Just want to keep everybody in the loop. I'm moving to a new hosting provider/server that will be able to scale to a much bigger load.

Both servers will remain operational, so getting to the regular articles will still work fine, but the forum access will be much slower for a few hours since the old server will be using the database on the new server, which is going across the internet...

Once all the DNS migration has completed (You will know you are on the new server because the message will be gone), then everything should go back to normal.

I'll also update this topic with instructions on manually updating your hosts file if you wanted to access only the new server.

Sorry, I just realized I deleted a section of my original post while editing... I'm going to add a message to the top of the forum on the old server, stating that there is maintenance going on. Once the DNS updates you shouldn't see that message anymore on the new server.

There shouldn't be too much downtime, maybe 10-20 minutes that you can't login (while I do a backup / restore of the database onto the new server). You'll be able to access the site just fine though.

Once the DNS has fully transferred for everybody, which might be a few days, then I'll get rid of the old server.

Comments will be down, yes... thankfully we get very few during the middle of the night so it's not a big deal. I can manually copy any comments that happen during that timeframe.

Alright, at this point the forum is running on the new database, but if you see the big blue message across the top then you are still running off the old web server. The DNS has been transferred, so when the blue message goes away you know you are on the new web server as well.

If you want to switch to using the new server without waiting for the DNS, you can add this line into your C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file:

74.55.7.242 www.howtogeek.com blogs.howtogeek.com howtogeek.com

Otherwise you can just wait for the DNS to update... it's not a big deal either way. The articles will still load off the old or new server, no changes have been posted there.

So from anybody's perspective that is reading this, just use the site as you normally would, except perhaps it'll be a little slow for a few hours.

It appears that everything is now operational, so it's time for bed!

The new server should scale to a much bigger load, so we won't have any of the problems we've had during certain days lately.

[edit] I should say, hopefully we won't.

nice