Does Anyone Remember These Posts?

[TrappedinCalifornia]

Does anyone remember these posts? They kind of 'explain' why certain things have been done and directly answer some of the questions/accusations which have been posted.

We've been running on the vBulletin cloud server now for a few months and I'm not enthralled.
The limitations are immense; I can not access any files on the 'server' or view the database, I have no way to see what our server stats are (CPU and RAM usage) and they can not tell me, additions or modifications to the forum other than the bone stock vBulletin install are not an option and basic maintenance must be done by request.

And to top it off the price increases monthly since our traffic is picking back up.
The original plan was set at 800GB/month because that's what we were at prior to the software update and move. Our first month back was 1TB and our second went to 1.2TB. Since they charge by traffic the cost they are now asking is double the starting monthly rate and will increase as our traffic increases.
Frankly what they want is more than out previous upper tier dedicated server (12-Core 24-Thread/64GB RAM) was costing. And we were seriously overgunned.

Just to be clear, this is NOT an 'I need money' post. I'm saying this to explain my next course of action.
We can be just fine doing things right rather than rushed or 'easy'. The move from GeoVario/Professional Edge to the dedicated server was rushed, GV/PE was closing and we had to move. The move to cloud hosting was easy, 'Here it is make it work for me'. Neither was satisfactory.

Frankly I was partly lazy, make it work, and partly stupid. I wanted an easy and fast fix because the problems were mounting and I was concerned the proper fix would take too much time, people would walk away and the community would die off. Given all the difficulties of the past year and a half and how many are still here despite them that was a foolish concern.

Now that the reasons are out there it's time for the plan.

I am taking us off the cloud hosting for all the reasons above and going back to a more reasonably scaled dedicated server or VPS rather than just grabbing the biggest one available at the time. Seriously, 64GB of RAM meant we could cache the entire database, the software and have spare RAM. All the server options I am looking at have at least 1GBPS lines so speed should stay the same or improve.

Right now the plan is to stay with vbulletin 6 since I have the license, it's pretty much set up and frankly there are no convertors available to switch vB6 to SMF or Xenforo. I want to do it soon but not rushed so I will post up a warning once I have all the preliminary things in place.

I second all the recommendations for cloudflare - it looks like you're already using cloudflare, but it's not set up optimally. Every request from an auth'd user is dynamic, which means its hitting your origin server. With some tuning I'm sure you could get the bandwidth down significantly. Happy to help for free if you'd like any, I do this professionally.

I'd love to take you up on that but I have zero access to the server to make any optimizations, one of the major reasons I want to leave the cloud hosting with vBulletin...

For the last year the site has definitely had some issues, we had to move to a new server in 01/23 and the new server's MySQL version conflicted with our older software which caused the slow loading or failures to load as well as odd text and exceptions.
I have been working with the developers of our forum software to update to a current version since May of 2023 but that has taken far longer than it should have due to the proprietary control panel on the new server.

Rather than continuing on what has been too long a path to make the updated software work on our private server I?m switching gears.
I?m moving to cloud hosting with vBulletin. This should not only resolve the current issues but improve our update process as they will be installing updates, patches and upgrades automatically.

Barring any unexpected problems this transition will be occurring this month. According to vB's answer to yesterday's question I sent
'You can start by purchasing the Gold Plan, and we will manually upgrade you to the custom Enterprise Plan we discussed after.
Please let us know once you have purchased so we can initiate the upgrade and migration.'

I will be starting the process today by purchasing the cloud subscription, as soon as I hear of a definitive time for the upgrade and migration I will post it here, on calguns.org and on the Calguns Members group on FB.

No. itrader was an add-on for vB 3 - this is moving to vB 6, I believe.

After some issues I am working with vBulletin's support on getting the software update that should fix most of our issues started in the near future.

For those paying attention you will notice a new sub-forum in the Marketplace, Private User Reviews and Feedback.

The purpose of this sub-forum is to take the place of the iTrader system which will unfortunately not carry over to the newer versions of the forum software.

Instead, unless a better system is found, we will be doing this in-house.

If you'd like to receive feedback and ratings from the people you buy from and sell to start a SINGLE thread with your username as the title.
Prior to the software upgrade I would suggest taking a screen shot of your iTrader rating and posting it in the initial post of your thread.

If you'd like to leave a rating or give feedback on the people you buy from and sell to either search for their screen name or ask them for a link to their feedback thread and then post your rating/feedback there.

It may make it easier on both parties if sellers were to add a link to their individual feedback thread to their profile signature.


Just so it doesn't get lost I will reititerate: I would suggest taking a screen shot of your iTrader rating and posting it in the initial post of your thread.

I've been chasing these oddities we've been having ever since the server move and frankly I ran out of things to try.

I reached out to vBulletin staff and I think we have the answer.

Most if not all of the issues are related to the database and that seems to be where the problem is. Our old server ran an older version of MySQL which worked with vB 3.8.11. When we moved I knew the later versions of PHP were going to be a problem so I paid to have our server temporarily set up with a legacy version of PHP. I hadn't realized nor considered that the later version of MySQL would have it's own problems. Every reported bug I'd seen had been related to PHP versions.

Apparently in MySQL 8.0.x certain words were reclassified as 'reserved'. Since they were not classed as such in the earlier version this is causing problems on the forum since the new server is running 8.0.32.

So, there are two options to address this, one really because the other is incredibly impractical.
The first would be to go through the database finding each and every usage of these words and encase them in backticks, this is the insanely impractical option.
The second is to update the forum to vB 5.7.4. The 5.7.x series of softwares has coding in it to account for these reserved words.

In the very near future I will be contracting with vBulletin to have them handle the update from 3.8.11 to 5.7.4 since it's such a significant leap in versions. If something goes wrong they can figure it out since it's their coding.

Unfortunately this means there will be some 'losses'. The Blog hasn't been supported as an add on in years so we will likely lose whatever blog posts have been made.
iTrader is old enough to buy alcohol and has been unsupported long enough to vote. I doubt it will work but I'll try to reinstall it after the update.
I suspect there will be a few other things that will have to be looked at for compatibility as well. We'll find out after the vB engineers look at the install.

We'll probably be down for a couple of days from what I've read, hopefully less but it all depends on how we arrange the chicken bones and feathers and how good vB's voodoo is.

Once I have an idea on the dates I'll post them up.

I've posted about what is causing our issues, in short a conflict between the coding of the old vB 3.8 software and the newer version of MySQL. This came about when we moved to the new server when P.E. closed.

The fix is updating the forum software to vBulletin 5.7.x, something that was suppose to happen not long after we did the server move in January.

The fact that it didn't happen is entirely on me.
To make a long and whiny story short Dad passed the end of last year, step mom passed in January while working on this and I kind of got in to a whole 'who gives a s**t about anything anyway' funk.

But life goes on and things need to be done so no more funk unless it's Carl Carlton!

I've reached out to the vBulletin staff to pick up where I left off on having them do the update since it's their software. It's not free but it's not too expensive and the plausible deniability is worth it.
I'm hoping we can get this going soon because this slow stuff is irritating me too!

There are more; but... In short, when people post that we weren't warned, haven't been told anything, poor decisions were made, things worked fine on the Cloud, etc., that's not quite true.

It was never gonna be an 'overnight fix.' However, I don't think the length of time it's taking was anticipated either. Then again, some of the 'other posts' indicate a disenchantment with the help (or lack thereof) which was being obtained from the software companies being worked with.

It's 'easy' to sit and Monday Morning Quarterback. However, bear in mind that, for example, keeping iTrader as long as the site did was for the benefit of the membership and that caused a delay in updating to newer versions of vBulletin since iTrader was version specific. Kestryll has already posted that he doesn't have multiple access points to simply 'give out' so others can help. In other words, it all boils down to the idea that coulda/woulda/shoulda is a retrospective pursuit and what is needed now is looking forward to whether some things can be fixed, some things can't be fixed, some things won't be fixed, et al.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating... I don't have any insight into what's happening behind the curtain. Yet, I'm fairly certain that constantly demanding updates is likely to be unfruitful in that Kestryll, likely, doesn't have anything new or definitive to add beyond what has been posted. Missed the posts? That's not necessarily his problem. As I've just shown, many of the things decried as not having been shared or why didn't you do this/that or why weren't we told are more indicative of those doing the yelling not having paid attention or having missed the post(s) which were created or disagreeing with decisions/promises made and administrative styling.

No. I don't think this post/thread is going to 'solve' anything. Yes. I hope it helps, however. As I also noted, it's Kestryll's call on most of these matters, not our call beyond 'voting with your feet.' (Which coincides with not letting the door hit you in the backside on the way out rather than simply staying here to complain.) Problems were anticipated or predicted and warnings were posted. I'm just not sure that the total extent of those problems was or could have been in terms of keeping the promises made, trying to keep the most for the most, attempting to preserve things, etc. Also bear in mind that some of the loudest voices of complaint/criticism also appear to have their own agenda and some of that has less to do with the 'benefit of the membership at large' and more to do with... other factors.

Might our loyalty to the site, as it has existed for two decades, and to Kestryll be... 'misplaced?' Only time will provide the answer. Hopefully, not an indefinite time period, but one which involves more than the 'instant gratification' many seemed to have been expecting.