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KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:37 am
by ATPTourFan
Update: Barring any unforeseen technical issues, I plan on locking down the site Friday night to move the database to our new host. There may be a period of time early Saturday when your internet provider hasn't yet learned of our site's new IP address. This is normal and during that time I will post our direct IP address on this site's "locked" page to help you manually access it while your computer learns the new location of KeaneyBlue.com.

Fellow Rhode Island basketball fans,

This morning I received word that our web host, Forumatic, will be shutting down all operations on December 20. I think most would agree that Forumatic has been an excellent hosting provider with its combination of speed, reliability and features.

Over the next few days, I will be making arrangements to move our community and all it's members and post history to a new hosting service provider. Fortunately, Forumatic provides a convenient export feature where our entire digital history can be packaged and redeployed onto a new host. This should be a fairly easy process with perhaps a day of downtime. We will keep our web address, KeaneyBlue.com, user accounts, site structure, post history, etc.

We are also fortunate to have received word at this time rather than during the season when traffic and discussion is at its highest. KeaneyBlue will be transitioned without any disruption during the season.

I am also excited to see what new features will be available on the new host. We will still be running the same phpBB forum software, but it will be the newest version which offers some long awaited features and customization such as a mobile-friendly responsive layout (easier to view on phones/tablets, etc) among others.

Additional details will be shared in this thread as they become available. My plan is to have the forum migration completed over this upcoming weekend when I have time to ensure its success. This will likely require this site to go read-only (no new posts/replies) for a period of time this weekend so nothing is lost in the migration.

Feel free to ask any questions and I will answer them the best I can.

ATPTourFan
KeaneyBlue Administrator

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:47 am
by Rhody74
Thanks for the notice. It will be nice to have a more mobile-friendly host.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 10:11 am
by ATPTourFan
Definitely. To get an idea of how the site will automatically resize itself to your device's screen, load this from the official phpBB development community: https://www.phpbb.com/community/

We will make every effort to maintain the general look and feel of KeaneyBlue (it will not look like the demo site above), and the new host will allow for better customization than what we have today. I'm going to be leaning on Adam, our resident artist, to help with site design.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 10:19 am
by ramster
ATPTourFan wrote:Definitely. To get an idea of how the site will automatically resize itself to your device's screen, load this from the official phpBB development community: https://www.phpbb.com/community/

We will make every effort to maintain the general look and feel of KeaneyBlue (it will not look like the demo site above), and the new host will allow for better customization than what we have today. I'm going to be leaning on Adam, our resident artist, to help with site design.

Great work ATP. Thank you for all of your leadership with this site.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 10:51 am
by adam914
Thanks for taking the time to get the new site up and running. Just hit me up and let me know how I can help!

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 12:36 pm
by TruePoint
We will follow our fearless leader to whatever web hosting site he takes us to.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 3:14 pm
by RAM67
ATPTourFan wrote:Fellow Rhode Island basketball fans,

This morning I received word that our web host, Forumatic, will be shutting down all operations on December 20. I think most would agree that Forumatic has been an excellent hosting provider with its combination of speed, reliability and features.

Over the next few days, I will be making arrangements to move our community and all it's members and post history to a new hosting service provider. Fortunately, Forumatic provides a convenient export feature where our entire digital history can be packaged and redeployed onto a new host. This should be a fairly easy process with perhaps a day of downtime. We will keep our web address, KeaneyBlue.com, user accounts, site structure, post history, etc.

We are also fortunate to have received word at this time rather than during the season when traffic and discussion is at its highest. KeaneyBlue will be transitioned without any disruption during the season.

I am also excited to see what new features will be available on the new host. We will still be running the same phpBB forum software, but it will be the newest version which offers some long awaited features and customization such as a mobile-friendly responsive layout (easier to view on phones/tablets, etc) among others.

Additional details will be shared in this thread as they become available. My plan is to have the forum migration completed over this upcoming weekend when I have time to ensure its success. This will likely require this site to go read-only (no new posts/replies) for a period of time this weekend so nothing is lost in the migration.

Feel free to ask any questions and I will answer them the best I can.

ATPTourFan
KeaneyBlue Administrator


Let us know how we can contribute financially. Great job as usual.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 6:17 pm
by Rhodysk
Crazy question...... will login info stay the same or new site means have to sign up again??

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 7:32 pm
by ATPTourFan
All data including user logins are preserved. My early tests have confirmed this.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 4:53 pm
by ATPTourFan
Made some great progress today (after a frustrating Tuesday of failures). All user accounts/passwords, avatars, post history, private messages, etc are preserved.

I was able to upgrade the forum to the latest version which provides ability to add feature extensions and provides a mobile-responsive design. So much easier to read on your phone. No need for Tapatalk or constant zooming.

I'm still figuring out some of the top banner sizing adjustments and Adam will help create a smaller mobile-screen-sized KeaneyBlue site banner.

With today's success I'm confident that we will be able to migrate to the new server this weekend. Soon, I will post details about when the site will be locked so that the transition can take place.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 5:06 pm
by Billyboy78
We appreciate the work you do so all the rest of us can enjoy this great forum, especially the technically challenged bozos like myself.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 6:54 pm
by Rhody74
I was never able to get Tapatalk to work properly so that's good news for me. Let us know if you need donations.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 1:44 pm
by ATPTourFan
Looking very good for a Friday night migration....


Here's what it looks like on the home page:

Image



Here is a thread page with a YouTube video and Tweet:

Image


Here's what a thread looks like, without any zooming or other nonsense, on a typical phone:

Image


Another showing readability of text on phones:

Image

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider Frida

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 2:08 pm
by ATPTourFan
Update: Barring any unforeseen technical issues, I plan on locking down the site Friday night to move the database to our new host. There may be a period of time early Saturday when your internet provider hasn't yet learned of our site's new IP address. This is normal and during that time I will post our direct IP address on this site's "locked" page to help you manually access it while your computer learns the new location of KeaneyBlue.com.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider Frida

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:08 pm
by TruePoint
Looks good. Only question is on the first screen cap you posted, it looks like the page is flipped - is that just how it is going to look on the site now?

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider Frida

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:18 pm
by ATPTourFan
Yeah. We've never made the Dance with the avatars on the left.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider Frida

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:20 pm
by TruePoint
Nice

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider Frida

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2016 3:17 am
by Running Ram
Looks good ATP, thanks for all the work you do for us shlubs.

Re: KeaneyBlue is Moving to a New Web Hosting Provider Friday

Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2016 12:53 am
by ATPTourFan
Migration was successful!