I have a new host at Interserver. After comparing features I found them to be my best choice. I'm probably going to try to switch over to a central CMS system like Tiki CMS Group. For now though I've got to wait on the DNS servers to update. Once they update, it will take me a few hours to get around to updating the new host with information so it will be pretty bare.
If I am able to utilize the Tiki system I'll be converted over with most of my information in a few days. If not, I will upload my old site and build a secondary CMS later so the data is available while I'm building. Either way I expect to have some downtime lasting about a day or two.
In the meantime, I'm still building up the information held in the Wiki. Feel free to probe around there. It doesn't have any 2nd Edition D&D information at all. Mostly what is there is generic information that can be used for any d20 system. It is directly compatible with D&D 3e and Pathfinder. Most of it is compatible with 5th edition D&D with just a little tweaking.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Friday, October 25, 2019
Confirmation of Host problems
I redirected Traykon back to my Godaddy site a couple days back. Today I checked my access logs on the server and compared them to my site traffic. In the first day it was online, I had 9264 pages accessed from the server, some of them were from bots that won't show up on analytics. The vast majority of the traffic were recorded through my wiki. Statcounter logged 385 viewers on that day and could account for just over 5k page views. Google Analytics only tracks the traffic on my legacy site and ignores the wiki but they listed the total at only 23 users for my legacy site on that day. I last checked GoDaddy's bandwidth usage and they have me using 0.00mb of traffic over that time.
Further, at approximately 9:01 pm EST all traffic from the access log, statcounter, and google analytics suddenly stopped. Siteuptime shows my site was active, but for some reason no traffic was logged to my site after 9pm. I don't know what could be causing these issues except network problems. How the Siteuptime site still shows my website as active when no traffic is being monitored, I don't know. None of this is making sense.
On the bright side, I have been adding content to the wiki. Since I don't know the final architecture of my new host, I have found it best to post to the wiki. Hopefully I'll be able to utilize a CMS system that I can take full advantage of. I hope to soon be able to return to a regular content schedule even if the content must conform to current internet trends of being specific articles instead of batch uploads. What can I say, I'm still a dinosaur trying to evolve.
Further, at approximately 9:01 pm EST all traffic from the access log, statcounter, and google analytics suddenly stopped. Siteuptime shows my site was active, but for some reason no traffic was logged to my site after 9pm. I don't know what could be causing these issues except network problems. How the Siteuptime site still shows my website as active when no traffic is being monitored, I don't know. None of this is making sense.
On the bright side, I have been adding content to the wiki. Since I don't know the final architecture of my new host, I have found it best to post to the wiki. Hopefully I'll be able to utilize a CMS system that I can take full advantage of. I hope to soon be able to return to a regular content schedule even if the content must conform to current internet trends of being specific articles instead of batch uploads. What can I say, I'm still a dinosaur trying to evolve.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Down again
This is sad. My host has disabled my site again for excessive traffic. It seems I'm having burst traffic and that's what is freaking them out. My real numbers seem to be 70+\- users a day but with page views being anywhere from 1 to 60. So much for me trying to go with a free host believing my site traffic was down. For some reason, it seems to have been suppressed over this last year. I think GoDaddy was blocking my tracking code.
When I made my backup, I found they had deleted some of my files without explanation. Going back through the emails, it seems they warned me of possible viruses on my site but when I would examine the file there would be nothing. For example, they said one of my php files was holding a virus but it was actually just a simple text file without any script text or anything that can be activated. I'm not sure what was going on with the host.
I am currently looking at both Interserver and Hostinger to be my new site. I've contacted both of them to verify their MYSql and PHP versions. The cost is cheaper for Hostinger to get started but long term Interserver will be cheaper. I'm leaning toward Interserver too because their architecture seems to allow for the one CMS system I've been hoping to use as it is part of their "one click install" package. If I go with them, it looks like I'll be able to reconstitute my entire site package into one host.
After checking Google Analytics, my site traffic did increase over 500% since October 18th, when I transferred my domain to the new host. I'm not sure what to think of that or how to read it. I can't think of any reason my site views would have been suppressed with my old host but it is hard to argue with two different traffic monitors.
For now, I am redirecting my domain back to my GoDaddy site. It will go down on 11/4/2019. I have until then to secure a hosting package on another site. Please bear with me during this time. I've never had such frustration over hosting before.
When I made my backup, I found they had deleted some of my files without explanation. Going back through the emails, it seems they warned me of possible viruses on my site but when I would examine the file there would be nothing. For example, they said one of my php files was holding a virus but it was actually just a simple text file without any script text or anything that can be activated. I'm not sure what was going on with the host.
I am currently looking at both Interserver and Hostinger to be my new site. I've contacted both of them to verify their MYSql and PHP versions. The cost is cheaper for Hostinger to get started but long term Interserver will be cheaper. I'm leaning toward Interserver too because their architecture seems to allow for the one CMS system I've been hoping to use as it is part of their "one click install" package. If I go with them, it looks like I'll be able to reconstitute my entire site package into one host.
After checking Google Analytics, my site traffic did increase over 500% since October 18th, when I transferred my domain to the new host. I'm not sure what to think of that or how to read it. I can't think of any reason my site views would have been suppressed with my old host but it is hard to argue with two different traffic monitors.
For now, I am redirecting my domain back to my GoDaddy site. It will go down on 11/4/2019. I have until then to secure a hosting package on another site. Please bear with me during this time. I've never had such frustration over hosting before.
Back UP!
Website back up! I heard back from them as to why my site was taken down. It seemed I stressed their server with over 500 unique viewers in just a few hours. I hit their hard limit of 60k page views per day and it triggered my site being taken down. This was the reason in their email to me bringing my site back up. They urged me to move to their paid hosting plan to remove this restriction.
I just checked with my statcounter account and it seems they were right. For some reason my web views and site traffic increased dramatically when I moved to the new server. On my first day at the new server, I garnered over 354 new visitors in the span of what looks like 4 hours. Considering I normally would only get about 500 visitors a month before the server change this is quite shocking. I'll be coming through the stat logs as well as checking with google analystics to see if I can see what's driving the extra traffic. If it turns out my traffic is organically that high, I will return to a paid hosting package as soon a possible.
I just checked with my statcounter account and it seems they were right. For some reason my web views and site traffic increased dramatically when I moved to the new server. On my first day at the new server, I garnered over 354 new visitors in the span of what looks like 4 hours. Considering I normally would only get about 500 visitors a month before the server change this is quite shocking. I'll be coming through the stat logs as well as checking with google analystics to see if I can see what's driving the extra traffic. If it turns out my traffic is organically that high, I will return to a paid hosting package as soon a possible.
Monday, October 21, 2019
First major obstacle
Traykon.com was redirected sucessfully after a 24 hour nameserver delay. However, shortly after the domain redirected the host has suspended my site for an unknown reason. I am checking their support site and it seems that this hit a lot of accounts about 5 to 10 hours ago. I'm not sure when mine went down yet as I haven't checked the monitor. Right now I'm going on the assumption that this is a system error. I have to email them to see what is going on. I should have a resolution soon. If not, I will redirect Traykon.com here temporarily until I figure out what's happening.
Friday, October 18, 2019
Crude site transfer
I have the main Traykon repository up at https://traykon.000webhostapp.com/ for now. It's crude and needs some work but the data is fairly safe for now. I've also split my WIKI into it's own site hosted at https://traykon.miraheze.org/
I'm not sure who I will redirect my domain name to at this point. I may redirect to the wiki but reformat the legacy site some. I'm leaning toward just pointing toward the normal site at 000webhostapp and linking the wiki better. This is something I'll have to think about and see.
I'm not sure who I will redirect my domain name to at this point. I may redirect to the wiki but reformat the legacy site some. I'm leaning toward just pointing toward the normal site at 000webhostapp and linking the wiki better. This is something I'll have to think about and see.
Godaddy No More
Last month I took a good hard look at my godaddy.com website, the main host for Traykon.com. I was behind several versions on a few of my applications. I tried to update my mediawiki extension but quickly discovered that both the MYSql version and the PHP version were far below the minimum requirements. In order to upgrade my Sql for security, I was going to have to either buy a much more expensive package or move to a new host. The same story applied for upgrading PHP for stability.
To give an example, I needed to have at least MYSql version 5.5.8 but the highest godaddy had available was 5.5.6, which I had upgraded to just a few months ago. For PHP, I needed at least version 7.0.13 but the highest Godaddy would allow me to go was 5.6 of which I had long ago upgraded.
To me this was unacceptable. My image database (Coppermine) was supported but I had to remove it to a free service (irony) because of server load a year ago. MediaWiki was no longer supported and I had an version that was not only no longer supported but one that wasn't compatible with mobile viewing. Also a horrendous hit was that Wordpress now required PHP 7.3 for the necessary security upgrades. I was unable to export the Wordpress postings to preserve that information over the last 2+ years. There was nothing I could do to upgrade the application to continue using it either.
Faced with these facts (and a few other things I was unable to do with the website due to outdated architecture) I decided to remove my Traykon.com website from Godaddy.com. This was not an easy decision. I have had that site hosted with them since spring of 2006. Aside from the Traykon site, there were also 3 other websites that piggybacked off of my main host package. I was using only about 6% of my available resources but I was unable to get the full use of the site. Facing reality, I could no longer justify the $150 a year for hosting when the website was not capable of meeting my needs.
So here I am today. I have decided to split my site over a few free hosts for the time being. I am looking at two different host sites to see which one offers the reliability and features I need while remaining affordable. I am keeping my domain registered at Godaddy this year (I have to renew in 2 weeks) but the site itself has to move on.
More information as it comes available.
To give an example, I needed to have at least MYSql version 5.5.8 but the highest godaddy had available was 5.5.6, which I had upgraded to just a few months ago. For PHP, I needed at least version 7.0.13 but the highest Godaddy would allow me to go was 5.6 of which I had long ago upgraded.
To me this was unacceptable. My image database (Coppermine) was supported but I had to remove it to a free service (irony) because of server load a year ago. MediaWiki was no longer supported and I had an version that was not only no longer supported but one that wasn't compatible with mobile viewing. Also a horrendous hit was that Wordpress now required PHP 7.3 for the necessary security upgrades. I was unable to export the Wordpress postings to preserve that information over the last 2+ years. There was nothing I could do to upgrade the application to continue using it either.
Faced with these facts (and a few other things I was unable to do with the website due to outdated architecture) I decided to remove my Traykon.com website from Godaddy.com. This was not an easy decision. I have had that site hosted with them since spring of 2006. Aside from the Traykon site, there were also 3 other websites that piggybacked off of my main host package. I was using only about 6% of my available resources but I was unable to get the full use of the site. Facing reality, I could no longer justify the $150 a year for hosting when the website was not capable of meeting my needs.
So here I am today. I have decided to split my site over a few free hosts for the time being. I am looking at two different host sites to see which one offers the reliability and features I need while remaining affordable. I am keeping my domain registered at Godaddy this year (I have to renew in 2 weeks) but the site itself has to move on.
More information as it comes available.
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