Exodus Strength

Welcome back! Sorry for the extended downtime.

The TLDR:

• The forum is on a new web host, and has been upgraded to the latest software
• The forum is also on a new domain, but only temporarily. I've redirected the .com to this site, but expect to reinstate it properly in the next week or so
• There are probably things that need fixing, but the important stuff appears to work OK
• Where the site is hosted and how we avoid these issues moving forward is still to be determined, but I think this latest outage will probably be a catalyst for positive changes

The long version, for anyone who is interested enough to read it:

The Cause:

Our forum software (phpBB) hadn't been updated for a while so it was a bit behind the times. Then the web host (HostGator) upgraded the server to a newer version of PHP that was incompatible with the phpBB version we were running.

The Fix:

An upgrade to phpBB would've likely fixed it, but upgrading a forum that's already broken does add some complication. Also, given there had been previous issues with HostGator and there'd been talk of moving it anyway, I migrated the forum to a different web host.That host just happened to support using older PHP versions, so I was able to drop the version back down and get the forums working again, then perform the upgrades to the latest version of phpBB and also then upgrade the PHP version to the new version (same as HostGator did - except without breaking the site).

The Current Situation:

The migration and upgrade should've brought across all of our data, and I was able to get most of the custom functionality (lifter rankings, training log index, etc) working again. The main thing we've lost for now is our customised themes, because the theme engine seems to be slightly different in the new version of phpBB - but that's something we can work on moving forward.

The Future:

We have options now where we can move the site back to HostGator if we want to (no thanks) or a completely different host. Personally, I am inclined to leave it where it is for now and see how the performance is once everyone is using it again. But Marc still ultimately owns the forum and I'd like to leave that decision up to him (with input from Manveer and Matt and anyone else he feels worth listening to).

I'm happy to keep helping out with the admin side as it seems like there's a bit of a gap to fill, both in availability and maybe in skills, too. If they want me to, of course!

Realistically, I'd really like to see the site growing again - I feel like it has shrunk a fair bit since its peak - some people have left due to disagreements and changes in life priorities, but the outages over time have also contributed to the exodus from Exodus, as it were. Personally, I really like this place, there's been a lot of good content and discussion here over the years and I'd hate to see it die off completely - so I hope that with some changes we can start seeing more new people come in (and maybe some oldies come back).

Thanks for reading!

Thanks, Ben!

Thank you for taking on this project which I’m sure was/is a huge PITA!

Thanks!

TimK wrote: ↑Thu Apr 21, 2022 5:22 pm Thank you for taking on this project which I’m sure was/is a huge PITA!

Surprisingly it wasn't that bad. I've had worse.

Thanks Ben! I really like this community and would like to see it grow again.

Thank you very much for all the work you have put in to get everything up and running again, Ben!

Ben, Thanks for getting the site up and running again.

Thanks for fixing the forum, Ben!

I blame this guy:

Thank you!

Huge thank you, @BenM!

BenM wrote: ↑Thu Apr 21, 2022 4:06 pm Personally, I really like this place, there's been a lot of good content and discussion here over the years and I'd hate to see it die off completely - so I hope that with some changes we can start seeing more new people come in (and maybe some oldies come back).

Same! Thank you for taking this on.

I know this has been mentioned in the past and I don't believe anyone has been taken up on it, but if a small monetary donation helps keep this forum on a stable host I'm happy to chip in. I definitely get at least $50/year of utility out of the site.

mikeylikey wrote: ↑Fri Apr 22, 2022 7:44 am I blame this guy:

Yeah that @Root is a troublemaker.

brkriete wrote: ↑Fri Apr 22, 2022 11:20 am
Same! Thank you for taking this on.

I know this has been mentioned in the past and I don't believe anyone has been taken up on it, but if a small monetary donation helps keep this forum on a stable host I'm happy to chip in. I definitely get at least $50/year of utility out of the site.

I needed a project this week. If I don't keep myself busy my brain does bad things.

Thanks for the offer of funding too. I think the ongoing cost is something Marc was concerned about too. The hosting I've put it on is relatively inexpensive, and I'm ok with absorbing that cost for now - but if it does ultimately need upgrading then that might change, so it'd be good to have a plan.

It could be something as simple as a PayPal donate button, or perhaps we could tack a small margin onto the merchandise sales to cover hosting and domain registration costs - @mgil might be the man to discuss this with. Whatever we do it just needs to be transparent.

@BenM, huge thanks for helping out here!

Yeah, I have the one site set up to tack on a fee, but I honestly haven’t checked in recently. I also have the custom logo for a tee, but haven’t found someone that will print it, albeit I have also not been searching all that hard recently.

Life has been majorly busy for me over the last year or so, and I apologize for being a bit lax at times with promotion stuff. The IG account has been mostly idle as well, much of being that I’ve cut way back on social media.

mgil wrote: ↑Fri Apr 22, 2022 6:08 pm @BenM, huge thanks for helping out here!

Yeah, I have the one site set up to tack on a fee, but I honestly haven’t checked in recently. I also have the custom logo for a tee, but haven’t found someone that will print it, albeit I have also not been searching all that hard recently.

Life has been majorly busy for me over the last year or so, and I apologize for being a bit lax at times with promotion stuff. The IG account has been mostly idle as well, much of being that I’ve cut way back on social media.

You don't have anything to apologise for - we all have lives and jobs and families and we do this on our free time.

It's not a pressing issue right now anyway, so long as the site is performing ok and the host isn't complaining. Current hosting costs are only a little more than a cup of barista coffee per month. Being that it's hosted here in Australia I was concerned it might be slow for those geographically distant, but so far so good. We'll see how it goes once the .com domain points here, as traffic might increase.

Must fix the issue with unread posts not working....

Thank you again for bringing the site backup! I don’t envy your job of fixing prod issues and having vendor issues.

Strong work @BenM, thanks!

BenM wrote: ↑Fri Apr 22, 2022 2:16 pm

mikeylikey wrote: ↑Fri Apr 22, 2022 7:44 am I blame this guy:

Yeah that @Root is a troublemaker.

I totally hacked the PHDs and warned all the includes

OK - hopefully non-logged in users might see this.

We've just reinstated the previous exodus-strength.com domain name. It should start working again within the next 24 hours.

As such, I've changed the cookie domain of this site back to exodus-strength.com (rather than .co) - I found that for me, that broke my ability to login until I cleared my browser cache.

If you're having trouble logging in, please clear your cache and hopefully all will be well; and very soon we all should be able to access this site via the .com like before.