JohnCh

We're >8" of snow now with another front set to arrive at 4am, bringing more snow through early afternoon. That means even if power is up tomorrow at 7am, there is a decent chance we could have a power outage or Internet resets later in the day. The conversion tool requires a constant connection during the migration. Any downtime will cause problems, so we are taking the prudent approach and delaying the migration to next Sunday provided that day still works for our primary support person at the hosting provider. Apologies for the false start, but I'd rather not risk unnecessary forum downtime. Thanks, John

Thanks Henry. Can anyone recall seeing a youtube video working since the migration to the new hoster on 1/31? If not, then it's likely related to that migration and I'll open a ticket. It looks like a new link will work (at least in preview), but pulling the video ID from the old links and reformatting them as per the below still results in a video not found error. I suppose this could be a red herring and those specific videos are simply no longer there, but my money is on a bug. -John

I did. They love snow and are built for it. I just tried to embed a short video to prove it, but it didn't work. Hmm... Going back to older posts with embedded youtube videos shows them either missing or replaced by links. Is this a special feature just for me or is everyone seeing this behavior? I checked the help topic I posted as well as a this thread by Croc. Thanks, John

We are getting hit with a snowstorm in the Seattle area. It's expected to continue throughout today with more coming tomorrow morning. Given the soil is very saturated, there is a chance that trees will topple and my power could go out. If that happens, I'll be incommunicado and the migration to Invision will not happen as planned. Check back tomorrow morning shortly after 7am PT. If the site is still up, that's what happened and the migration will move to a future date. If it's offline, then check back later in the day and keep your fingers crossed for no issues. -John

Rumors are that Bessie has an evil stepsister. She could well make an appearance in the future... We are at T-2 for the big move. I'll post another update tomorrow, but want to share a little more information now. With any migration there will be issues ranging from very minor (e.g. some emoticons are broken) to holy-crap-what-the-hell-just-happened? If we hit the latter, and can't easily fix things, we will turn vBulletin back on to keep the forum running while we develop and implement plan B. Assuming we go live Sunday or Monday, I will launch the Invision forum with a thread in the help section that identifies known issues in the initial post and where you can post new issues you’ve discovered which we will track down and fix. One issue to expect is the temporary absence of attachments in posts that migrate over. This is a result of the reindexing process that can take a few days to complete. As it does, attachments will begin to reappear. -John

And if you think that's bad folks, you should have read the original -John

SENC, let's just say that if you noticed the site was a little slower than normal for 30 minutes before that post, it wasn't your imagination. That kind of editing puts a serious tax on our server resources. -John

Nothing that glamorous. I edit all of Croc’s communications to ensure they result in neither litigation, public censure, nor involuntary confinement in a foreign country. He is a prolific writer who rarely sleeps, so it keeps me busy. -John

Compared to my real job, this has been kind of relaxing and slow paced -John

As some of you noticed, the site was offline for about 4 hours yesterday. This was not planned and was due to an issue within our vBulletin code. Our new hosting company identified and corrected it, but it confirmed what we have long suspected; there are underlying code issues that have contributed to the interesting "features" we've randomly experienced over the past few years. The good news is the code base is not something moving over on Sunday and we will be starting fresh. The bad news is that because this randomly cropped up, Murphy's Law dictates there is no guarantee a related issue won't arise before Sunday and cause a repeat. Should that occur, and depending on the severity and effort to fix it, we may make the decision to rip off the band-aid and do the upgrade to Invision at that time. If the site does go down for a few hours before Sunday, please check the Twitter feed provided in Post #1 for an update. Thanks, John

I just added an update to the initial post and repeating it here for awareness. The avatar dimensions (called Profile Photo in Invision) are different than on vbulletin and may look strange depending on the shape and resolution of your current avatar. The good news is that you may use a larger image than on the current forum, with max dimensions of 170x170px and up to 490kb. The downside is that the image must be square. If you use a rectangular photo, it will make you crop it by lopping off the long end. Below is a screen of the actual tool so you can more easily see what I mean. If you have time, you might want to play with a new avatar in preparation for Sunday/Monday. Thanks, John

It's a new feature that started cropping up for some of us a couple of weeks ago. Given we're switching forums in a little over a week, there has been no point investigating why it started happening and potentially introducing more problems. I'm looking forward to a fresh start on a less buggy platform. -John

Max, you have PM -John

Is that your Elan? If so, that means there are at least 3 of us on here with yellow FHCs. -John

That's what I meant, hence the term simpletons' machines So to summarize, se7ens are simple, but their owner are complex, and modern Porsches are complex, but their owners are simpletons. Owners of older Porsches, however, are somewhere in between. -John

Based on the other thread about daily drivers, I didn't think any modern car could be called simple. A se7en on the other hand... And Croc, knowing your feelings about Porsches, I think you misread Bill's comment and mentally appended "tons" to the word simple. -John

Almost 500hp, well under 2000lb, and below freezing temperatures. What could possibly go wrong? :jester: Great looking car! -John

Don't. Jinx. It.

Given my involvement, anyone who followed my engine rebuild saga, shouldn't find any of this surprising -John

For those of you keeping score at home, we nearly had a successful migration on Sunday for the first hop to the new hoster. The site started to come back online after ~90 minutes, and was working well, so I attempted to install Invision (the fancy, new forum software platform) on the servers to begin the prep work for the second and final migration. It wouldn't work. Turns out Invision needs PHP 7.1 or later, and we were running PHP 5.6 in our vBulletin installation. Since our version of vBulletin is compatible with PHP 7.1, the simple fix was for our hoster to update our PHP to 7.1. That's when things went sideways and truly bizarre and random issues began to spring up. It turns out that some past customization to our forum was not compatible with PHP 7.1 and it started throwing a tantrum. The fix was to downgrade back to PHP 5.6. The bad news is that we have no idea what is causing the incompatibility, so the original plan of me spending a couple of leisurely weeks preparing the new invision forum for the migration from vBulletin, won't work since I can't install it while we are still running PHP 5.6 (I never thought I would write the letters PHP so many times in a post, but I digress). The new plan is to take down the forum at 7am PT on Sunday, February 14th. As soon as it's down, we'll upgrade PHP to 7.1, I'll install the Invision software, get things as settled as possible, then we'll migrate the data and return with all the existing content (your posts PMs, attachments, etc) on the new forum, ready for you to post at will. Realistically this process will take all day Sunday, but if there are issues, it could bleed into Monday. Although the new forum will be working correctly, some of the improvements we have planned around articles and downloads won't yet be available and will follow in the coming weeks. How does that saying go about the best laid plans of Se7ens and drivers? -John

Wow, I thought this would be the one place where I wouldn't feel like an anachronism, but I was wrong. All the modern conveniences are nice, but for me, they detract from the experience of...well...driving. Even in the slog of commuting, or a long freeway trip, I don't wish to dilute that experience. At some point there will be a corner preceded by a break in traffic. When that happens, I want to be ready. And when that happens, the trip will no longer seem so bad. At least, that's how I view things. My daily drivers depend on the weather, but go between my track prepped '91 Miata with no options other than those supplied by Flyin Miata, and my "luxurious" '95 Porsche 993 C2. Its leather seats, power windows, power door locks, power sunroof, and AC is about all I desire. I also have a beater '06 Outback used for dog runs to the vet, picking up large items from Home Depot, and dealing with snow on those rare occasions it sticks and I really need to be somewhere. Until I bought it, my only vehicle with cupholders was my riding lawnmower (which is still the only one without a clutch). We recently bought my wife a '21 Hyundai Palisade Limited, which is ludicrously feature rich; heated steering wheel, heated and ventilated seats, lane assistance, cameras that display your blind spots in the dash when the turn signal is engaged, heads up navigation, voice control, rear hatch that opens when sensing your presence out back, parking lot sensors, an overhead video of the car generated from the various front & side cameras. The list goes on. I hate to think what it will be like to repair down the road. Gotta love Hyundai's ridiculously long warranty though. Yes, it's a very nice beast of a vehicle; It comforts and cossets, but as my wife recently said, "it almost drives itself." She meant it as a compliment. I considered it a statement of damnation. Now where is that rock I just crawled out from under? -John

That's good :-) This migration (step 1) was to move the existing vBulletin instance to the new Hoster. Step 2 is moving from vBulletin to Invision. We could have simply done both migrations at the same time, but that can introduce issues that are much harder to track down. I'll provide un update on migration #2 and update post 1 with those details later today. Thanks, John

Thanks Steve, and thanks for the content you're providing. The next step is the big one, and the most difficult. New software is purchased, and I'm currently attempting to install it, so I can start the build out process. Once I make sufficient progress in that endeavor, I'll update the final migration date. -John

The Migration has completed! Some of you will be able to access it sooner than others due to DNS replication, but it's already working for me, which is a good sign. If you experience any new problems with the forum, please report them on this thread so we can track them. Thanks, John

Just saw the ebay post. That was anticlimactic :jester: -John