Update from SzAdmin on site outage and future solutions

Meta
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Dear forum users,

We are very sorry for the recent downtime that affected our site and caused inconvenience or anxiety for many of you. We know how important this community is for you and we appreciate your patience and understanding.

The reason for the downtime is that our site is not cheap to run due to the large amount of content it contains and the high level of user activity it generates, which resulted in us falling a bit behind on the bills. This is being squared up over the coming week.

We are currently using a service provided by the Discourse Team, which is very reliable and secure, but also very expensive. To reduce the cost and ensure the sustainability of our site, we have decided to migrate the SZ forums from the Discourse Team managed solution to a private server that we will manage ourselves. This will allow us to have more control over our site and save a lot of money in the long run. The migrated site will look and feel the same and have all of the current content so the change will not be jarring for anyone.

This migration process will require some time and effort, and it will also cause some temporary disruption to our site. We will need to transfer all the data from the old setup to the new one, which will take several days. During this time, our site will be offline and inaccessible.

We will announce the exact date and duration of the migration well in advance, so that you can prepare accordingly and not be caught off guard like last week (we apologize again for that!). We will also provide regular updates on the progress of the migration via social media (to be announced) and notify you when the site is back online.

We hope that you will bear with us during this transition period and understand that we are doing this for the benefit of the site and our community. We are confident that once the migration is completed, our site will be more stable, secure, and efficient than ever before.

We would also like to thank everyone who has offered to donate money to support the site. We are very touched by your generosity and kindness, but we hope that we can arrange things so that donations are not needed moving forward. We hope that we can restore stability for everyone moving forward.

If you have any questions or concerns about the migration, please feel free to ask or comment and we will respond as best we are able to.

Best wishes to all,

SzAdmin and the SZ forum team

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I would like confirmation from @SzAdmin from his own account on this please

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will the new site be still called sz.com? just wondered.

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I’m sorry, I didn’t understand
How are users going to be notified when the new site is up and running?
I mean we’re going to be offline for a while

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The web addresses you use will not change and any bookmarks you have will still work after. All that is happening is that the software and content are being moved from a commercially managed setup to a privately managed one. This means that @SzAdmin and his helpers will be applying updates to the server and forum software manually. That and the expense to run things are the differences, but they won’t be visible to forum users.

I hope this helps?

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We will arrange for a social media setup that can be accessed in the event of future downtime and to make announcements during downtime. This will be announced when it is ready.

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No - it was posted with my agreement. All is good.

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I didn’t even know it costed money to build a website I hope the new place is as good as here

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I believe it is the hosting that costs money :moneybag::moneybag::moneybag:

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can i ask if the site and forum’s are changing ownership? and if szadmin is going to remain as the owner like he has been for a long time?

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Will it be public? The site?

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You will not notice any difference after the move. It will look and feel the same.

The ownership of the site is not changing. @SzAdmin has, does, and will continue to call the shots.

Yes, the site will remain public like it is now. End users will not see a difference when using it after the migration and the back end of the site will be the same for the moderation staff as well.

I hope these answers are helpful.

v.

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Will we have to re-sign into the new forum? I dont remember my password :rofl:

Or will everyone have to create a new account?

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Accounts and passwords should remain unaffected.

v.

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can i ask if szadmin is the original owner of these forums/site, i was worried that it had a change of ownership, i know that it was set up in dedication to a family member who had sz

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Does this mean the Discourse app will no longer work on our mobile devices?

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I do not know the answer for this, but I will try and get it for you when I am able.

v.

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Thank you!!!

15151515

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Will the look and style of the site change?
New emojis as an example.

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Probably not. It’s still going to be discourse

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