Premium Membership News

[kitkatz]

As of July 2017, IHD.com will no longer be doing premium memberships.  Major changes are coming.  If you would like to donate use the Paypal button on the web pages, however ALL premium membership will end in October of 2017.

Thank you to everyone who has been a premium member. You have helped to keep these forums up and running for almost 12 years.


kitkatz-Admin

[Charlie B53]

??

[kristina]

As of July 2017, IHD.com will no longer be doing premium memberships.  Major changes are coming.  If you would like to donate use the Paypal button on the web pages, however ALL premium membership will end in October of 2017.

Thank you to everyone who has been a premium member. You have helped to keep these forums up and running for almost 12 years.


kitkatz-Admin

    ??

[Riki]

I hope it means that the site has landed a sponsor, and not that it's closing...

[kristina]

I hope it means that the site has landed a sponsor, and not that it's closing...

... I also hope that IHD is going to be sponsored in the future ?
Dear Kitkatz, please explain and please tell us more about it.
Many thanks from Kristina.

[Simon Dog]

My offer to provide free hosting on one of my servers (at a large hosting farm) remains on the table.

[kitkatz]

Could you PM me information, please?

[iolaire]

My offer to provide free hosting on one of my servers (at a large hosting farm) remains on the table.

I'm willing to help on the technical side as well. I'd prefer to see the site become a tad more commercial with someone marketing it, generating some advertising or sponsorship revenue to help insure that new blood comes in and keeps it active. 

I have no simple machines experience but in my day job work with huge databases and have operated hobby WordPress sites with a huge amount of content but fairly low readership.  I'm not a good marketer.

[Simon Dog]

Could you PM me information, please?

Done.   I sent my direct contact info.   I generally on the hose 8:30PM to minight UTC-05 except Wed and Sun, so it's OK to call late.  If the phone answers "Schnauzer Farm", do not hang up 

The system is a dedicated Linux box (MySql, Php, Perl, Apache .... all the usual goodies) used to support a small company that absolutely relies on the site to pay its staff.  This means that no effort will be spared to fix things if there is a problem.   Since it's dedicated, I have root access and am in control of the various upgrades to the infrastructure, and can create an account for the IHD tech team (whomever they are), or I can move the SMF forum for you.   The server is hosted at, and supported by, TSS (Total Server Solutions).  This means a large data center with redundant connections to the net, 24x7 on-site staff, etc.    Great people if you ever need hosting or a dedicated system.

I anticipate that the IHD is low enough that it won't be a noticeable load and, even if it is, the president of the company owes me more than a few favors so it's not like he would ever do anything impolite like ask me for compensation.

It would be easiest to do a move if the old site has shell access (probably easiest to create a tarball and mysqldump file, then move and extract).    Also, access to the DNS registration would be needed by the team doing the move to point to the new server.

have no simple machines experience but in my day job work with huge databases and have operated hobby WordPress sites with a huge amount of content but fairly low readership.  I'm not a good marketer.

Simple Machines Forum is a PHP based site that uses a MySQL database.  Your database experience would be handy, but there is no Wordpress involved (at least in the forum part of the site).   I think the non-forum part of IHD could use a makeover by someone talented in that sort of thing (I am more of a systems/database person that user interface specialist).    The forum is sufficiently separate from the rest of the site as to make it practical to re-do the non-forum part of IHD with Wordpress, and keep the existing Simple Machines Forum software.

I have moved this sort of open source php/mysql system before, and it's generally pretty easy even if one does not know the actual operation of the package.   Port the files, the database, set database permissions, and change the config to point to the new database if the name changes as part of the move, then update the DNS.

[PrimeTimer]

Wow! That would be mighty generous of you, Simon Dog! 

[Jean]

So happy to have some one who ares for us, I just wish Simon Dog would learn to speak English. ( JK Simon Dog )

[Charlie B53]

Now I really KNOW that I am a Dinosaur as everything you said seems to be in an alien language.

Whatever happened to Basic?

Other than help Moderate, I'm no help at all.

Thanks Simo.  We would be lost without you.

[kristina]

My offer to provide free hosting on one of my servers (at a large hosting farm) remains on the table.

Many thanks Simonfor your kind offer to provide free hosting on one of your servers, and many thanks iolaire for your kind offer to assist on the technical side, your kind and generous offers are very much appreciated.
IHD is great to know when one needs to learn how to deal with emotional and practical aspects of dialysis plus clever ways of how to survive on dialysis for as long as is possible...
Many thanks for being here for us,
Kristina.

[iolaire]

Simple Machines Forum is a PHP based site that uses a MySQL database.  Your database experience would be handy, but there is no Wordpress involved (at least in the forum part of the site).   

WordPress is more in the context of I have some experience dealing with caching and PHP/MySQL based issues.  I know enough to know that you will experience some issues after the initial setup as you figure out the resource requirements (by trail and error - with the site having performance issues).   I'm sure the site still has issues with resources at times, even a site with zero users will get hammered with web indexes and bots hitting it and its 513,393 posts.   Also I've done the move of my sites from AWS to various shared hosting and back sites quite a bit.

I'd be hesitant to move it onto a mission critical box until you have a gauge of the resources needed.

[Simon Dog]

Greeting all - I have heard from the techie who handles the site, and things look hopeful.   I hope to work with her on a "dry run" (porting into a test environment) to prove everything will work nicely.

I'd be hesitant to move it onto a mission critical box until you have a gauge of the resources needed.

Agreed.   My first step would be to copy IHD to the new site, and do some testing without changing the DNS pointing to the existing site.    The issue is not so much the number of posts (MySql scales nicely, and text posts are very space efficient), but the number of concurrent users of the forum.   My server is a large virtual machine, so it is easy to scale up.  I do know that my current mission-ciritical site is running some extensive custom database code without a glitch.

The "mission critical" nature of the target server is a good thing.  It means that any necessary resources will be brought to bear if there is a server problem, as there  are people making their  living off of that machine.

I would also recommend keeping the old server/site in place (unused and unreferenced) for an "acceptance period" after the move.

And finally, SMF is a bit out of date.   It should be upgraded as part of the move.

caching and PHP/MySQL based issues

I generally let the system software handle the caching 

[kitkatz]

Currently I have to have meet with Trina the owner of the site to see what she wants to do.
We are in contact with Simon and are looking into things from our end into his end of things.
It is going to take time to get things set up so please be patient.

I would love to see IHD.com advertised and out there more, if anyone has ideas or experience PM me.


kitkatz,Admin