Hogville Maintenance scheduled - Sun, Jul 5th from 8 PM CST to 2 AM Jul 6th

[Doug]

On Sunday night, we're doing two things....

* Upgrading the forum software to the latest version;
* Relocating several servers from one facility to the other

The site will be down HARD for at least two hours... and then intermittently up after that.

Don't bug me about restoration of features/capabilities, please. They will come back when I can get to them.

This affects ALL of Hogville's sister sites, as well.

[Doug]

Let's keep this thread on topic, please.

[DeltaBoy]

Thanks Douglas we need the Ville running at top speed for this Fall.

[Vildsvin]

Hogville is hosted from it's own server site, eh?

[Vildsvin]

So this is just a general update question as far as layout and design goes.. it if doesnt belong here then my bad..

This may be a question that is asked frequently by relatively new folks like myself.. has there been any discussion of possibly redesigning the site to bring it a little further along into the 21st century. I dont been that as I slight again anyone.. I understand there is merit to not fixing things that arent "broke".. but there is also something to be said for aesthetics.

You may not want to go into great detail but this is a question Ive long been wanting to ask.

[Doug]

Hogville is hosted from it's own server site, eh?

A lot of people (especially those with a tech understanding of how servers/hosting work) would be shocked as to what it takes to power Hogville.

2x Load balancers
6x Front End Web Servers (can be expanded, quite easily, within 30 minutes or less)
1x Central File Server (CDN / NginX)
2x Database servers (Master/Slave pairing)

And that's just to run the site itself. That doesn't include email (separate cluster) or DNS (separate cluster).

It's amazing to watch how Hogville has grown from 2003 to present.

has there been any discussion of possibly redesigning the site to bring it a little further along into the 21st century.

Based off Hogvillian's reactions to both the ESPN and Arkansas Razorbacks website changes, we're not going to shift things around TOO much.

Yes, there are planned changes coming, but nothing drastic. Just subtle ones to make the site more mobile friendly... and to do some small tweaks, plus a little modernization.

[Vildsvin]

A lot of people (especially those with a tech understanding of how servers/hosting work) would be shocked as to what it takes to power Hogville.

2x Load balancers
6x Front End Web Servers (can be expanded, quite easily, within 30 minutes or less)
1x Central File Server (CDN / NginX)
2x Database servers (Master/Slave pairing)

And that's just to run the site itself. That doesn't include email (separate cluster) or DNS (separate cluster).

It's amazing to watch how Hogville has grown from 2003 to present.

Why, if I may ask, was the decision made to continue to maintain your own site rather than use a big time web hosting company?

[cubsfan5150]

Search function going to work or will it be another few years?

[Doug]

Why, if I may ask, was the decision made to continue to maintain your own site rather than use a big time web hosting company?

I dunno... maybe the fact that I'm also employed by said company has a lot to do with it?

The fact that I can physically head to the DC to work on the servers directly, maybe?

Cost standpoint?

Lack of scalability by these so-called big companies?

Bigger is not always better, especially with "Name Brand" organizations. You're paying for the name, not the service with those guys.

Take your pick.

[Vildsvin]

I dunno... maybe the fact that I'm also employed by said company has a lot to do with it?

The fact that I can physically head to the DC to work on the servers directly, maybe?

Cost standpoint?

Lack of scalability by these so-called big companies?

Bigger is not always better, especially with "Name Brand" organizations. You're paying for the name, not the service with those guys.

Take your pick.

Thats cool that the company afforded you that opportunity. I also work in a DC but Im sure i'd get a laugh if I asked about borrowing rack space

[Doug]

Thats cool that the company afforded you that opportunity. I also work in a DC but Im sure i'd get a laugh if I asked about borrowing rack space

Borrowing? You're funny.

[Doug]

All, since the downtime took longer than expected, I wasn't able to roll out the forum upgrades.

I'm going to get that part rescheduled to next Sunday night, 9 PM Eastern (8 PM Arkansas time).

I'll re-post this up on Thursday.