Opinion regarding posts and the move.
 

The "moving part" of the transition that seems most likely to cause a minor inconvenience is the potential to lose posting data versus the potential for downtime. Right now, my plan is to go with Option One, but I'm open to doing it differently.

1. The moment I receive notification that our backup is available, I shut the board down and post that we'll be back in a few hours.

POSITIVE: No posts that are made after I am notified will be lost.
NEGATIVE: No FOFC for a few hours.


2. I keep the board up here until the moment we are up and running at Operation Sports.

POSITIVES: FOFC has zero down time.
NEGATIVE: Any posts made between the time of the backup and the time we get online at OS will be lost.


In either scenario, any posts that are made between the actual backup being done and the time I am notified will be lost. There's nothing we can figure out to do about that in any scenario. What's still unclear is how long that FOFC will remain up here after it is closed down. I would think it would be beneficial to Gamespy to keep it up for at least a few days, but I'm not sure. If it's up for a while, I suppose that people could copy and paste their posts that were made in the interim. But as I said, my thinking right now is that #1 is the most seamless option, and we can do without FOFC for a few hours. Thoughts?

Poll ready and opened.

Would we learn when we were in the transition time?

The minute I know something and have time to post it.

Ok then I would have actually voted for option 2.

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

I vote #1. It won't kill us to not be able to post here for a few hours. Or even a day, God Forbid.

If we already have an account over at OS, will we still need another account for the new FOFC? I would guess not, but I don't know how separate we are going to be from the other OS boards.

Given all the whining that has gone on about lost posts in the past around here, Option 1 seems the better choice.

I don't give a rat's ass about the post count (obviously), but if there's a way to keep the join dates that would be appreciated.

Eh, if you are going to do it, do it right and make sure everything gets moved over plus, knowing that there is a scheduled outage allows time to work around any issues.

With a full database backup, absolutely no peripheral data should be lost, either. It's as if we're copying and pasting everything that's in Front Office Football Central - Powered by vBulletin to http://www.operationsports.com/fofc.

Downtime is fine although some of the shutins that can't get off the internet might commit suicide.

So, option 1.

For the sake of completeness and continuity, I chose Option 1. When I've done data center migrations in the past, whenever Option 2 was picked by the customer, it invariably led to issues later on, and the data never really got sync'd up properly.

It's pretty clear where this is heading, so I'm unstickying this...

I didn't even know the board was moving. Doh.

#1 seems fine to me.

My concern is not over "lost posts," but "lost content." Just to be clear: I don't care about my post count, but I don't want to post something that is meaningful (or not) and have it disappear 5 hours later.

Right. The whole "lost posts" thing is a long-standing joke here. It's making a long post in a thread and then 5 hours later having to copy and paste it (or lose it entirely) that folks appear to want to avoid.

I don't know about this software, but I assume there is a third option.

Put the forum in read-only mode but keep it running
Kick off the backup and restore to OS
Post something here when it is restored at OS (but keep this in read-only)
Shut this forum down a few days later

That way there is no downtime for reading and only downtime for posting.

Personally, I am unlikely to read a post and reply later. I am heavily dependent upon the "last read" flag and will only read things since my last visit.

I wasn't very clear. This is exactly what I meant by "shut the board down" in Option One. Everyone will be able to read. Admins will be able to post updates on where we are in the process of moving. This forum will remain readable until Gamespy shuts it down.

Do you know how soon after the move that will be? If they shut it down quickly, would there be any re-direct to the OS location from this fof.sportplanet... url? I know that there are a significant number of users who don't check in every day (or even every week) who might miss out on the switch completely. I know that the frontofficefootballcentral.com will redirect, but I always come directly to the current url. If Gamespy could give us a week or so where you would have the announcement and new URL at the top, I think it would make the transition significantly easier and lead to less lost users from the switch.

Absolutely. We'll leave the board up in the current location with a single "WE HAVE MOVED" post heading up every subforum for as long as Gamespy will let us. I'm not sure what's going to happen there, but I would *think* it's to their benefit to leave the board up for a bit to grab those last few hits from people who don't check in as often.

I also intend to use the board's e-mail feature to send out the new URL. Although I fully realize that won't get complete coverage, it certainly should be of some benefit.

I know this is in the other thread, but I wanted to put it in both places. It looks like the move is going to be the best-case scenario, at least from the IGN/Gamespy end. (Props to them!)

1. I will put the forum at sportplanet.gamespy.com into read-only mode at 12:45pm EDT on Thursday, June 5th.

2. By late afternoon (EDT), we will be back up and running at the new site with all forum data, posts, user names, skins, passwords, user groups, banned users, etc. from here. I will post a message here and send a mass e-mail from the vbulletin software at the new forum location when that is completed.

3. For a few weeks, the read-only version of the board should be online here. I'll add a new forum category and a sticky in every forum with a link to the new url. The version of the board here will be searchable, but you won't be able to post. That should be a huge help in our not-so-regulars being able to find us.

I guess it will be time to read some classic threads when we can't post. Anyone have any suggestions?

Werewolf................cause you know the posts there don't count anyway.

I know it was a lame joke.