with the move, but...

I don't see your persistently screen anomaly in your screen shot and neither have I seen it on my screen.

You don't see a blue bar at the top of my screen overlaying the FTM widget blurb?

Just to clarify, "persistent" means it doesn't fade away on its own, rather I've got to refresh the page to get rid of it; the blue in the "Threads" boxes fades away, but I haven't seen it since the server move.

And quantifying the slowdown I see, when I hit command-R with the bottom half of the Forums page visible, the top always refreshes first and then snaps down to the bottom, but the time lag before it snaps down has gotten annoyingly longer since the move.

I'm finding that (apparently) the new server is a tad rickety, ie taking unusually long to load and all too often crapping out in the process, with Firefox providing its standard error message:

Secure Connection Failed
The connection to www.finetunedmac.com was interrupted while the page was loading.
• The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
• Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

Plus sometimes extended delay times between keying in and appearance on screen (which has been happening repeated during this session; eg, I was just able to type "during" completely before it showed up on screen).

And still no answer to this query and observation.

At 8:32 PM EDT, "Current server time is: 03/21/17 04:32 PM" per my prefs.

Something's wacky, because the only place I can think of where it's 4:32 PM at the moment is Gilligan's Island.

It seems like the new server is in Los Angeles, and something somewhere hasn't compensated for daylight savings time (which I suggested in my OP).

....not sure where your time offset issue came from, as my previous offset of +1 remains correct for both the old server and the new.

My recollection is that the old server was in Mountain Time hence my +2 (now +4) in NYC, so shouldn't you, in Pacific Time, have been -1?

And if the server moved to Los Angeles, then you'd be even +1 for the apparent daylight time screw up.

Edit: If everything's working correctly, you're not +1 from anywhere in the US in Pacific Time.

Maybe my original setting was wrong and through a fortuitous turn of mis-settings, it is now able to correct for the server being on Pacific Standard incorrectly while the rest of the US (save Arizona of course) has sprung forward.....

I figured either the server was on PST not PDT or located somewhere in Alaska.

Personally I think Arizona is right in eschewing Daylight Savings Time.

Thanks for clarifying Alaska Time; it appeared to be 2 hours earlier than Pacific Time on the first map I looked at.

Thanks, all, for repeatedly ignoring my queries (while answering everyone else's). Glad to know where I stand.

No need to get snippy! tacit's the only one who can answer your questions authoritatively, and he hasn't weighed in yet.

But I think it's cystal clear that his LA meant Los Angeles, not Louisiana, and that the server isn't set to daylight savings time.

The new server is in Los Angeles, not Louisiana. (I realize that was totally unclear of me.)

It seems like what one hand giveth, the other taketh away as far as speed goes. The new server has a much faster database behind it, but the SSL encryption does seem to slow things down. (SSL adds overhead to the Web page requests. Usually it's not a big deal, but since FTM's pages are dynamically generated, they have to be re-encrypted each time, and I think that's why it's slower.)

I dunno; Louisiana never even crossed my mind until grelber mentioned it. I mean, when's the last time you heard somebody say "LA" without meaning "Los Angeles"...even in Louisiana?

I assume that your confirmation that the new server's located in LA answers the daylight savings time question, too.

I think FTM is now slightly slower to respond, but it's in my face only under the circumstances I mentioned in post #44071; in general, even as it's a bit slower it seems a bit "snappier" at the same time.

Say "el-a"; write L.A., something native Californians are taught at an early age.

Updating, the temporary anomalies eventually reappeared, but (and I hope I'm not jumping the gun here) I've seen no anomalies, persistent or temporary, during the 24 hours since I upgraded to Safari 11.

This was a strange issue, because I never noticed any anomalies on any other site during the six months I saw them here.

Well, I spoke a bit too soon.

I haven't seen this persistent screen anomaly in Safari 11, but these have begun appearing; they're mostly transient, but sometimes they're persistent.

And now for something brand new and completely different.

Wow! That's bizarre.

And I'm still seeing both of the other anomalies.

That's gotta be some sort of incompatibility associated with Safari 11. I've never come across any of those anomalies using Firefox.

By the bye, your 'sleep cycle' must have gone off-kilter. Not used to seeing your contributions outside of late-night.

I think I've been seeing those anomalies in Safari since v 10, and I seem to be the only one here seeing them. (It's not important enough to search for others.)

Nor do I ever see anything unusual at ANY website other than FTM.

Yeah, I quit trying to fight my body and now wake up sometime between 10-12 for a coupl'a hours and a bite to eat, and then go back to sleep.