User talk:Kine/server relocation

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Issues

Happy new year! Some outstanding issues I've noticed (I bet you're aware of them):-

All of that is working for me (on multiple machines). I suspect the problem you've run into is that some assets are now being pulled from the gineistatic.com domain (which was done for performance reasons), and either your browser's cache is out of date or your JavaScript security settings are interfering with this.
Can you try to completely clear your cache/cookies and then see if it works again?
If it doesn't, can you let me know what browser you're running, and whether you have any privacy/security extensions like NoScript or whatever installed? If it causes a lot of problems for those i can just switch it back to the original domain, but i want to be sure that's the case first  ♥ kine @ 08:19, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Heh, you called it, my noscript was blocking gineistatic. :) Vympel 08:40, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Update @ 2011/12/23 05:15 UTC

ImageMagick now appears to be working, as does e-mail. Assuming i don't find any gigantic issues in the next few minutes, i will leave the other stuff for later :)  ♥ kine @ 05:16, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Update @ 2011/12/23 03:20 UTC

Regarding upload permissions — they are working. However, ImageMagick (the thing that generates thumb-nails from the uploaded images) is not. I'm trying to track down why :x  ♥ kine @ 03:20, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Update @ 2011/12/23 02:50 UTC

The transfer has been made and the database and files all appear to be OK. Lucene is also working — feel free to test it out. The only remaining issues that i'm aware of are:

There are also some further performance-related changes i need to make, but these can be done later. Otherwise functionality is completely restored. Please let me know if you see worse performance than before, or if there's anything else that looks strange!

PS: This isn't strictly necessary, but i would recommend doing a Ctrl/Shift+refresh to make sure you've got the latest versions of everything. (In Firefox do Ctrl+Shift+R or Cmd+Shift+R; in IE do Ctrl+F5; in Chrome do Ctrl+F5; in Safari do Shift+reload.) Or you can just clear your entire browser cache  ♥ kine @ 02:57, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Original notice

Hello. Tomorrow night, we are going to attempt to relocate Gineipaedia's hosting to a new provider. As this is not a full-time job for me, i can't provide a precise and guaranteed time frame, but i expect it to occur around the following time:

The move will take between 1 and 6 hours (hopefully closer to the former). No specific action is needed on your part, although if you have an account here you will probably need to log back in once the move is completed (your session will not transfer over). Additionally, depending on your Internet service provider, there may be a delay before the DNS change propagates to you; if you find that 6 hours have passed and you are still unable to access the site, please flush your DNS cache. (I do not expect this to be a problem in practice, however; DNS in my experience usually updates within 15 to 30 minutes.)

FAQs:

1. Why are we doing this?

Gineipaedia's current host has proven to be extremely slow and somewhat unreliable. This unreliability has led to increasingly frequent periods of unresponsiveness. Additionally, since we have shared hosting, we do not have fine control over the server, which prevents us from doing a few things we've liked to do.

2. What will the immediate benefits be?

The most immediate benefit will be improved page-loading speed. In my tests so far i have found that the average page-load time for our current provider (depending on time of day) is 11.2 seconds, whilst the test site on the new provider gives a consistent 2.9 seconds. Even this is higher than i would like, and that is something i will continue to work on, but the change should be immediately noticeable.
Additionally, stability will be improved, and the 15-minute periods of unresponsiveness we have been experiencing will hopefully disappear for ever.
Thirdly, due to the flexibility the new host provides, i will be able to implement several immediate performance-related changes, such as hosting static content from a separate domain, which will improve our Page Speed score on Google, leading ultimately to improved search ranking.
Lastly, from my testing so far i believe that i can have Lucene set up and running quickly as part of the move. Lucene is a search back-end (used by, for example, Wikipedia) that will greatly improve Gineipaedia's search function. The two main improvements will be spell-checking ('Did you mean ____ ?') and the rendering of page content (instead of displaying all of the raw wiki code in the search results, it will show only the actual text of the article).

3. What will the long-term benefits be?

Since we will have complete control over our host, we will be able to make changes that we could not previously do. One major benefit is that, should Gineipaedia experience increased popularity that requires more server power, we will be able to add additional hardware quickly and easily, without having to go through a lot of down-time.
Also, i am hopeful that we can set up a test server, which will allow us to test incremental changes to the site, such as MediaWiki upgrades and the like.

4. What if i have more questions or comments, or i need to get in touch with you during the move?

Please leave any pre-move questions/comments below. Since my e-mail is going to be moved along with the Web server, i will probably not have access to e-mail, so if you'd like to reach me during the move, please post on the LOGH Wiki Forum. (I will be checking it periodically.)

 ♥ kine @ 22:59, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Previous discussion

Hey there. I can't think of a better place to put this at the moment that everyone will see and have access to, and since our user base is fairly limited i guess this'll do:

If you have been trying to access GP during the day North-American time (and sometimes even at other times), you've probably noticed that its performance is horrible. Page loading is extraordinarily slow and there have been increasingly frequent periods of complete unresponsiveness. Sometimes it's OK, but overall it's not. Google's Page Speed test consistently gives us very low scores, which are also, coincidentally, affecting our ranking in their search results (which is partially based on site performance).

So, i have been planning for some time to move us to different hosting. I currently have a test copy of the site running on a Linode VPS and it's about 90% ready to be used (moving things over wasn't as difficult as i expected it to be)... but i wanted to get everyone's opinions on how this should work.

My thinking is that we put the site into read-only mode for about an hour or two so that i can copy the current state of the site over without losing anything, and then within an hour or two after that we should be back in business.

Assuming you guys think that's wise, when do you think is the best time to do this? How much notice should i give, and so on?

I know we don't get heaps and heaps of visitors, so maybe i'm over-thinking it, but i don't want to act unilaterally. Let me know what you think :)  ♥ kine @ 00:54, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Well your midnight is my middle of the day, so I don't mind. I'm supposed to be working! Vympel 01:30, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
I believe a three-day notice on the front page would be sufficient. I have no opinion about which time is the best, so just choose one at your own discretion. =) Glacierfairy 01:39, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Speaking of visitor numbers, perhaps the site needs wider press among LOGH viewers. It seems even among such circles not many people are aware of this place. Iracundus 09:47, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Well, our visits have been steadily (but very slowly) growing; we used to hover around 100 a day, and now we're at 150. We've also become very popular in Russia for some reason.
However, we are limited by our search ranking, which still puts us below two or three Wikia sites that have absolutely zero content, and our traffic stats reflect that (Wikia wikis are our #1 and #4 sources of referral traffic). One reason we are stuck below them is, as i mentioned, the poor site speed. If we can improve that i suspect we will see improved search ranking and subsequently more traffic, although i couldn't say how much.
We've also been doing our best to add links to GP on any other relevant wikis (i even created an article on reddit's anime wiki and put a link to us there — it has been a source of several referrals, but not a huge number). Someone added us to TV Tropes the other day too.
However i do agree with you that we need better press. Unfortunately i am kind of timid when it comes to that; i have never been a good sales-person. :(
I think getting added to Wikipedia's article on LOGH would be a really good idea, but it's discouraged to link to other wikis 'except [for] those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors'. I don't know that we qualify for that. I guess i could ask about it on their talk page though. (There is also the matter of our OVA episode pages, almost all of which contain unsourced content from Wikipedia.... These need re-written pretty badly.)
I have also been watching out for LOGH-related posts on reddit, which can be a major source of traffic if you get into them while they're still young. Unfortunately i have not been super successful there.
And we also tried to enlist the assistance of the guy who moderates MyAnimeList's LOGH forum, who happened to have his own (smaller, newer) competitor wiki, but he disagreed with the content we allow (he wanted his to be completely 100% in-universe, no exceptions). And then Canary pissed him off during an argument later. :p So he probably hates us
Anyway. Let me know if you have any other specific ideas. :)  ♥ kine @ 15:06, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
The Gineiden-wiki is dead and the site itself seems to be gone so this place is now really the sole significant English language collection of information. Iracundus 21:44, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Well, i think that was the case even before it disappeared, at least when it came to wikis. They only had like a dozen articles i think, when i last looked, and maybe two contributors. In the non-wiki realm, there is still the LOGH InfoCenter site (logh.net)... but it hasn't been updated in many years.
Were you following along with that gineiden-wiki thing? Is that how you found us?  ♥ kine @ 22:06, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
No, actually it was Vympel's battle thread on StarDestroyer.net, as it has been a long time since I've seen any attempt at tech analysis of LOGH, at least in English. I am still not fully aware what exactly was the big disagreement Gineiden-wiki had with here, even given the different POV style preferences. I am aware of logh.net as it was the then new main English site when I got into LOGH, but as you say it has not been updated in years and its forums are down. Iracundus 22:27, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
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