Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #506
    Breakable
    Keymaster

    Hello there,
    I was trying to raise awareness of focus fusion society and technology, however there is a problem that http://www.focusfusion.org website comes offline pretty often recently.
    This reduces its usefulness, because I cannot direct people to an unavailable website, and other resources such as the video in google talk are less useful.

    I would propose to investigate the problem. If it is a problem of hosting provider, there are many reliable and cheap options available on the web:
    http://www-thehostingchart.com/

    Regards,
    Ignas

    Attached files

    #2688

    Thanks for the info! Is the site you linked to reliable? They don’t say anything about their criteria for choosing top hosts, etc. Given the trouble we’ve had with our current host, I don’t want to pick a new one off some website at random. Anyone else have suggestions for an ideal server/host? Let me know.

    Also, my apologies for the recent site inconsistency. Some explanations/excuses:

    The most recent site outage on the 9th, 10th & 11th of April were due to our registrar randomly switching our DNS pointers to some other site. Not sure why or how this happened, but that was not a host/server issue. It was a renegade domain registrar corruption thing (?)

    The intermittent outage on Mar. 26, 27, 29 and 30 – does seem to be a server problem. Unfortunately, i was in Turkey when that happened, with belated internet access so I didn’t complain to the host until I found out about it, in a crowded little internet cafe outside of Diyarbakir on the 30th. So that might be chalked up to a vacationing administrator problem. Happy Nowruz, by the way! Spring is here!

    A more serious problem is that the administrator (me) resides in Iran for the time being, and this seems to have created a few access problems with the website. The site is going through some kind of migration of servers initiated by the host, which is taking an inordinate amount of time and during which time I have been unable to access some (but not all) parts of the control panel (a problem not encountered by folks in the US. A problem I don’t have after migration, as seen on another site of mine that went through this with this host. They are moving from vdeck1 to vdeck3). This may mean that we need a US based administrator/webmaster. Any volunteers? You need to know how to use expression engine, which is really fun and easy to use. I’ve just scratched the surface with it. Also other basic webmastering skills.

    I’m frustrated with the host, but hope that after their migration, things will settle down/stabilize and I can get back to my list of things to overhaul on the site. So one option is to be patient and hope that this works itself out soon. On the other hand, “soon” has proven to be a very long time. Perhaps time to change hosts.

    Frustration with the present host is offset by worries about changing hosts altogether. E.g., these guys are allegedly about to get their act together/server problems will all be behind us soon, while on the other hand a new host would be untested, plus there’s the worry that migrating this site over to a new host entirely could also have downtime and loss of data/other unexpected problems. (This kind of rationalization is probably why Iran hasn’t had another revolution yet. We just make do with what we’ve got :cheese: )

    A long way of saying, it may be worth it to change hosts at this time, but we want to be really sure of the host we go to, and that such a change can occur seamlessly. We’re looking into it, but if you have any bright suggestions, guarantees and reassurances, let us know.

    #2689
    Breakable
    Keymaster

    Thank you for the explanation.
    I wish that your hosting will finally get better!
    Have no real idea about the reliability of the site i linked to. If you click on the “read review” button you can see how they ranked their websites. I bought a domain/hosting plane from http://www.ixwebhosting.com which is ranked #1. I will see how it goes.

    PS:Its not a bad idea to have a mirror, if possible.

    #2738

    Breakable wrote:
    PS:Its not a bad idea to have a mirror, if possible.

    Re-reading your post. Just noticed the PS. What is this “mirror” of which you speak? Is it something that pops up if your server goes down? How would it know that your server is down…er, tell me more. I’m intrigued.

    #2739
    Breakable
    Keymaster

    My own knowledge of the subject is not very deep. Yes the mirror is something that copies your website content so it would be accessible when your main server is offline.
    The simplest approach is to be able to access the copied content by a different url. I have no extensive knowledge how to implement dynamic mirroring so it would kick in automatically, when the main server goes down. I guess it would require playing with dns records, so that the mirroring server would constantly check if the main server is online, and if not, it would register dns records to point to itself instead.

    Some information i found:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_(computing)
    http://wenderhost.com/2007/06/11/mirror-a-dynamic-website-on-a-cpanelwhm-server/

    #2959

    Admin wrote:
    The site is going through some kind of migration of servers initiated by the host, which is taking an inordinate amount of time and during which time I have been unable to access some (but not all) parts of the control panel (a problem not encountered by folks in the US. A problem I don’t have after migration, as seen on another site of mine that went through this with this host. They are moving from vdeck1 to vdeck3).

    FYI, migration is complete. With a day of downtime because I am in Iran and didn’t check the email until all y’all in the US spent a whole day being frustrated, and then went to bed. (Time zone issues).

    My bad!

    But now, the migration is behind us, and going forward, it’s time to streamline the site and bring it up a level. Any suggestions?

    #2960
    Breakable
    Keymaster

    Suggestion:
    Lets build a community, nothing else is more important 😉

    #3130
    benf
    Participant

    Don’t know if this would help, but I’ve also been having problems accessing the site lately. I’ve recently read a news item on DNS vulnerability that looked interesting as it highlights the extent to which the web has been taken over by hackers through this flaw. It can scramble server access.
    Here’s the news page:
    http://www.physorg.com/news136142907.html

    and the site to go to check your DNS status is:
    http://www.doxpara.com/

    #3132

    Good news everyone.

    As of 8/20/08, We’ve completed the migration to a new server and hope to have reliable service from now on. We’re also taking more security precautions with the site.

    Thank you for your patience during this time.

    Please let us know if you notice any broken links and so forth, as the new site may have some hard-coded urls that don’t work with the new configuration.

    Now, let’s get on with the fusion project!

    #3135
    belbear42
    Participant

    Thanks for bringing back the focusfusion site and forum. The path to a bright future of clean and cheap energy is open again 🙂

    One remark however:
    My old stored link https://focusfusion.org/log/index.php returns a 404 since yesterday.

    I tried https://focusfusion.org and this brings up the new home page https://focusfusion.org/index.php
    The /log/ seems to have disappeared.
    I think it might be important to add some way to redirect all links with /log/ in them to the correct page as well, so all stored links reconnect again.

    Countless focusfusion links in all those other websites, wiki’s, google’s and forums (including this one) will now appear to be broken, and most surfers will not bother to retype the domain name.

    The /log/ may once have been some sort of a mistake but backward compatibility is a very important issue. Please lift the 404 smokescreen!

    Chris

    #3136

    Good call.

    I have made a redirect for the /log/index.php page.

    Now, for the links. There must be a find and replace function. Otherwise I’ll need an .htaccess redirect.

    OK. I’m working on this.

    Thanks for the input.

    #3139

    Well, that was tedious. There must have been a quicker way. Anyway, the forum links should all be updated. Let me know if you find any strays.

    #3214
    benf
    Participant

    The site is now performing brilliantly. .Glad you all figured it out. Now I can spread the word and pass along this helpful tool..

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.