Pet Talk Now

Okay, Pet Talk is open again - with a couple caveats.

Go ahead and post, but right now "New Posts" will not work. We have disabled the search feature entirely, as we need to rebuild the index for all 2.6 million posts, but cannot do that until we move to the new server, hopefully tomorrow.

So just until then, if you post anythings you really really value, keep a copy for yourself on your own computer.

And yes, you read right - we are having to move to another new server, as the one we moved to over the weekend has a fatal flaw with its drives. Scary, frustrating and because of the holiday, we know we won't get a new machine today, hope to get it tomorrow.

Thanks you all for your patience, please bear with us!

And for now, be leery of attaching anything, wait until we are on a stable server again!

Oh YOW - I hope that server is under warranty! Will post carefully....promise! :)

I think I'll just lurk after this post, till things get straightened out. Who said this would be easy - right??:eek:

Thanks for posting this warning Karen. I was going to post some pics from my vacay (really cool stuff - visited a rainforest, etc.), but I'll wait till we're on the stable server. I didn't recognize PT when I was logged on this morning from my phone, it was a bit of a surprise to say the least :D

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Originally Posted by pomtzu

I think I'll just lurk after this post, till things get straightened out. Who said this would be easy - right??:eek:

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What she said. Lots of crossed fingers and toes, and good luck wishes for both of you :love:

Thanks for understanding, folks. And no, Candace, there's kind of no such thing as "under warranty."

Once we are stable, we hope to add new layouts for phones, too, Alysser! But right now, the priority is stability, of course.

The forum disappeared just as I was posting a new thread and I panicked and thought I'd broke it for a minute.:eek: From now on I think I'll just lurk until you give us the green light. :)

Wow, sorry this is turning into so much work for Paul and worries for you Karen. I'll be patient, Pet Talk is worth waiting for!:)

Gosh! Pathetic servers! Hoping the next will be great and won't cause any problems. Good luck and lots of prayers that everything goes swiftly and fine! Will be patient...will try to be patient...probably won't post... http://PetoftheDay.com/talk/attachme...7&d=1298024830

I know this can be disconcerting, we'll be making some changes over the next couple days. Anyone who wants to post, go ahead, just keep a copy for yourself just in case. There are a lot of things to configure, but of course we'll wait until we are on the new server for that.

Thanks everyone for your patience in all of this. As I said before, we had hoped to do the upgrade carefully and test everything before we opened it up to everyone. But the hackers necessitated the move, and the faulty new server means moving it all again. And as you can imagine, doing anything with a board with thus many users and posts takes time!

Karen, we'll be patient, so take your time and do what you need to do. :) What a nuisance that the first new server had a flaw.

Good luck! :love:

The hackers probably did something to the old site that made it no longer "safe for work". It is now, btw.:)

No, the people who attacked the old server, as far as we can tell, were using it for phishing and sending out spam attacks. I will be glad when we are on a stable machine again, and I don;t have to continually check and make sure the websites still exist!

We have not gotten the new server yet, we hope that will happen today, but cannot be sure. I will keep you all updated when I know anything more.

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Originally Posted by Grace

What she said. Lots of crossed fingers and toes, and good luck wishes for both of you :love:

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Agree, agree, agree!

I have one comment and that is -- I miss the birthday list on the bottom of the page. The new PT looks great and I am getting the hang of it!

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Originally Posted by cassiesmom

Agree, agree, agree!

I have one comment and that is -- I miss the birthday list on the bottom of the page. The new PT looks great and I am getting the hang of it!

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I see the B-day list at the bottom of the page.

Okay, folks, big update! We will not be getting the new server until Saturday. But then it will be a brand new machine, and hopefully stable for many years to come. Thank you for all your patience, and bearing with us. This server seems stable for now, but we will continue to monitor it closely. Go ahead and post, but of course, Search and "Today's Threads" will not be available until we are on the new server, as we know this one cannot handle the search process.

I don't know much about servers, but I hope it will live up to your expectations! We'll be patient - and anyway, things work fairly well now - we can view and post. :D

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Originally Posted by Karen

Okay, folks, big update! We will not be getting the new server until Saturday. But then it will be a brand new machine, and hopefully stable for many years to come. Thank you for all your patience, and bearing with us. This server seems stable for now, but we will continue to monitor it closely. Go ahead and post, but of course, Search and "Today's Threads" will not be available until we are on the new server, as we know this one cannot handle the search process.

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So you and Paul get to spend yet another weekend, serving another server. :eek: You certainly have put a lot of work - expected and unexpected - into this move. Hopefully all will go smoothly this time. Fingers and paws crossed here.

I have an avatar, but it didn't show up in my recent post showing in the right hand columns of Forum threads and New Forum Posts. I see other avatars there, so why not mine? :confused:

That may be related to the search engine being turned off, or something to do with the image database that will need to be rebuilt. There's a lot we cannot explore right now, as my avatar doesn't show up in those places either. I will be glad when we are on the new server and can uncripple things.

By the way, folks, we fixed the blue text under the profiles in the "green" format, just so you know!

You did! Thank you!

We also fixed if you click on the logo at the top of the forum, it takes you back to the Forums homepage, instead of PetoftheDay.com. Incremental changes, it is like working on an old car. This server works, just not on anything too complex right now!

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Originally Posted by Karen

That may be related to the search engine being turned off, or something to do with the image database that will need to be rebuilt. There's a lot we cannot explore right now, as my avatar doesn't show up in those places either. I will be glad when we are on the new server and can uncripple things.

By the way, folks, we fixed the blue text under the profiles in the "green" format, just so you know!

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Default (blue/gray), or green...........so where's the purple???? :confused::p

Just a question out of curiosity, what hosting company do you run Petoftheday.com out of?

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Originally Posted by Hellow

Just a question out of curiosity, what hosting company do you run Petoftheday.com out of?

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We are moving to 1 and 1.

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Originally Posted by Karen

We are moving to 1 and 1.

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Hrm. From my experience, 1&1 wasn't that great. They had problems from the start with provisioning my shared hosting, then their tech support was absolute failure, so I just gave up on it.

If you're after shared hosting, I personally recommend Arvixe. My site's never gone down before, and their tech support is very speedy: http://www.arvixe.com/

And if you want a VPS, I've had hosting with Bluemile Cloud for.. two years now. My VPSs there went down once when they moved datacenters, a year and a half ago. http://bluemilecloud.com/

Thanks for your input, Colin. We are looking for a dedicated server, not VPS or any other kind of shared hosting.

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Originally Posted by Karen

Thanks for your input, Colin. We are looking for a dedicated server, not VPS or any other kind of shared hosting.

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Oh, Bluemile does dedicated server hosting as well. They own their own datacenters - both in Ohio (Cleveland and Columbus, respectively) - I believe they're both Tier 4 or at least Tier 3, and own their own fiber network in Ohio that links up to many of the biggest ISPs.

Yes, I sound like a salesperson. I really like them. Never had a single problem with them before.

Thanks for the advice.

Karen - are you aware that your Google Gadget Preview doesn't change every day now? It's still stuck on the last one before you made the switch.

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Originally Posted by pomtzu

Karen - are you aware that your Google Gadget Preview doesn't change every day now? It's still stuck on the last one before you made the switch.

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Gosh, thanks for letting us know, we'll check that out!

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Originally Posted by pomtzu

Karen - are you aware that your Google Gadget Preview doesn't change every day now? It's still stuck on the last one before you made the switch.

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What on earth is a Google Gadget Preview?????

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Originally Posted by Grace

What on earth is a Google Gadget Preview?????

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She's talking about these:

http://petoftheday.com/gadgets/

They are "gadgets" people can install on their iGoogle page - those that have one - and see the preview icons. I see the small ones are not working, Pom, but the bigger ones are, we'll look into this!

The "Home" button at the top of the page which links to http://petoftheday.com/talk/content.php , throws an "Access denied" error message in the style of vBulletin.

Attachment 52311

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Originally Posted by Hellow

The "Home" button at the top of the page which links to http://petoftheday.com/talk/content.php , throws an "Access denied" error message in the style of vBulletin.

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As I said before, that "Home" button is pretty pointless right now. It is meant to be the pages where you can see stuff from all the "blogs" and "articles" people have published here, but as we are as yet unable to activate those features, there is nothing there for anyone to see, even those of us (moderators) with the "privileges" to see it. Ignore it for now.

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Originally Posted by Karen

As I said before, that "Home" button is pretty pointless right now. It is meant to be the pages where you can see stuff from all the "blogs" and "articles" people have published here, but as we are as yet unable to activate those features, there is nothing there for anyone to see, even those of us (moderators) with the "privileges" to see it. Ignore it for now.

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Ah, must've missed that. Alright.

Karen, you may have already answered this on FB or here...will we be able to click on a "recent posts" button like we did before that brings up everything new since the last time we visited? I know we can't do that right now because everything has to be put back into the new server. Just checkin. ;)

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Originally Posted by happylabs

Karen, you may have already answered this on FB or here...will we be able to click on a "recent posts" button like we did before that brings up everything new since the last time we visited? I know we can't do that right now because everything has to be put back into the new server. Just checkin. ;)

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Yes, that is one of the functions of the "Search" engine on the forum, which we had to shut off for the time being.