New server coming soon

Official announcements pertaining to NWN Campaigns will be made here
User avatar
Venture
Site Admin
Posts:269
Location:Pennsylvania
Contact:
New server coming soon

Post by Venture » Tue Aug 19, 2008 6:20 pm

Keep an eye here for temporary access info that may come into play soon. For a variety of reasons too boring to go into here (speed, size, inodes), the site will be moving to a new server, hopefully in the next few days. After the move, you shouldn't see any difference in how things operate now (address will be the same, etc.), except perhaps a speed increase.

During the move, however, there will be DNS issues. As you tech geeks out there know, all website addresses are really just a bunch of numbers. When you type in a name (like http://www.nwncampaigns.com), you first go to what is known as a "DNS server," which is sort of like the yellow pages for the internet. That DNS server says, "ah, this person typed in nwncampaigns.com, which means they want the web site with the numerical address of [whatever the number is]." You then go to the website.

At some point, I will "flick the switch" so that nwncampaigns.com points to the new server. However, there are many DNS servers around the internet, and it will take time (usually 24-48 hours) for the change to propagate to all of them. Not all of you will see the change at the same time (i.e. some of you will get routed to the old site, while some go to the new).

To make sure that the database (forum posts, etc.) stays uniform and that no posts are lost in the translation, I will at some point make the old server "read only", and try to put up a link on the old server that will take you to the numerical address of the new server. I believe there are ways to automate it, but I also understand that can get ugly. But I'll look into making it as painless as possible (if any hosting experts want to drop me a line, feel free).

I'll announce here once I'm getting ready to flick the switch, and put up the temporary numerical link to the new server. If you can't get into the forum, check the front page for the link. I'm hoping it is soon, and possibly as early as tonight. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Post Reply

Return to “Official Announcements”