ASF Downtime

[qldfrog]

And Joe, thanks for your efforts and time

 

[explod]

This is a wonderful site and has helped me limp through some very difficult times due to my PTSD. In fact Basilio visited me (physically) as a result of our meeting here (ASF) when I was extremely low. Julia (bless her spirit) was also a great support, we unfortunately never got to meet.
So my pick is:- Go Joe.

 

[Joe Blow]

I had no idea that the DNS changes would take so long to filter through to people's ISPs. DNS is a strange and scary beast. Once you make the changes you have no control over it and it takes as long as it takes. All you can do is wait.

I see that there are still quite a few people trapped over at the old ASF installation. It looks like it is going to take a full 24 hours until everyone makes it over here.

 

[explod]

I had no idea that the DNS changes would take so long to filter through to people's ISPs. DNS is a strange and scary beast. Once you make the changes you have no control over it and it takes as long as it takes. All you can do is wait.

I see that there are still quite a few people trapped over at the old ASF installation. It looks like it is going to take a full 24 hours until everyone makes it over here.

Only took a couple of hours for me, that was from about 3.00pm so i'd say all good by tomorrow.

 

[Ann]

I see that there are still a few people trapped over at the old ASF installation. It looks like it is going to take a full 24 hours until everyone makes it over here.

Geez, I took a couple of looks at your instructions and went yeah/nah, going to wait till the son gets back from S.A. he can fix it.
Never to be deterred I decided to try again....bingo, it worked!

You say you are are planning to re-design the whole site....Nooooooo please don't! It is lovely as it is. Don't touch any of the buttons. We all need You and ASF too much, you are the chosen one!

If you do decide to change please leave it to the professionals. If they fcuk up you can always sue them!

Final word, what a pity we lost posts from Zaxon a rare poster. We need these people, Zaxon please come back!

 

[Zaxon]

I had no idea that the DNS changes would take so long to filter through to people's ISPs.

I've been bouncing between the two versions, sometimes just within the time of going from one page to the next. And clearing the windows DNS cache had no impact.

 

[Zaxon]

Final word, what a pity we lost posts from Zaxon a rare poster. We need these people, Zaxon please come back!

I will do my best to crawl back from the DNS abyss!

 

[Joe Blow]

Geez, I took a couple of looks at your instructions and went yeah/nah, going to wait till the son gets back from S.A. he can fix it.
Never to be deterred I decided to try again....bingo, it worked!

Persistence can bring great rewards! Glad to hear it worked for you.

You say you are are planning to re-design the whole site....Nooooooo please don't! It is lovely as it is. Don't touch any of the buttons. We all need You and ASF too much, you are the chosen one!

If you do decide to change please leave it to the professionals. If they fcuk up you can always sue them!

I like it too, but I think improvements can be made. The hard part is figuring out what those changes should be and how to design and implement them. I'm not a revolutionary change kind of person, at least when it comes to ASF. I like small, useful, incremental changes that improve and enhance people's experience here. That will be my aim.

Final word, what a pity we lost posts from Zaxon a rare poster. We need these people, Zaxon please come back!

I see he's back already!

 

[Joe Blow]

And clearing the windows DNS cache had no impact.

It was a long shot but sometimes it works. Glad to see you made it here in the end.

 

[Ann]

I will do my best to crawl back from the DNS abyss!

YAY! Never change your avi...please!

 

[Ann]

Persistence can bring great rewards!

Never a truer word spoken Joe, this is the number 42!

I like it too, but I think improvements can be made. The hard part is figuring out what those changes should be and how to design and implement them. I'm not a revolutionary change kind of person, at least when it comes to ASF. I like small, useful, incremental changes that improve and enhance people's experience here. That will be my
I see he's back already!

My suggestion is to get rid of any ratings. They can be used as a weapon. I suffered dreadful bullying on another forum when I was a beginner/prat. It never pushed me off the site but it made me question my thoughts. No one bothered to tell me why I was wrong/or potentially wrong.
I now know all info can be right or wrong it is just a timing thing. I know who the Bully was on the other site but I always feel their contribution was of value there and still do here but my respect for him is lessened.

Kindness and respect will always trump arrogance. Thank you Joe, you are the most polite and kind person I can imagine online.

 

[Joe Blow]

Never a truer word spoken Joe, this is the number 42!

My suggestion is to get rid of any ratings. They can be used as a weapon. I suffered dreadful bullying on another forum when I was a beginner/prat. It never pushed me off the site but it made me question my thoughts. No one bothered to tell me why I was wrong/or potentially wrong.
I now know all info can be right or wrong it is just a timing thing. I know who the Bully was on the other site but I always feel their contribution was of value there and still do here but my respect for him is lessened.

Kindness and respect will always trump arrogance. Thank you Joe, you are the most polite and kind person I can imagine online.

Thanks for your kind words Ann, and don't worry, I have no intention of introducing a rating system for ASF members. Something like that will create unnecessary division and rivalry in the community and I don't think that's a wise direction to take.

 

[Ann]

Thanks for your kind words Ann, and don't worry, I have no intention of introducing a rating system for ASF members. Something like that will create unnecessary division and rivalry in the community and I don't think that's a wise direction to take.

It has already happened Joe.

Thanks for your kind words Ann, and don't worry, I have no intention of introducing a rating system for ASF members. Something like that will create unnecessary division and rivalry in the community and I don't think that's a wise direction to take.

Joe, you have done it already. There is a rating thing of "likes" that Skate is working to his advantage, whatever that is ( I think he is a boring moron but whatever). Peter2 is brilliant. Tech/a as a great example of how not to trade to make money.
I say just get rid of stars and faves and whatever, no ratings. Let the viewing punters come to their own decisions, right or wrong.

 

[Joe Blow]

There is a rating thing of "likes" that Skate is working to his advantage, whatever that is ( I think he is a boring moron but whatever). Peter2 is brilliant. Tech/a as a great example of how not to trade to make money.
I say just get rid of stars and faves and whatever, no ratings. Let the viewing punters come to their own decisions, right or wrong.

I understand and appreciate your point of view but when it comes to likes we will have to agree to disagree. Although there may be some less than benign effects of them, I see the feature as mostly positive. Liking a post can be a shorthand way of saying, "I agree" and also a way of telling someone that you appreciate the time and effort they have put into creating the post. The pattern of likes a member receives can tell them a lot about the kind of content others like and find useful, encouraging them to create more of it.

There will never be a dislike feature or any way to give a negative rating to anything or anyone (except perhaps for dodgy stocks). I don't think negativity is good for a community. But I'm happy for people to convey appreciation and agreement to others. Those are good things.

 

[sptrawler]

It has already happened Joe.

Joe, you have done it already. There is a rating thing of "likes" that Skate is working to his advantage, whatever that is ( I think he is a boring moron but whatever). Peter2 is brilliant. Tech/a as a great example of how not to trade to make money.
I say just get rid of stars and faves and whatever, no ratings. Let the viewing punters come to their own decisions, right or wrong.

Joe, I don't know what you did, but my android tablet choked, it keeps returning to the old site.
So I have downloaded Tapatalk, that had given me access, but now I have to learn how to use it.lol

 

[sptrawler]

Sorry about the interuption ann

 

[galumay]

Thanks for the great work in the background, @Joe Blow - I have also had my battles with DNS propogation on sites I manage, its very frustrating. I think your open communication on these tech matters is a very positive aspect to ASF.

I am with Ann on the likes and ratings stuff, personally I think forums are better without it. Its one of the main reasons I dont have a presence on another reasonably new website/forum for investors, despite it being run by an investor I admire. The competitive nature of the whole site structure is very off-putting for me. I think ASF would be better without the ratings for individual businesses and the likes for posts - but its at least inoffensive enough to not overly bother me!

I respect your desire to retain these elements on ASF, and I am sure many members like them.

 

[Joe Blow]

Thanks for the great work in the background, @Joe Blow - I have also had my battles with DNS propogation on sites I manage, its very frustrating. I think your open communication on these tech matters is a very positive aspect to ASF.

Thanks. I like to keep people informed, especially about service disruptions. Although I once again underestimated the DNS propagation time. I have come to conclusion that it's mostly a ISP issue with some ISPs updating their DNS records more often than others. Whatever the cause, it turns a relatively simple three hour website migration into a 24 hour ordeal and I like to vent about it.

 

[explod]

Hunken fckn doooolaaar. love this site Joe, keep it up.

 

[tinhat]

I had no idea that the DNS changes would take so long to filter through to people's ISPs. DNS is a strange and scary beast. Once you make the changes you have no control over it and it takes as long as it takes. All you can do is wait.

I see that there are still quite a few people trapped over at the old ASF installation. It looks like it is going to take a full 24 hours until everyone makes it over here.

DNS is one of the hidden parts of the internet that helps glue it all together. As you note it is rather esoteric.

Once suggestion is to drop the TTL (time to live) setting in the DNS record for your domain name on the server a couple of days before you migrate to a new IP address. That is actually the purpose of the TTL setting in a DNS zone file. Usually, it is set at 14400 (seconds; ie, 4 hours). Drop it down to say 3000 (five minutes). You only need to do this on the DNS server that is running on the old IP address.

But wait, you are now wondering why, if the default TTL setting is usually 14400 seconds (4 hours) why can it take days for some users to switch over to the new IP address? Well,

1. DNS records are cached at each node along a network route. So between the client (forum user) and the forum server there may be anywhere from a dozen or thirty or more hops with each node holding a dns cache. Thus when a change in a domain DNS record is made at the primary DNS server it may take up to the TTL (standard setting 4 hours) for that change to propagate to the next node, another four hours to propagate to the next node and so on along any particular route. So one user may be routed to the new IP address almost instantly (because the old IP is not cached along their network route) and other users might take a couple of days for the DNS caches to refresh along their route.

2. It's the internet. The TTL record that the primary DNS server for your domain name advertises, should always be adhered to by the authorised secondary/slave DNS servers listed for your domain but not necessarily by other dns servers that might be caching the DNS in various nodes along various routes. DNS lookups require a bit of overhead so network operators may implement their own systems for DNS caching to optimize their networks.

It's been quite a few years since I worked in this field and I am pretty rusty on it now. This is a good article:

https://www.varonis.com/blog/definitive-guide-to-dns-ttl-settings/