Forum upgrade

[Woody]

Site looks great and thanks Rubber Toe!

[CorneliusAlphonse]

thanks Rob!

[LeafMan66_67]

Agreed - upgrade looks great, and having Tapatalk back is awesome! Thanks for the effort!

[Lucas]

Looks great Rob! Thanks!

[Celiacbrew]

Well done Rob. The new look is great.

[mthibodeau]

Site looks good, and I'm glad it works on tapatalk again. I hadnt realized how much I liked it until it broke. Thanks for all the hard work

Sent from my STV100-3 using Tapatalk

[jason.loxton]

I might be in a minority, but I actually kind of hate the changes. I can't comment on functionality: I am sure it is much improved. But I find the colour scheme and font really jarring. The old site aesthetic was warm and easy to read. This one is cold and causes eye strain. I am already reading less content, as I find it hard to stay on the site for extended periods of time.

To be clear, I really appreciate the hard work. Just providing my subjective, blunt feedback.

Jason

[RubberToe]

Jason, thanks for the feedback.

I think you have a point about the eye strain, perhaps the white background should be toned down and softened a bit.

-Rob

[Halifax_Jeff]

Jason, thanks for the feedback.

I think you have a point about the eye strain, perhaps the white background should be toned down and softened a bit.

-Rob

I think that would be a good move. I'm also finding it a bit of a strain to read at length. Otherwise I love it.

[jmacdonald]

I see at the bottom of the board we are currently set for the "Flat" style. It is possible to make others available by adding them in. I see there are quite a few listed on the phpbb site that are available.

https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/

[Jimmy]

I think the style used fine, but can maybe use a couple of tweaks.

Every "style" used will have flaws that need to be adjusted...something I quickly discovered when I originally created the site!

[CorneliusAlphonse]

Mobile layout is great, no more zooming need

[jason.loxton]

Did you darken the background or did I just get used to it. Enjoying it a lot more now...

[RubberToe]

Lol, I didn't touch it yet! I still plan on it though, just a matter of time.

[elreplica]

Like getting a new set of glasses...

[Jimmy]

Personally, I like it as is. Clean design, and a great color match for the Brewnosers logo.

[SFR709]

Hey guys, the changes seem fine and I appreciate all the hard work that goes into the forum. But I've found over the last few months that reliability has wavered, is this just growing pains with the new format? I hate complaining here as it is such an overwhelmingly positive place; but it seems the crashes are more frequent. Just my two cents

[RubberToe]

The instability is due to our inconsistent (to say the least) hosting provider, Cloud at Cost. It can go long periods being awesome but when it's sketchy it's really bad. It has been terrible lately.

The thing is, it was paid for as an up front one time low fee. It's basically free now. I wouldn't mind switching hosts at this point but that would mean monthly recurring costs plus a fair bit of my time moving the site. Therefore I'm hoping Cloud at Cost will improve so we can stay here.

[jimboh]

Any Reason why we are with CaC?
I have a Dedicated server and a VPS with Knownhost and I have had fantastic reliability.
What are the space/ Bandwidth requirements for the site? I might be able to help

Do you have a cpanel account?

[SFR709]

The thing is, it was paid for as an up front one time low fee. It's basically free now. I wouldn't mind switching hosts at this point but that would mean monthly recurring costs plus a fair bit of my time moving the site. Therefore I'm hoping Cloud at Cost will improve so we can stay here.

That makes sense, why spend more if we don't have to, and obviously given the time commitment that would take it makes sense to wait. But I'm confident if it were to continue most of us would be willing to contribute or find ways to raise money if we had to.

I only brought it up because I've had two brand new to brewing friends join recently and one wanted to ask a question during his first brew day and couldn't and the other just thinks we're crashed all the time. I've only been a part of the forum for two or three years but I've gained so much knowledge from here and view the community created through the forum as something very special, as I'm sure you all do. I guess what I'm saying is if reliability were to continue to be the same over the next six months or so I feel the decline of usage and effect on our community would justify spending a couple dollars if we had to.

Again I really appreciate all of the work that the more senior members such as yourself put in to making the forum possible. I just feel if something is failing often enough to draw attention to itself, a monitoring period to determine its reliability objectively would be a good idea.

[jimboh]

I have been a member for less than a year but find myself to be almost a daily visitor.
If CaC has any periods of poor service then I do not think it is a good choice to host what is to many a valuable resource and also a place to meet people of shared interest.

And I have to ask, why would we expect it to improve?

There are many low cost reliable hosting services out there, and as SFR709 says, it shouldn't be too difficult to find the funds for better hosting.

I have a Dedicated server and a VPS with Knownhost and if the bandwidth requirements for this site are not too onerous I would consider providing hosting as my contribution to the club.

My servers are cpanel based so transfer away at any time would be extremely simple, should the club want to find another host.

[sleepyjamie]

Let's just go Amazon AWS. I can pay for it. Likely just need a T1 instance which is dirt cheap.

Just maybe throw me a couple bags of malt or hops when you guys do group buys?

[RubberToe]

Ha, we'll need more than a t1.

I did the numbers a couple years ago and IIRC it might get expensive on AWS. However that's also my preferred host and I was thinking of trying the site on my instance (m3.medium). The bandwidth might get out of hand there is the problem.

I suppose I should run some metrics on the current site and use the AWS cost calculator.

[sleepyjamie]

Ha, we'll need more than a t1.

I did the numbers a couple years ago and IIRC it might get expensive on AWS. However that's also my preferred host and I was thinking of trying the site on my instance (m3.medium). The bandwidth might get out of hand there is the problem.

I suppose I should run some metrics on the current site and use the AWS cost calculator.

T2 Medium spot instances are $34 / month and have 2 vCPUs and 4GB RAM. I can't imagine we need more than that. We can sign up for reserved instance which gives you a price break. Get a dump of the network I/O, CPU, Memory and Disk so we can determine the size on AWS.

Or we can go with Google Cloud Platform, they are typically 33% more cheaper.

[RubberToe]

That instance size would be fine. I have to figure out our bandwidth though.