[UPDATE] Website Downtime for Server Maintenance Soon
Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:37 am
I don't have a specific date/time just yet, but I wanted to go ahead and share that there will be some website downtime in the very near future. This will take the forums offline, and additionally will cause errors during CMC's check for updates on startup.
There's a small chance this outage may happen today, but if not today then sometime this week. I anticipate a few hours of downtime to make the switch and work out the kinks.
For those that are interested in the nerdy details, read on...
The downtime is occurring because I am having to migrate the website to a new server. The website is hosted by AWS, and I made the mistake of using a pre-built Bitnami LAMP stack that has an old version of PHP which cannot be upgraded. The main website is a Wordpress site which I keep updated with bug fixes and critical patches, but the old PHP version is now becoming a major obstacle and security risk. Sadly, this is now the 2nd time I've had to migrate due to this exact same issue. First time, shame on Bitnami for not providing a solution to this well documented limitation. Second time, why the hell is there a second time...
To make sure this never happens again, I have built a new AWS server from scratch, not using a pre-built Bitnami LAMP stack, but rather rolling my own, so now I am in full control of all component versions, and I can upgrade PHP easily in the future. So hopefully this will be the last major outage.
I'm also taking this opportunity to make better software choices, i.e. a MariaDB instead of MySQL, and a highly optimized "Amazon Linux 2" flavor of Linux, instead of something like Ubuntu which really isn't the best server OS. Hopefully the end result is a better performing website, unless I totally mess this up.
By building a new server in parallel, the current website remains up until I'm ready to make the switch. When I make the switch, I have to export/import the database to migrate both the WordPress website and the CMC forums to the new server. And then once I bring the new server online, there will be some functionality issues as I work on the last setup tasks, like installing an SSL Cert and making sure the server works correctly with the domain name - these are things hard to do before making the switch.
There's a small chance this outage may happen today, but if not today then sometime this week. I anticipate a few hours of downtime to make the switch and work out the kinks.
For those that are interested in the nerdy details, read on...
The downtime is occurring because I am having to migrate the website to a new server. The website is hosted by AWS, and I made the mistake of using a pre-built Bitnami LAMP stack that has an old version of PHP which cannot be upgraded. The main website is a Wordpress site which I keep updated with bug fixes and critical patches, but the old PHP version is now becoming a major obstacle and security risk. Sadly, this is now the 2nd time I've had to migrate due to this exact same issue. First time, shame on Bitnami for not providing a solution to this well documented limitation. Second time, why the hell is there a second time...
To make sure this never happens again, I have built a new AWS server from scratch, not using a pre-built Bitnami LAMP stack, but rather rolling my own, so now I am in full control of all component versions, and I can upgrade PHP easily in the future. So hopefully this will be the last major outage.
I'm also taking this opportunity to make better software choices, i.e. a MariaDB instead of MySQL, and a highly optimized "Amazon Linux 2" flavor of Linux, instead of something like Ubuntu which really isn't the best server OS. Hopefully the end result is a better performing website, unless I totally mess this up.
By building a new server in parallel, the current website remains up until I'm ready to make the switch. When I make the switch, I have to export/import the database to migrate both the WordPress website and the CMC forums to the new server. And then once I bring the new server online, there will be some functionality issues as I work on the last setup tasks, like installing an SSL Cert and making sure the server works correctly with the domain name - these are things hard to do before making the switch.