I got an email today from GoDaddy saying that they'll be changing their hosting plan system. The one I've been using is basically going to be discontinued.

I will get one free year of Economy Hosting, which does have some advantages over what I have now, but the $6.99 per month cost after that first year is intimidating me, especially as I think I would have to renew it in one year chunks (meaning about $84 a year). I don't know what I'm going to do after that first year; I may end up with another service, or just lump it and spend less at GenCon. I really don't want to be one of those guys who begs his users for money, but I won't rule that out either.

I may have to fold the GBWC site into a subdomain of the Ectozone. I'll set it so the GBWC.net urls still work, though it probably means the end of the GBWC message board; nobody uses it anymore anyway, and if necessary I can make a GBWC members-only user group and board.

In the shorter term, sometime before April 30th (the deadline for the closing of the current hosting package) the Ectozone and GBWC will go offline for a time. I'll let you know when I plan to do it.

I keep comprehensive backups of all Ectozone.com and GBWC.net pages and databases, so if it all goes well nothing will be lost. Once the changeover is done, you won't notice any difference at all if things work as they should.

Thanks for your patience

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I've sent out an email to users of the GBWC message board to the effect that I will be closing it next Saturday, April 9th. After it's closed, I'll be opening a new board here on the Ectozone for discussions of GBWC fan fic and other matters; existing threads in the Ectozone Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters: The Fan Projects sections will be moved there at that time.

And if you think you'll miss the "Ecto Orange" style of the GBWC board, I'll be setting it so on the GBWC forum only, the "Ecto Orange" will be the default style.

It will probably be after that--tentatively the weekend of April 16-17--that I will be looking at migrating the Ectozone hosting.

Thanks to everyone for their patience.

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Well, the GBWC board is now closed, and a redirect set to take all gbwc.net/phpBB3 urls to the Ectozone. There's a GBWC forum now underneath the Ectozone Ghostbusters forum, and all GBWC fan fics from the Ectozone Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters: The Fan Projects forums have been moved there.

I'll get a better redirect--one linking straight to the GBWC forum--in place after the server migration actually takes place.

And as previously noted, the GBWC forum on the Ectozone shows the "Ecto Orange" style seen on the GBWC.net board.

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Thanks for keeping us informed, Fritz. There's not really much to say in reply to these, but be assured that your hard work does not go unappreciated.

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'Extreme Ghostbusters was the best-written show, because it wasn't just about the ghostbusting, it was about the characters.' - Rino Romano

EGB Fan's EGB Fans
EGB Fan on FFN and AO3

I appreciate it, Rosey


It will probably be within the coming week that I start gearing up for this. It will probably go something like the following:

1. I will reset ectozone.com to redirect to ectozone.net. This will only be a temporary measure--ectozone.com is leased from the different company from ectozone.net, which is the account all the files are posted at etc; it's currently set so that ectozone.com points to ectozone.net's IP number and is reconciled by the servers blah blah. Basically, the same urls will work, they'll just change to a .net

2. Actually set up the new hosting. The files will be uploaded to the new hosting server, and I'll verify everything at a temporary url. Once this is done...

3. Temporarily close the Ectozone message board. You'll get the "This board is not available" message. This is so I can make a completely up to date backup of the database to restore at the new hosting server.

4. The biggie: actually cancel the current hosting. This will take ectozone.net completely off line until the main site's IP is reassigned and the reassignment is propagated throughout the directory servers.

5. Once ectozone.net is set to the new servers, restore the database and reopen the message board.

6. Get Ectozone.com assigned to the new IP, and recognized by the new ectozone.net server, so the ectozone.com urls work the way they do now.

Hopefully, at your end the only real inconvenience will be the temporary closing of the message board.

Thanks again for all of your patience.

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I hate you have to fool with all of that. Thanks for your hard work on it. If I can't log on I'll just know to try again in a while.

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Peter: "Huh. Guess we're not welcome."
Winston: "Not welcome, there's a first. We should all get nametags that say, 'Hello, I'm not welcome'. Or maybe Tshirts or mugs or something."
--Ghostbusters the video game

I've just accomplished step 1: switched ectozone.com to a redirect to ectozone.net. It will take some time for the change to work its way "into the wild" as IP directories are updated, but the switch has been thrown.

I plan to close this message board tomorrow, and make the backup that will go into the new database. I'm not too terribly worried about this working--I actually switched to a different database about two years ago, when I updated the board from PhpBB 3.0 to PhpBB 3.1. I will send out a mass email message when I close the board, and later when the board's successfully restored on its new hosting location.

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Well, other than a hiccup caused by me putting an extra "/" in the url that messed up the board for a few hours depending on how you got here, so far so good.

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I'm actually making this post on the Beta. I'd say things are looking very very good now.

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And we're back with only one little hitch, but I fixed it.

The Ectozone.com domain should be resolving back to the ectozone.net hosting account soon.

Thanks everyone for their patience!

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And now the Ectozone.com domain is working as intended.

All I have to do now is get the digimon files uploaded and the gbwc.net conversion done, but the main part is finished.

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Pretty painless on this end. Thanks again for all your hard work and dedication, Fritz.

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'Extreme Ghostbusters was the best-written show, because it wasn't just about the ghostbusting, it was about the characters.' - Rino Romano

EGB Fan's EGB Fans
EGB Fan on FFN and AO3

Yeah. Just two little bumps in the process (the first backup of the message board didn't want to restore, but the second one worked just fine; I didn't have the server's email settings right so my first notice that the board was open was eaten) but yeah, here on the front end the only noticeable thing was some down time, which is exactly as intended.

The new GBWC files are in place, you can see them here:

http://gbwc.ectozone.net

All that remains there is to get the old hosting cancelled and the gbwc.net url redirected.

And I'll get the Digimon site (which is where the "Digibusters" files are located) back online probably tomorrow.

Still, since the first time since Friday, I feel like I can breathe again

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Hurm. Another little glitch--the extension I installed to display little zodiac symbols on profiles doesn't seem to be working anymore. I uninstalled then reinstalled it, but still nothing. I'll have to examine this further.

Edit: Ah ha...fixed.

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