25
May
2019

CASC-OR Forums Are Back

webmaster / Tag: CASC-OR, frontpage

TL;DR The forums are now live at a new location, http://forums.casc.on.ca

Use your previous login and password.

If you don't remember your password you can reset it yourself with the Forgot password or user name? link on the login form BUT you have to have access to the email address related to your account.

If you need help, write forums@casc.on.ca and someone will assist you.

If you'd like the more complete explanation of what happened, though ...

Some years ago we hosted all CASC-OR's web presence (this site, the forums, the members website for club memberships and licences) at a Canadian hosting provider where we got great technical support from a top class company. Then they were sold to a larger American company, and over time that company has changed, and not for the better.

When the members site was completely redone from the ground up in 2017, that site was moved onto a virtual private server which is located in Canada and which we maintain and control ourselves but the rest of our presence remained at the old hosting company.

In early April 2019, the hosting company announced that they were migrating us to new servers and that "There is no action required on your behalf ...". Ha.

When they actually "completed" the migration May 7, everything was broken or out of date except the members site.

All email and other content like forum posts etc. copied to the new servers was as of April 4 - an entire month of data was not moved over.

Fortunately, given it was the week before the season started, the members site was unaffected and no data was lost, except its ability to send email to members was broken until we found a solution to that on May 10. Fixing that email was the first priority.

Then we needed to get all the email to/from the CASC-OR email addresses restored which was done around the same time.

The content on this site (like rules and bulletins) had to be retrieved and copied to the site so it was available.

The forums, though, were the biggest issue. They wouldn't operate at all at first because they were running on a very old version of the forum software (2009) which wouldn't run on the new host servers. We purchased the upgraded software and began the process of upgrading. We then had to find a new location for the forums (because they had to have their own configuration separate from this site) which is the reason for the new address, http://forums.casc.on.ca.

Then we discovered that the forums had the same problem as the email, no posts between April 4 and May 7. It took four days to get that back and then we could start the full upgrade.

We needed to go through four separate upgrade steps, and to ensure we didn't lose anything each step was done in a test environment before applying it to the live server. Plus, each upgrade required changing the server configuration before the next upgrade step.

But finally today the forums are completely restored and upgraded and available at the new address. They are easier to read, particularly on mobile devices, and as we lean more about them there are some new features we'll take advantage of.

It's taken a lot of time and effort but we think we're back in order. If you have problems or questions please reach out to webmaster@casc.on.ca