What exactly do you mean... 'in a brief'?gcmartin wrote:I seem to remember in a brief with John awhile ago that he has plans to upgrade the site with latest "bb-ware".
Also what do you mean by 'bb-ware'? Are you using that term to mean phpbb forum software? Vbulletin? Invision?
There's no way for any of us to know what may or may not be happening, since there is no open communication. The last time I spoke with John was months ago, so I cant vouch for anything either way. All I know is that when we spoke before he was too busy to do anything.gcmartin wrote:Could it possibly be that he may be trying to do that and wants to get that done first, before moving the site to a new physical home? It could be that he's working on something as we speak.
That could explain, in part, what's happening.
Mirgrating from phpbb2 to phpbb3 is the simpliest route to go. Going from phpbb2 to another forum software requires extensive database conversion. Something that takes quite a lot of time, and also very precise knowledge and experience.
Trying to set up a mirror within forum software would be stupid, and may not even be possible.gcmartin wrote:Question:
What would it take to upgrade the BB software in a completely mirrored approach which would provide physical redundancy?
Any mirroring would be done on the shell level on the server. Its not really hard at all, all you need is A) another server B) shell access C) cron job access D) some simple shell scripting knowledge.
You simply create a daily (or however often you want) backup of the sql database, which you then transfer between the main server and the mirror. Then on the mirror side you import the sql database into the forum on the mirror.
You could also strip passwords from the sql database before transferring between servers that way the mirror is a read only backup. This in my opinion is the best option as you never have to worry about any user being able to make a post on the mirror. You wouldn't want write access on the mirror because when the next sync occurs any changes would be overwritten.
I dont think anyone of us can really say anything that John doesn't already know.gcmartin wrote:A dialogue with approaches could certainly provide good guidance no matter what.
If John doesn't want any changes to happen... then nothing will happen.
If John wants to make these changes but doesn't have time and doesn't want to give anyone else access... then nothing will happen.
If John does want to make changes and has time... then something will happen.
The Ball is entirely in John's court. People, like myself, have offered to help, but our offers have not been used. I think this is one of the reasons people talk about John being possessive about the forum and making sure that no one other than a couple even the slightest control over it. I really hope that's not the case. At the end of the day though, I dont really care about any of that crap. I just want the community to have a system in place that when the forum does go down... we have a backup of some kind.
All I can do is offer to help...