I didn't want to get into details about this before it was mostly in place, so we didn't get people all excited and then have them waiting forever to see the result. But because we had downtime again tonight, I wanted to say something reassuring.
The not-so-secret secret is this:
We've bought a new server.
It is our very own, meaning that we no longer need to have a hosting company. We're not at anyone's mercy. We own the machine. (Up to now, we rented a dedicated server.) And it's a lot better machine than the one we're on now. Faster, better capacity, etc.
And as you see from the title, her name is Dawnette.
Why?
'Cause Dawno made a significant contribution toward buying it. In fact, she offered to buy it outright for us. You ever have one of those speechless moments? Servers are darn expensive. (Charlie had been suggesting that we buy our own for a while, and I was too dense to realize you could buy it on credit... for a long time, I was assuming I was going to have to come up with thousands of dollars all at once, and AW never has that kind of money just lying around. But hooray for plastic!)
Thank you so much, Dawno.
It's at the facility where it's going to live now, and CC and Fahim are working on it; our friend Scott who helped save us after the Great AW Takedown '06 has already done the initial setup stuff.
So we've been putting off doing any big purges and merges until after we get over to the new server, which should be about 20 days from now. Once we're settled in, then we take the next step. Fahim has made a script that should allow us to get rid of threads that haven't been posted on in more than a year on a board-by-board basis, without losing the rep comments and post counts that are associated with them.
All in all, we're hoping hard that the new server will mean a much smoother experience here-- no more worries about down time, errors, double posts, etc. Keep your fingers crossed (well... maybe not for 20 whole days... you might get a cramp. How about just thinking good thoughts?).
Giant thanks to everyone who's helped us take this step: everyone who's donated or supported AW by taking a class, buying an ad, etc.; Charlie, Fahim, and Scott for the research and technical work; Medievalist for overseeing the process; OFG, Silver King, and Spooky for running the auctions; and-- have I mentioned Dawno? Group hug.
The not-so-secret secret is this:
We've bought a new server.
It is our very own, meaning that we no longer need to have a hosting company. We're not at anyone's mercy. We own the machine. (Up to now, we rented a dedicated server.) And it's a lot better machine than the one we're on now. Faster, better capacity, etc.
And as you see from the title, her name is Dawnette.
Why?
'Cause Dawno made a significant contribution toward buying it. In fact, she offered to buy it outright for us. You ever have one of those speechless moments? Servers are darn expensive. (Charlie had been suggesting that we buy our own for a while, and I was too dense to realize you could buy it on credit... for a long time, I was assuming I was going to have to come up with thousands of dollars all at once, and AW never has that kind of money just lying around. But hooray for plastic!)
Thank you so much, Dawno.
It's at the facility where it's going to live now, and CC and Fahim are working on it; our friend Scott who helped save us after the Great AW Takedown '06 has already done the initial setup stuff.
So we've been putting off doing any big purges and merges until after we get over to the new server, which should be about 20 days from now. Once we're settled in, then we take the next step. Fahim has made a script that should allow us to get rid of threads that haven't been posted on in more than a year on a board-by-board basis, without losing the rep comments and post counts that are associated with them.
All in all, we're hoping hard that the new server will mean a much smoother experience here-- no more worries about down time, errors, double posts, etc. Keep your fingers crossed (well... maybe not for 20 whole days... you might get a cramp. How about just thinking good thoughts?).
Giant thanks to everyone who's helped us take this step: everyone who's donated or supported AW by taking a class, buying an ad, etc.; Charlie, Fahim, and Scott for the research and technical work; Medievalist for overseeing the process; OFG, Silver King, and Spooky for running the auctions; and-- have I mentioned Dawno? Group hug.