Update 5: Complete! – Upcoming Site Works

Updated 21 June, 5:22p: It’s done! No really, it’s finally done! Welcome to the new server! If you find something broken, PLEASE let me know!

Updated 12 June, 9:11a: Today(ish) is the day! The move is expected to take place some time today. If things suddenly gone down, that is why.

Updated 7 June, 7:03p: I am finally happy with the results I’m seeing from the test environment. That being said, you’ll need to use https://newblog.francehopper.com while the server move is actually taking place if you want to view the blog. The fhnwrk.com domain will go down for several hours as part of the server move. If this suddenly goes poof, that would be why. Unless I become unexpectedly busy, the move will be this weekend, and may start as early as tonight. The test environment is a few posts behind, so some of the Instagram posts will disappear for a bit as part of the move. Don’t panic, as this will automatically fix themselves when the move is done.

Updated 4 June, 10:09a: This update has been delayed again. I want to test the new environment more first as there are a lot of backend changes planned. This has been resulting in some performance issues that are stabilizing, but I want more time to monitor them.

Updated 27 May, 10:12p: Turns out the blog got pretty big over the last eight years. And by big, I mean 30+ GB of files, and over 100,000 lines of SQL to replicate the site at another domain. Making an exact copy did not go well.

Just getting the blog to download took almost half a day and hundreds of FTP timeouts before finding out I had SFTP enabled all along. That fixed the file download issue.

Next up was getting the database replicated, which required running the queries by hand for every table, one at a time, and hoping I didn’t miss anything. While the database isn’t nearly as large as the file dump, it got large enough phpMyAdmin and MySQL Workbench both couldn’t process even a compressed copy of it. So, I had to open all 100,000+ lines up, split them up by table (which Atom very much did not like), and then run them on MySQL Workbench.

So, where do things stand right now? I have finally replicated the entire database on the new server and just updated all of the URL values to the test subdomain to make sure things actually work before doing this for real. WP CLI didn’t like the copied install of WordPress, so that has resulted in an unexpected re-install. I’m now in the process of getting all of the plugins, uploads, and theme moved back over to the new server. Once that is done, it’ll finally be testing time.

The actual move, if all goes well in the test environment, will now happen on Sunday, extending in to next Monday in the worst case scenario.

Original post follows below:

I am planning to make some badly needed changes to the site backend over the holiday weekend, the biggest of which involves moving the site entirely.

For the last several years, this blog has lived on a dedicated server I’ve shared with some mates for around ten years or so. This server is starting to show its age, and the site really struggles at times as a result. In fact, it actually has a hard time just rendering image thumbnails now.

As a result, I’m going to [hopefully] move the blog to another server I have. That’s going to depend on if the site is too big for it though, as it’s on a shared hosting plan. On the upside, it’s a much faster server that should bring some stability improvements, and the blog would also finally gain HTTPS support, something I’ve been meaning to do for several years now.

So long as everything goes to plan, you shouldn’t see the blog go down while the move is taking place, except for when I cutover to the new server. That should be a very short blip. If things go wrong, I’ll cut back over to the existing server.