The Lifestream to move to a new host

Update 4: Move (almost) complete!: Last night, the domain name propagated (or something) to the new host, meaning that you’re now visiting TLS through Bluehost! We’re currently working on getting the forums back up again, be patient plx kthx. We’ll be doing some regular maintenance once the forums are back online (= update the frontpage software), but that probably won’t cause any problems.

Once again, we thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.

Final update: We’ve restored the forums to working order – no or very little posts will have been lost. We had to re-install the forum software to get it to work again, but that didn’t cause any problems. We’ve also re-installed some of the addons (such as the pretty URLs and the video embedding) on there, but that went well as well. Enjoy, ^_^.

Final update 2: We’ve updated the frontpage software to WordPress 2.7, which mainly adds features to the administration panel, but also offers functionality such as threaded replies out of the box (where they were earlier added through a plugin).

Update 3 (Monday evening): We’ve decided to open up the forums again temporarily, at least until the domain has been moved to the new server. If I’m right, if you see the closed message again, it’ll mean the domain transfer is completed. Once that happens, I’ll get the database from the old host and upload it to the new one again, so no posts or anything will be lost. So, for now, feel free to post at the forums again, for great justice.

Update 2 (Monday): The old host indicate it’s out of their hands now, and right now we’re going to have to wait on the old domain registrar (i.e. the organization that manages the domain) to transfer the domain to the new registrar (Bluehost). This is a process that could take up to seven days according to some, so :/ at that. Sorry about the delays, I’ve only had one other experience with moving a site to a different host, and that was relatively easy because the registrar didn’t have to change (I think).

I’m hoping the seven days is the most pessimistic estimate evar, but who knows? In the meantime, FFOF is where you want to be, fgj.

Update: The files and database have been moved, but we’re having a bit of difficulty getting the domain to transfer properly. Apparently, there’s still something that needs to be done by the old host, but seeing that it’s past regular working hours and I doubt they’re working on Sundays, I don’t think the move will be able to complete this weekend.

In the meantime, feel free to visit and/or post at FFOF, for great justice. There’s also a thread on the matter there.

With TLS’s increasing popularity over the last few months, we’ve kinda out-grown our current host – not due to excessive visitors or anything, but both too much bandwidth usage and the host’s fair use policy being too low (imho). Because of that, we’ve decided to move from Dutch hoster Mijndomein to the popular Bluehost, which claims to offer unlimited bandwidth at a reasonable price.

We’ve already arranged the hosting and have unlocked the domain, so we’re all set for moving the site and the forums now. We’ll initiate the move this afternoon, so expect some downtime (up to 24 hours due to the domain name alterations having to propagate through the internets, although that shouldn’t take more than an hour for most people) later today. We will attempt to reduce downtime to a minimum, for your convenience.

During the move, the forums will be closed for posting for a bit to prevent posts you’ve made during the move from being lost. Also, we will attempt to upgrade the frontpage’s software to WordPress 2.7, which brings some features that are mainly important to site staff, but can also be useful to people with an account on the frontpage – the dashboard has some large changes compared to the current version.

No big problems are expected during the move, and we’ve got very recent backups of Everything, so nothing should be lost.

Also, we will open up a donation option to members, so that we can afford future webhosting and possibly an upgrade of the forum software to vBulletin (which is both a much requested feature and contains much requested features compared to our current forum software SMF). But more on that in a future news announcement.

We will initiate the move in a few hours, so finish up your business on the forums and prepare to lose your favorite site for a small amount of time, =D.