Home Forums FineTunedMac Community FineTunedMac Feedback FineTunedMac is changing servers!

So I've finally become aggravated with the intermittent slow loading and the fact that the current Web host was slow to mitigate against last week's denial of service attack, and I've decided to move the Fine tuned Mac forum to a new server.

The advantages of the move include:

- Greater bandwidth to allow for future expansion as we become more popular
- A local database server, to help eliminate the occasional slow database access that has been the cause of the forum slowdowns we've been plagued with on and off
- Better low-level access to the server, so I will be able to do more myself to help mitigate any future DoS attacks like the ones that were causing us grief a while ago

During this move, we will also be upgrading from UBB.threads 7.5.3, which we are currently running on, to UBB.threads 7.5.5.

The downside of the move is that the IP address of Fine Tuned Mac will change. In practical terms, this means the forum will be down for a period of anywhere between a few hours to as long as 72 hours, depending on where you are, who your ISP is, and how often your ISP updates its name servers.

Since the forum load is lowest over the weekend, the moderators and I feel that the best time to do the move is next weekend, May 22. I'll be closing the forum on Saturday afternoon Pacific time, moving the database and installing the software in its new home, then re-opening the forum Saturday evening. How soon you will be able to see the site again will depend on how often your ISP updates the DNS entries in its name servers. I've noticed that Comcast seems to be pretty quick about this, so those of you on Comcast will probably see the site down only for that afternoon; other users may see the site down for longer periods of time.

Once we're up and running on our new home, it's my belief that the intermittent forum slowdowns will be a thing of the past.

Any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them here or email me directly at tacitr (at) aol (dot) com.

That's good news!

Not with ruining yours or anybody else's in mind, but, without considering possible extraneous circumstances, wouldn't Memorial Day weekend be a more logical time to move?

Edit: DoS attack still going on, huh?

Maybe you could post the dot.quad addy here... or email it to members (when most convenient).

E.g., http://208.109.34.115/

or at least let us know what your registrar's dns server is, and we will DIG it ourselves if and when necessary.

currently looks like it's using GoDaddy: (sorry to hear that!)



still haven't fixed the code-doesn't-wrap bug I see...

Yeah, i groped the domain name info too (which is where that number in my post came from).

Odd how it leads to a page called "Obsidian Fields"
(try it... i.e., copy/paste that green url into Safari).

I guess FTM is some sub.serve.ient part of something else?

As with any non-dedicated hosting, many sites live on the same server as Fine Tuned Mac. That's pretty much inevitable when you use shared hosting at any provider.

It would be possible to put FTM on a non-shared server, of course, though the monthly hosting cost would increase by a factor of twelve were we to do that. Given the current usage pattens and number of users, doing that would be radical overkill.

Once the new server is set up, I plan to see whether or not the forum can be reached by its IP address. The way UBB.threads licensing works, though, is the registration number is tied to a specific domain name, so it's my understanding that if you try to access a UBB.threads board directly by its IP address rather than its domain name, it won't work. I'll test it out and keep people posted, though.

Are we there yet? Clearly I'm still able to access the (old) site. Or has the timeline changed for the move?

No planned changes to the timeline AFAIK...not sure what's up.