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Hey guys! It is I, your webgenius, coming at you with mildly scary news.
Dreamhost, our hosting provider, is going to be removing the version of PHP that the woddenver site runs on from their servers. We have until January 19 of next year to make the switch to a new version of PHP.
I would personally like to test this out now, so that I know what is coming later. Unfortunately, the only testing grounds I have available is the live site.
So, this is a warning! In a week, I will be doing tests and attempting to move the site to a newer version of PHP. The site may go down. If you are as paranoid as I am, I would back up character sheets and whatever else you'd like to save in the event of mega site-apocalypse (but I don't suspect that will happen -- I expect that even if the site breaks, I'll be able to switch back to the lower version of PHP, at least until January).
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Why, Dreamhost, why.
Hah. Get 'em, Noel! I have no doubt you'll tame the PHP beastie.
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09-29-2015, 02:56 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-29-2015, 03:20 AM by FadedNoel.)
Bad news, I am afraid. I tried switching over to a new PHP version, and things were fairly broken.
I have a few months to fix all the bugs in the site (currently, I know you can't log in, and the gallery spits out errors by the dozen), but without a test bed, this is going to be difficult. I am going to basically operate like this: When people are not online playing, and I am available? I will have the site in a broken condition while I debug these PHP errors and try to get them fixed.
So, if you see the site totally broken, can't log in, can't do whatever, and need it functional so you can play? Send me an AIM message (fadespirit) or an email (fadednoel@gmail.com), and I will cease debugging and flip the site back to the old PHP version for you. This is *really* not a problem for me. You won't be interfering with my work. I want people to be able to continue playing on the site! So go do that! Just know you might have to IM me first if you happen to catch me working on it.
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My knowledge of the back ends of these things is rather limited, but what do you need to be able to test this out elsewhere?
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Well, the back end to that is that, yes, I have tried setting up a test site. I copied the code from the regular site over to a test domain, modified the configuration as necessary, and any link I click on (which should be valid links) on the test site results in a 404 error. I suspected that this could be resulting from a configuration difference between the test site and the live site, and tried to get Dreamhost to confirm for me that the configuration settings for both sites were the same so I could rule that out, but they would not.
So, I would have to figure out why the test site is failing before I can use it. That is an option, but if I waste a month and a half trying to stand up a test site and find out it was a server configuration issue all along.... Then come Janurary, we're probably going to have a broken site still. It's a gamble I'm taking that fixing the PHP errors on live is probably going to be simpler than trying to debug what seems to be a server configuration problem on the test site, basically.
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Ah, fair enough. I have a site sat around gathering dust, if it would have helped I'd happily have let you trash it in the name of testing 
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Working on the site right now, if you need access, let me know!
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And, we have a functional site again!
I have moved both the forums and the main site to the new version of PHP. After some bug fixing on the main site, I am confident I have squashed most of them. HOWEVER, if you notice anything acting weird on either the forums or the main site, let me know the problem.
I know Howl had some issues sending FPMs when I had the forums updated, but I don't know if that had to do with the upgrades or not. So if you have issues sending FPMs, yeah. You know what to do!
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Noel your brain is marvelous, you have the mad skillz.
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