Site Downtime: September 1, 2018 - And we're back!

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The Goffman Prophecies
Quizbowl Detective Extraordinaire
Posts: 1611
Joined: Wed Mar 03, 2004 10:25 pm
Location: Wichita, KS

Site Downtime: September 1, 2018 - And we're back!

Post by The Goffman Prophecies »

Saturday is going to be moving day for the Quizbowl Resource Center. While you're enjoying a long Labor Day weekend, this site - including the forums, the tournament database, and the packet archive - will be moving into some new digs. Thanks to PACE and a contribution from Microsoft, we'll be moving the whole site to a bigger, faster server with some additional storage space and plenty of room for expansion in the years to come.

What does this mean to you?

The site will be offline and inaccessible after 11:00 EDT on Saturday, September 1. The forums will be in maintenance mode and the remainder of the site content will be read-only while we move everything over to the new server. A new server also means a new IP address, so there may be some delay once we update the DNS records before you're able to access the new site. It could be up to 48 hours, but you will likely see this happen much faster.

The overall downtime should only take a few hours, but will be heavily dependent on the speed of the data transfers and any configuration changes that need to be made. Most of the changes will be invisible, but will result in a stronger, more stable, and more robust system for us going forward.

Please feel free to PM or email me if you have specific questions in the meantime.
Dan Goff
HSQB sysadmin

Virginia Tech '13
South Carolina '15
and a couple other places
Not Thomas Dale HS

STAAATS
User avatar
The Goffman Prophecies
Quizbowl Detective Extraordinaire
Posts: 1611
Joined: Wed Mar 03, 2004 10:25 pm
Location: Wichita, KS

Re: Site Downtime: September 1, 2018 - And we're back!

Post by The Goffman Prophecies »

Things are back up! In addition to a new server, the forums have been updated to the latest version of phpBB and I cleaned up some of the old style options that did not work correctly. The currently active theme uses responsive design and should work well both on traditional PCs and mobile devices.

As always, feel free to contact me privately if you have any feedback.
Dan Goff
HSQB sysadmin

Virginia Tech '13
South Carolina '15
and a couple other places
Not Thomas Dale HS

STAAATS
User avatar
The Goffman Prophecies
Quizbowl Detective Extraordinaire
Posts: 1611
Joined: Wed Mar 03, 2004 10:25 pm
Location: Wichita, KS

Re: Site Downtime: September 1, 2018 - And we're back!

Post by The Goffman Prophecies »

I wanted to take a moment to say thanks to those of you that have sent me some feedback so far. Based on this feedback, I've made a couple tweaks:

1) The "hsquizbowl.org" buzzer logo in the top-left was changed to redirect back to the database instead of the forum index. A couple of you noted that it had become habit to use the logo to get back to the forum index (myself included), so I've changed that back.

1a) The "Sponsored by" text used to link back to the PACE web site. For the moment that is not functioning.

2) Some have noted that they preferred the older "subsilver2" style compared to the newer responsive style that's used by default. I added a new style called Legacy that replaces some of this look/feel to the site. To enable it:
  • Access your User Control Panel via the dropdown menu next to your username in the top right of the screen
  • Click on the Board Preferences tab
  • Under My Style, change the dropdown from prosilver to Legacy
  • Hit Submit, and then go back to the board index to view the new style
Dan Goff
HSQB sysadmin

Virginia Tech '13
South Carolina '15
and a couple other places
Not Thomas Dale HS

STAAATS
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