Hi all, today we moved across to a new server and you may have experienced some downtime with different internet providers taking different time frames to update there DNS that directs you to our new home...
So I know the first question is going to be - "Yes a new server, but why didn't we just move?" :decision:
Well over the past few months the site has grown substantially!
To give you an idea we used to average around 30 active users on the site at one time but now this can be any where from 50 - 100 at a time.
Although this is only 10% of our base it could grow even further especially in winter when alot of us are hibernating and planning the summer adventures / van pick ups
but overall this does require a larger degree of server capacity.
The most important fact here though is how much this is really fantastic news for everyone on the site as it means through your posts, help, insightful information, discussions and openness we are growing as a group substantially.
You should all be proud of this fact as you are all contributing to the sites appeal and the groups as a whole as each day progresses and the numbers are going up because of this so kudos to you.
Some statistics for you to give some background on what this means in numbers terms -
Technical / Facts mumbo jumbo aside what this does mean is that we have really outgrown the style of website hosting the site has used for the past 2.5 years since it was created.
Essentially in the past we shared resources of the hosting services we had and once we reached the limit the site would temporarily be disabled at most it was around 10 minutes a time.
But the frequency of this due to the increase in numbers was obviously happening more often as we grew.
You may have read me asking other members if access issues they where experiencing where related to "Resource Limit" errors and this is what I was getting at.
So today we moved to a new home for the site and we are now on our own box, with our own resources and there is no sharing what so ever.
And if we do happen in the future to reach the limits through future growth we can just tack on more of what ever we need (CPU / RAM).
This is fantastic from technical perspective as well as it has allowed us to implement a few new technologies that will make the site faster, more accessible and is something which we couldn't do in the past due to restrictions on shared hosting.
But it does present other challenges as it means we have more things to look after in the background.
Myself and the mod team over the last few weeks have been testing the new home we find the site in today and have essentially been stress testing it and trying to make it fall over and also enjoying the extra speed and load times of photos and files and we now are the point where we have committed to moving from the old home to the new which is what happened early this morning.
But we do also need your help moving forward, if you notice something strange / not working or just need help I encourage you to log a fault ticket by either of the following methods -
1) Using the online ticket system to raise a ticket
www.expandasdownunder.com/support
2) Email your issues to the below email address and this will raise a ticket for you
support@expandasdownunder.com
I will endeavour to respond in the quickest time frame possible to any issue raised but at the moment have alot going on so please bare with me.
From myself and the mod team we hope you enjoy the new home for the site and another huge thank you to you all as it is 10000% true without the participation off all of you on the forum we would not be here today and such a wonderful website to visit so thank you for your patience in getting this all setup and any downtime you may have experienced today but lets bring on tomorrow!!!!
Dion and The Mod Team....
So I know the first question is going to be - "Yes a new server, but why didn't we just move?" :decision:
Well over the past few months the site has grown substantially!
To give you an idea we used to average around 30 active users on the site at one time but now this can be any where from 50 - 100 at a time.
Although this is only 10% of our base it could grow even further especially in winter when alot of us are hibernating and planning the summer adventures / van pick ups
but overall this does require a larger degree of server capacity.The most important fact here though is how much this is really fantastic news for everyone on the site as it means through your posts, help, insightful information, discussions and openness we are growing as a group substantially.
You should all be proud of this fact as you are all contributing to the sites appeal and the groups as a whole as each day progresses and the numbers are going up because of this so kudos to you.
Some statistics for you to give some background on what this means in numbers terms -
- Total Members = 700
- Photos / Files Stored On The Site = 3,680
- Photo File Storage = 1.5 GIG's of data
- Australian Site Visits For The Month Of June - 11,900 individual page hits
Technical / Facts mumbo jumbo aside what this does mean is that we have really outgrown the style of website hosting the site has used for the past 2.5 years since it was created.
Essentially in the past we shared resources of the hosting services we had and once we reached the limit the site would temporarily be disabled at most it was around 10 minutes a time.
But the frequency of this due to the increase in numbers was obviously happening more often as we grew.
You may have read me asking other members if access issues they where experiencing where related to "Resource Limit" errors and this is what I was getting at.
So today we moved to a new home for the site and we are now on our own box, with our own resources and there is no sharing what so ever.
And if we do happen in the future to reach the limits through future growth we can just tack on more of what ever we need (CPU / RAM).
This is fantastic from technical perspective as well as it has allowed us to implement a few new technologies that will make the site faster, more accessible and is something which we couldn't do in the past due to restrictions on shared hosting.
But it does present other challenges as it means we have more things to look after in the background.
Myself and the mod team over the last few weeks have been testing the new home we find the site in today and have essentially been stress testing it and trying to make it fall over and also enjoying the extra speed and load times of photos and files and we now are the point where we have committed to moving from the old home to the new which is what happened early this morning.
But we do also need your help moving forward, if you notice something strange / not working or just need help I encourage you to log a fault ticket by either of the following methods -
1) Using the online ticket system to raise a ticket
www.expandasdownunder.com/support
2) Email your issues to the below email address and this will raise a ticket for you
support@expandasdownunder.com
I will endeavour to respond in the quickest time frame possible to any issue raised but at the moment have alot going on so please bare with me.
From myself and the mod team we hope you enjoy the new home for the site and another huge thank you to you all as it is 10000% true without the participation off all of you on the forum we would not be here today and such a wonderful website to visit so thank you for your patience in getting this all setup and any downtime you may have experienced today but lets bring on tomorrow!!!!
Dion and The Mod Team....
