Pfhorums 7 year, 7 month, 7 day anniversary!

Destiny · Jan 22nd '13, 01:09

Wasn't a joke. If I lost that stuff, I would have lost this:

the mararthon crash-landed on lh'owon
and now there are madds EVERYWHERE
MARATHON 4: MADD MADNESS

CryoS · Jan 23rd '13, 10:13

I come back briefly for a few minutes and oh god a new layout!

Nice to see this place is still lively.

Jan 23rd '13, 21:43

appleswitch wrote:The old forum allowed you to set a "display name" and didn't allow you to change your account name. If anyone misses their display name, I would be happy to change their account name for them, and one user has already messaged me to do that.

This mod might be useful: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/ ... user_name/

Jan 28th '13, 23:03

Saturday night the server locked up ( mysql crashed, immediately dropped successful SSH connections, ignored reboot command ) and had to be rebooted manually. I was unable to get to the data center until this morning. From this morning to 17:00 CST, cocide was performing a remote backup, after which I started the web server again.

Hopefully this was a one-time glitch ( though my cynicism doubts it ), and the server doesn't cause any more trouble. Regardless, all the Pfhorums data is fully backed up and will continue to back up remotely.

SylithSenjak · Jan 28th '13, 23:11

Switch wrote:Saturday night the server locked up ( mysql crashed, immediately dropped successful SSH connections, ignored reboot command ) and had to be rebooted manually. I was unable to get to the data center until this morning. From this morning to 17:00 CST, cocide was performing a remote backup, after which I started the web server again.

Hopefully this was a one-time glitch ( though my cynicism doubts it ), and the server doesn't cause any more trouble. Regardless, all the Pfhorums data is fully backed up and will continue to back up remotely.

I was wondering what happened! Thanks for getting it fixed as quickly as you did.

Wrkncacnter · Jan 29th '13, 02:10

Hey, if you can't give us three nines, at least give us five sixes!

Crater Creator · Jan 29th '13, 03:37

Switch wrote:Saturday night the server locked up ( mysql crashed, immediately dropped successful SSH connections, ignored reboot command ) and had to be rebooted manually. I was unable to get to the data center until this morning. From this morning to 17:00 CST, cocide was performing a remote backup, after which I started the web server again.

Hopefully this was a one-time glitch ( though my cynicism doubts it ), and the server doesn't cause any more trouble. Regardless, all the Pfhorums data is fully backed up and will continue to back up remotely.

In the interest of preventing a catch-22... if future problems occur, would it be helpful to try to reach you or cocide, and if so, where?

thedoctor45 · Jan 29th '13, 05:20

I like the new layout but where did my private messages go? I just had a quick look into my PM archive and the last message stored there is from 2008 - from about 60 messages only 11 remain - has the PM DB been purged in the upgrade process?

Jan 29th '13, 05:28

Crater Creator wrote:In the interest of preventing a catch-22... if future problems occur, would it be helpful to try to reach you or cocide, and if so, where?

I believe my email address can be found ( and saved ) on my Pfhorums user page. I won't include it here, or it will be displayed publicly and collected by spam bots.

thedoctor45 wrote:I like the new layout but where did my private messages go? I just had a quick look into my PM archive and the last message stored there is from 2008 - from about 60 messages only 11 remain - has the PM DB been purged in the upgrade process?

Can you check your PMs on old.pfhorums.com and let me know if they are all there?

fiddler_on_a_roof · Jan 29th '13, 05:29

A couple of broader questions:

1) Could Switch or cocide give an itemized list on what does it cost per year to maintain the Pfhorums (bandwidth, domain name, server maintenance)?

2) Are the recent failures in any way due to parts getting old (i.e. hard drive errors, old cooling fans, etc.)

Once we know how much things cost per year, maybe we can set up a donation to ensure that these services are up for the next few years. I did a quick search, and found that PayPal has a donation feature.

Crater Creator · Jan 29th '13, 06:31

Switch wrote:
Crater Creator wrote:In the interest of preventing a catch-22... if future problems occur, would it be helpful to try to reach you or cocide, and if so, where?
I believe my email address can be found ( and saved ) on my Pfhorums user page. I won't include it here, or it will be displayed publicly and collected by spam bots.

Perfect; thank you.

JohannesG · Jan 29th '13, 07:04

What he said.

fiddler_on_a_roof wrote:A couple of broader questions:

1) Could Switch or cocide give an itemized list on what does it cost per year to maintain the Pfhorums (bandwidth, domain name, server maintenance)?

2) Are the recent failures in any way due to parts getting old (i.e. hard drive errors, old cooling fans, etc.)

Once we know how much things cost per year, maybe we can set up a donation to ensure that these services are up for the next few years. I did a quick search, and found that PayPal has a donation feature.

TBCR · Jan 29th '13, 07:52

Will there be Tapatalk Integration coming in the not too distant future?

interion · Jan 29th '13, 21:30

TBCR wrote:Will there be Tapatalk Integration coming in the not too distant future?

I hope so! Tapatalk would be the perfect way to get monetized with Admob Mediation™.

Jan 30th '13, 04:25

fiddler_on_a_roof wrote:A couple of broader questions:

1) Could Switch or cocide give an itemized list on what does it cost per year to maintain the Pfhorums (bandwidth, domain name, server maintenance)?

Bandwidth - Free
Bandwidth is currently free. My father has an arrangement with a tech company office building where he maintains the DNS in exchange for free use of the datacenter. I just provide the machine.

Domain name - Free
Normally, this would be a negligible $10/yr, but in this case it doesn't even cost me that. When I was 15 and started the Pfhorums, I was purchasing domain names through my father. Since then I have purchased many domains through my own GoDaddy account, and after that a NameCheap account. However, for no real reason other than not bothering, my two oldest domains appleswitch.com and pfhorums.com have remained on my father's account.

Server maintenance - Free
This is where cocide comes in. A few years ago cocide started working with the Android distribution Evervolv. They needed some web-based collaboration software, so Cocide offered to upgrade the RAM and HDDs on the "Devel" ( my server ) in exchange for running the Evervolv software.

fiddler_on_a_roof wrote:2) Are the recent failures in any way due to parts getting old (i.e. hard drive errors, old cooling fans, etc.)

The failure from December appears to be just a fried box. We brought it home, switched the RAM and HDDs into another box of the same model, and drove it back to the data center. Cocide is still trying to figure out the crash from a few days ago. Yes, the hardware is very very old. The first operating system I used on that machine was Fedora 4, and that was after it was old enough to be passed down to me.

The Pfhorums should have cost me at least $2,000 to run over the last 7 years. I have been very lucky.

fiddler_on_a_roof wrote:Once we know how much things cost per year, maybe we can set up a donation to ensure that these services are up for the next few years. I did a quick search, and found that PayPal has a donation feature.

Any improvements and maintenance I make to Simplici7y and Pfhorums directly serve my portfolio. Any maintenance I perform on the server directly serve my personal sites like rkuykendall.com and a half dozen others. I'm sure we can find cooler things to put our money towards. I really appreciate the support though.

TBCR wrote:Will there be Tapatalk Integration coming in the not too distant future?

Holy shit that is awesome. Definitely. If I don't do this in the next couple weeks, send me a harassing email or something.

fiddler_on_a_roof · Jan 30th '13, 05:25

I'm pleasantly surprised at these answers. Thank you Switch and cocide for running everything free of charge, especially since nothing is actually free.

When things actually get tight, let us know.

Jan 30th '13, 13:23

Switch wrote:
TBCR wrote:Will there be Tapatalk Integration coming in the not too distant future?
Holy shit that is awesome. Definitely. If I don't do this in the next couple weeks, send me a harassing email or something.

Does that mean an annoying pop-up ad for a paid app every time we visit from a mobile device? Because that would be not awesome.

How about a mobile device skin?

Destiny · Jan 30th '13, 17:04

Cool history lesson Switch!

Hey, is there any way the size limit for avatars and uploads could be increased? Even just a little bit?

Jan 30th '13, 17:27

treellama wrote:Does that mean an annoying pop-up ad for a paid app every time we visit from a mobile device? Because that would be not awesome.

No, the pop-up can be very simply removed. The app is only $3 and the plugin is free. I would pay $3 for a native android application to browse the Pfhorums.

treellama wrote:How about a mobile device skin?

Sadly, I expected modern PHPBB to have mobile device skins natively, but this is not the case. It requires a lot of modifications which would hinder upgrades.

Destiny wrote:Hey, is there any way the size limit for avatars and uploads could be increased? Even just a little bit?

Removed file size limit, increased dimensions to 120x120 ( my avatar ). Does that work?

Destiny · Jan 30th '13, 18:22

No. O_o

Tried shrinking a picture in paint then uploaded it. It looked awful, so I went to upload my previous avatar. It seems the dimensions for the avatars I'm choosing are too big.

Jan 30th '13, 20:08

Destiny wrote:Tried shrinking a picture in paint then uploaded it. It looked awful, so I went to upload my previous avatar. It seems the dimensions for the avatars I'm choosing are too big.

Can you send me your previous avatar?

Also, yes, Paint is probably a horrible way to shrink an image. You would probably be better off with any web service.

Destiny · Jan 30th '13, 21:35

This was my previous avatar: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... _Kopie.jpg

Thanks to your link, I resized a new avatar. Thankfully you increased the dimensions limit, otherwise I would have a lot less of a face for my avatar. Thanks for the help.

Jan 31st '13, 04:01

Switch wrote:Removed file size limit, increased dimensions to 120x120 ( my avatar ). Does that work?

Now scroll bars show up in the left column of anyone with an avatar, in Safari.

JohannesG · Jan 31st '13, 08:03

treellama wrote:
Switch wrote:Removed file size limit, increased dimensions to 120x120 ( my avatar ). Does that work?
Now scroll bars show up in the left column of anyone with an avatar, in Safari.

No scroll bars for me in Safari Version 6.0.2 (8536.26.17) and in Chrome.

Ares Ex Machina · Feb 3rd '13, 02:26

The date and time of the last visit was a useful feature. Although a better approach might be to highlight not just topics, but individual posts that one hasn't read.