Scheduled Site Maintenance & Upgrade

[webmaster]

Actually, firefox is not a ware. It is one of the most popular internet browsers today, a good alternative to Internet Explorer!

 

[Supe]

he does not need Firefox... quit pedling your wares.

It's not my 'wares', it's an alternative browser and it may help a fellow forum member browse gallery. I have a theory that his browser is crashing and is causing the 'freeze' he is experiencing. Firefox was proferred to test that theory out. If Firefox also crashes, then we know it's not IE. This is called troubleshooting. Sometimes it involves keeping an open mind and trying alternatives.

 

[webmaster]

Move has been pushed to start from Friday, June 16th, 2006 (evening, Eastern US time)

 

[steelbird]

$230+ per month... who are you on SDF?

So, what's the income? I don't see many ad on both side. Can you balance the expense?

 

[webmaster]

Defence Talk is now on the new server and move is completed.

 

[Grand Danois]

Defence Talk is now on the new server and move is completed.

And DT has become lightning fast!

 

[webmaster]

Good to hear that! enjoy!

 

[webmaster]

We will be moving to new (better/faster) server and network soon:

Server Processor: Dual Processor Dual Core Opteron 270 2.0GHz
Second Processor: Dual Core Opteron 270 - 2.0GHz
Ram / Memory: 4 GB
Disk System/HD: 3 x 250GB SATA II RAID 5
First Hard Drive: 250GB SATA II
Second Hard Drive: 250GB SATA II
Third Hard Drive: 250GB SATA II
Disk Controller: SATA RAID 5 Disk Controller
Uplink Port: 100 Mbps Public & Private Networks (upgradable to 1000Mbps)

I will put up exact date and timing soon!

Thanks and enjoy!

 

[webmaster]

Hello Folks,

Its been a long time since we had any updates to the forum and gallery. So, I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on an up coming upgrade and forum/gallery maintenance. It means that the forums and the gallery will be unavailable for hour or so.

When?
-May 31st to June 1st.

Expected downtime for the forum and the gallery?
- 1 to 2 hours... but could be less.

What are the new features for the forum?

• Inline spam management & prevention
• Thread tagging
• Search cloud / tag cloud
• Thread prefixes
• Reciprocal friendships between users
• Public visitor messaging on profile pages with 'conversation' feature
• User picture galleries with user comment facility
• User-created social groups with invite only and moderated membership options
• Extended member profile pages
• Customizable member profile pages with admin-controlled styling abilities
• Inline editing of custom user profile fields
• Lightbox viewer for attached images
• Viewable and comparable history maintained for post edits
• Extended re-authentication for inline moderation actions
• Notices system for navigation bar
• Multiple human-verification systems including reCAPTCHA, image verification and Q/A
• User change history
• Social bookmarking integration

What are the new features to look for in the Gallery?

. Private Messaging (PMs, notices for activity on photos and ratings, new photos from buddies,
message board activity)
. Built-in RSS (per category basis)
. Usergroup optimization resulting in significant reductions in memory usage for medium-large sites
. Lightbox integration for popover images
. Uniform thumbnails option (when using IM, all thumbnails are uniform in size and cropped from center
. Link codes for medium thumbnail/html codes
. Invites System for users to invite and track invitiations
. Mature Content flag to "hide" mature images from unregistered users (or users who select to not see mature pictures)
. Buddy Lists
. Who's Online page
. Internal Registration - Avatars, Titles and Signatures
. JavaScript usage for approve/delete options in admin bulk section (no page refresh)
. Redesigned data area for showphoto, more AJAX/JavaScript features
. Redesigned profile page - buddy lists, more stats, bio pages
. Slideshow Pause/Resume
. combined usergroup queries into 1 query versus multiple for each usergroup membership
. CAPTCHA image verification for new registrations
. Changed voting system to track votes seperately from ratings
. Use of icons versus text on showphoto page (famfam icons)

If anybody has any comments or suggestions, feel free to post here.

Thanks and enjoy!

 

[webmaster]

We will be moving to new (better/faster) server and network soon:

Server Processor: Dual Processor Dual Core Opteron 270 2.0GHz
Second Processor: Dual Core Opteron 270 - 2.0GHz
Ram / Memory: 4 GB
Disk System/HD: 3 x 250GB SATA II RAID 5
First Hard Drive: 250GB SATA II
Second Hard Drive: 250GB SATA II
Third Hard Drive: 250GB SATA II
Disk Controller: SATA RAID 5 Disk Controller
Uplink Port: 100 Mbps Public & Private Networks (upgradable to 1000Mbps)

I will put up exact date and timing soon!

Thanks and enjoy!

It seems we have to go through this every year... first of all, sorry about the outage for couple of days.

As a result, we've upgraded to a better server:

Server Processor: Quad Core Xeon 5430 - 2.66GHz (Harpertown) - 2 x 12MB cache
Second Processor: Quad Core Xeon 5430 - 2.66GHz (Harpertown) - 2 x 12MB cache
So, all together, over 21Ghz of CPU processing power.
Ram / Memory: 8 GB
Disk System/HD: 4x Raptor 10k RPM HDs
First Hard Drive: 74 GB Raptor 10K
In RAID 05 Configuration:
Second Hard Drive: 150 GB Raptor 10K
Third Hard Drive: 150 GB Raptor 10K
Fourth Hard Drive: 150 GB Raptor 10K
Disk Controller: SATA RAID 5 Disk Controller
Uplink Port: 100 Mbps Public & Private Networks (upgradeable to 1000Mbps)
Price: Don't ask!

I would love to hear your comments and performance of the site over the next few weeks?

Thanks and enjoy!

 

[Tasman]

That's good news. It is frustrating when it takes a long time to log in, post, switch threads, etc. Good luck with the new system.

Tas

 

[webmaster]

Forum software upgraded... slowly all of the features should be visible.

enjoy!

 

[eckherl]

Good to have defence talk up and running again Web Master, I thought you finally had enough of the whole lot of us and decided to pulled the plug.

 

[F-15 Eagle]

Oh so thats why I had trouble getting on. And I thought it was my stupid compuiter again....

 

[radiosilence]

Hey Webs, good to see DT back up and running. What happen to the feature that showed threads with new posts at the bottom of the page?

 

[webmaster]

It will be restored sometime today.

 

[webmaster]

We had issues with the server last night/early this morning (EST). I will be checking what happened but everything should be okay now. If you experience any issues, please send email or post here(if you can?).

Thanks and enjoy!

 

[OPSSG]

Like John below, 2 days ago, I too found that DT was not working. The DT forum (with the news still working) went down first, followed by the rest of whole site. When it first returned, it seem a little slow and the threads did not refresh properly. Thankfully this has been rectified and I'm not having trouble with it anymore.

Cheers

The other day an advisory on a posting to this forum topic appeared inquiring about the importation of drug paraphernalia to the United States. Yeah, right. Immediately subsequent to this porridge-brained posting, everything collapsed. I'm assuming a virus was introduced by the aforementioned poster. Can you confirm...or was there another cause?

 

[webmaster]

OPSSG, do you or John have screenshot of that? importation of drug paraphernalia? We had an issue with the server but I would love to see what you guys saw to further narrow it down.

Thank you!

 

[OPSSG]

OPSSG, do you or John have screenshot of that? importation of drug paraphernalia? We had an issue with the server but I would love to see what you guys saw to further narrow it down.

Thank you!

Sorry, WebMaster, I did not attempt to capture any screen shots.

I did not even see the 'post on drug paraphernalia' seen by John. I only know that I could not enter DT's forum. Therefore, I went to the DT news section instead, which still worked. But even the news section went down thereafter.

Maybe you can PM John for more info.