The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

Just a heads up. Every couple of years, the server goes through a major upgrade. Typically the underlying OS reaches EOL (Debian, in this case), and it becomes necessary to move to a new major version (sorta like moving from Windows 10 to Windows 11). This is also a good time to move to major releases of the LAMP stack (nginx, php, mariadb etc.).

What I usually do at this time is to shop for a new VPS (because one can typically get much better specs at better prices compared to a few years before), install the new OS and migrate TPFC over. However, the actual downtime to TPFC would be short (not more than than an hour, likely much shorter), because I would have made sure things work on the new server before cutting over (which simply involves a quick switch at the nameserver to point to the new VPS).

However, what might happen is we may encounter small issues after the cutover, which I am sure everyone has experienced when moving to major releases of OS/apps. I can only ask for your patience if such issues pop up, but I will try my best to iron them out promptly.

Fingers crossed!

okidoki.

Good luck with the upgrade!

TPFC is here to stay, then. Good news.

Andrew Lee wrote: ↑Sun Dec 11, 2022 4:05 am I can only ask for your patience if such issues pop up, but I will try my best to iron them out promptly.

Sure thing. Thanks for doing all that work

It is truly a devotion. Thanks, Andrew.

Thanks a ton for keeping this site online. Much appreciated

Thanks for all the well wishes!

This time round, it actually took longer than I expected because there's a major upgrade to PHP (7.x to 8.x), which affected some of the modules used by the site.

Anyhow all the major issues have been ironed out, so I should be able to switch over some time tomorrow, so expected an hour or so of downtime. Will let you folks know once the switch is done.

Fingers crossed!

The cutover is now complete. Welcome to the new server!

You may have to login to phpBB again due to the migration.

If you spot any other anomalies, please let me know.

Thanks!

Hey Andrew,

Great job - everything looks good so far...

I found one issue: The RSS feed isn't working: http://feeds.feedburner.com/pfc.

I have a customized, personal landing page that reads and aggregates all my important feeds. Since the cut-over, the TPFC feed does not return anything.

If you changed the URL, please post...

Thanks!

Hey Andrew,

To add to the above, I found this error: This is what the RSS button returns when I click the feed button on a page:

XML Parsing Error: mismatched tag. Expected: </link>.
Location: https://feeds.feedburner.com/pfc
Line Number 44, Column 3:
</head>
--^

Thanks...

nickoftime wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 12:22 pm Hey Andrew,

Great job - everything looks good so far...

I found one issue: The RSS feed isn't working: http://feeds.feedburner.com/pfc.

I have a customized, personal landing page that reads and aggregates all my important feeds. Since the cut-over, the TPFC feed does not return anything.

If you changed the URL, please post...

Thanks!

Fixed, no change in URL. Thanks for the report!

Addendum: The feed button issue is related, so fixed as well.

Hi Andrew,

When I click on the (i) for the change history of a database entry the page can't load

@Envoy: Fixed. Thanks for the reporting this!

Poster's avatars now display on forums right-side...

Server update artifact or deliberate forum design change ?