GamingTrend offline for a short time

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thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

Ok, so here's what Ron is going to post a little later about the forum:
Hello everyone,

Recently, you likely noticed that GamingTrend.com and her forum took a substantial amount of downtime. Without going into a great amount of detail, our dedicated server took a supposed double hardware failure on our RAID1 drive array, and our hosting provider was little to no help in recovering our data. We enlisted some outside help and were able to recover the years of work we’ve put into our front page. While we may have rolled a 20 for that recovery, we unfortunately rolled a 1 on the forums. It’s a tremendous blow, but unfortunately the database for the forum data is unrecoverable despite over a week’s worth of earnest attempts.

On the topic of the forum, we moved from PhpBB to a software called Vanilla. Vanilla was supposed to bring the tight integration that we wanted to use to to unify two heretofore disconnected aspects of the site. Unfortunately, Vanilla couldn’t deliver on those promises, and the atrophy of the forums has continued.

While we may have lost the data in the old forums, we have another shot at properly integrating the front page and forums, and we believe we’ve found the right solution. While it does mean starting over, our new hosted software exists entirely in the cloud. It has every feature we wanted from the Vanilla forum software, but it layers in with our front page. Comments on the front page, as well as content on the front page are now fully integrated. What looks, on the surface, like a reset, is also an opportunity to rebuild it exactly the way we wanted it to work. This is our chance to rebuild our community. The new forum software has a lot of things folks have requested (such as a dark theme option), and a lot of great features that we are sure you’ll love (groups, better tagging, ability to make a post a wiki that is editable by everyone, and more).

But what about the front page? Well, there is no longer a “front page” and “forum” divide. Beyond those semantics, by the time you read this, the “front page” will also be moved into the cloud. No longer will it reside on a single server. It has been moved into a grid of servers. Having worked for the company it is hosted on, I can tell you that the architecture is now three sets of load balancers with sixteen servers underneath that are then replicated WORLDWIDE, serving our content and forums to wherever YOU are. It is also backed up, and those backups are also distributed across multiple data centers We will never have downtime like what we’ve experienced in this last outage, and the site will be faster and more responsive than it ever has been. Buckle up folks...welcome to the next step for GamingTrend.

Ron Burke
Editor in Chief
As of this moment, we are happy enough with what we've seen of the new forum software to do a sort of soft launch. To put it blunty re: our last forum software- we screwed up. We thought Vanilla would be a good step forward but it ended up just being a colossal pain in the ass and not at all what we thought it would be. Once we realized that forum was toast (and poured out a beer for over a decade's worth of posts), we decided either we would go big with a new forum or just not have one anymore.

We decided to go big

Discourse is everything we wanted in a forum and then some. We hope you like it. You all are the first to look at it besides the staff, we'll be going wider with it once we get the rest of the site migrated to our new hosted (which better be before Tuesday because I'm driving to CO on Wednesday :P)

If you decide to make an account there (yes, all the accounts from the old forum are toast too), hit me up directly and I will grant you membership to a special group we made for you:

Membership in this group adds that flair to your profile icon, as well as grants you a trust level of 3 on the forums, pretty much opening up most of the functionality to you right off the bat (regular folks have to post a bunch and get badges before they get that).

We'd love to hear any suggestions you may have to better this forum- we are really going to put some effort into doing it the right way this time.

We hope you like it.
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Lassr
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Lassr »

I'm game. I created my account there.
Last edited by Lassr on Sun Feb 17, 2019 11:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

Yessir! Hit me up via DM here, that seems the best way to verify it.
thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

Lassr wrote: Sun Feb 17, 2019 11:36 pm I'm game. I created my account there.
Got it! You've been added to the OO group!
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Chrisoc13
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Chrisoc13 »

Console gold actually became my go to for a while even more than gg when I switched to console gaming. Then... I stopped feeling welcome at all there sometime after the death of gg and moved almost exclusively over to oo. Maybe I'll give it another try.
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Isgrimnur
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Isgrimnur »

I’m in.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

Isgrimnur wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 12:53 amI’m in.
Saw that! You have been added to the group!
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disarm
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by disarm »

New account created...had to make sure I'm in early to keep my name!

That's a major bummer to lose so much history though
thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

disarm wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 1:18 am New account created...had to make sure I'm in early to keep my name!

That's a major bummer to lose so much history though Image
Added!

And, yeah. We aren't happy about the loss, but I'm just glad we didn't lose EVERYTHING. :shock:
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Isgrimnur
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Isgrimnur »

Any word on Tapatalk integration?
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Rumpy
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Rumpy »

Ohhh, shiny new forum! Thanks guys! Will sign up in the morning. Hopefully this ends up being less work in the long run!

Edit: I'm in. That was easy enough :)
Last edited by Rumpy on Mon Feb 18, 2019 2:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
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thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

Isgrimnur wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 1:43 am Any word on Tapatalk integration?
Tooling around the Discourse meta forums, it looks like someone was tinkering a bit a while back, but it seems to have gone nowhere, and the official devs don't seem to be interested. That said, the forum works great on its own for mobile.
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Bullwinkle
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Bullwinkle »

Well, this sucks.

I'm in, though.
thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

Bullwinkle wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 2:04 am Well, this sucks.

I'm in, though.
Added!
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Blackhawk
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Blackhawk »

Ouch, that really hurts. I'm sorry.

I'm in, by the way.
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thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

Blackhawk wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 2:31 am Ouch, that really hurts. I'm sorry.

I'm in, by the way.
Added to the group!
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Z-Corn
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Z-Corn »

I'm in. The tutorial was fun!
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Skinypupy »

thFOOL wrote: Sun Feb 17, 2019 11:09 pm Once we realized that forum was toast (and poured out a beer for over a decade's worth of posts),
Oh no. :( The amount of our shared gaming history that just went *poof* honestly makes me want to shed a tear. :( So much great info gone.
If you decide to make an account there (yes, all the accounts from the old forum are toast too), hit me up directly and I will grant you membership to a special group we made for you
I suppose that now is as good a time as any to finally merge the user names from the two sites. Gratch is now officially no longer. He has risen as Skinypupy at GT, the first of his name.
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.
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MonkeyFinger
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by MonkeyFinger »

Back in as well.
-mf
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Exodor
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Exodor »

Signed up.

I suppose this is a good time to ask if OO is backed up?

If not perhaps we could roll that cost into the the costs shown in the banner at the top of the page?

I'd hate to lose almost two decades of posting history.
thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

Skinypupy wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 9:13 am
thFOOL wrote: Sun Feb 17, 2019 11:09 pm Once we realized that forum was toast (and poured out a beer for over a decade's worth of posts),
Oh no. :( The amount of our shared gaming history that just went *poof* honestly makes me want to shed a tear. :( So much great info gone.
If you decide to make an account there (yes, all the accounts from the old forum are toast too), hit me up directly and I will grant you membership to a special group we made for you
I suppose that now is as good a time as any to finally merge the user names from the two sites. Gratch is now officially no longer. He has risen as Skinypupy at GT, the first of his name.
Well, seems like a good time to share this :twisted: :


SkinyPupy, MonkeyFinger, Exodor, Z-Corn, you are all in the OO Group!
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naednek
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by naednek »

I'm in... Can I have my special powers back? :P
hepcat - "I agree with Naednek"
morlac
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by morlac »

Terrible to lose all that posting.

Kudos to the GT team to turn this into a opportunity to expand and revamp. Great way to look at it!

morlac is in.

P.s. discobot is the shit. I appreciate his lack of capitalization. I bookmarked his message, I suspect we will become fast friends.
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Zarathud »

It's a good time to express our thanks to those who keep OO running.

Thanks, guys.
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thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

At this point I'm just admitting everybody that joins up that I can recognize into the OO group. Once we go wider with it I'll ask for some verification (like PMing me here).
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by morlac »

You guys better hurry up.

Badges / First Emoji
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This badge is granted the first time you add an Emoji to your post thumbsup. Emoji let you convey emotion in your posts, from happiness smiley to sadness anguished to anger angry and everything in between sunglasses. Just type a : (colon) or press the Emoji toolbar button in the editor to select from hundreds of choices ok_hand


I am off to an early lead in the badge race with 4!
thFOOL
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by thFOOL »

naednek wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 12:10 pm I'm in... Can I have my special powers back? :P
You have been PM'd! (but not here... :ninja: )
morlac
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by morlac »

5 badges people! And you can like post!

New forum is all kinds of sexy and I haven't messed with themes and colors yet.
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by dbt1949 »

I always liked Gaming Trend. Their front page was superb and professional.
The forums were good too but after a while it seemed to be mainly a copy of the forum here. So altho I kept reading the front page I gave up on the forums.
I am still unsure about going back to the forums but Gaming Trend is still a great site.
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aka dbt1949
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Hrothgar
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Hrothgar »

I shouldn't be upset by losing posts, but I'm a bit sad. Signed up again.
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Kraken »

Skinypupy wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 9:13 am I suppose that now is as good a time as any to finally merge the user names from the two sites. Gratch is now officially no longer. He has risen as Skinypupy at GT, the first of his name.
The old GT forum was Ironrod's last redoubt, too. Now I'm Kraken everywhere.
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Rumpy »

thFOOL wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 1:58 am
Isgrimnur wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 1:43 am Any word on Tapatalk integration?
Tooling around the Discourse meta forums, it looks like someone was tinkering a bit a while back, but it seems to have gone nowhere, and the official devs don't seem to be interested. That said, the forum works great on its own for mobile.

Yeah, from what I've heard of Discourse in general, it was built from the ground up to be mobile friendly by developers who were frustrated by the lack of good options.
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LordMortis
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by LordMortis »

I'm not likely to port over but I approve. The forum is snazzy. If it integrates with the front page and they come together with the "trending" portion, then you'll have something.

Oh and so sorry to hear about your host and disaster recovery. I don't want to imagine that sort of thing. I don't do full VM offsite backups for disaster recovery either. My company just won't warrant the cash. I am very vocal that machines don't get backed up, only data stores and only data stores in such and such directories. One day, this is going to bite me in the ass but cost/benefit, I guess... *shrug*
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by hitbyambulance »

wasn't there any secondary backup sitting around anywhere - even if it's a few years old? just wondering.
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by stimpy »

Ooooooo....if I hurry, I can fulfill my life-long dream of being hepcat!!
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by dobberhd »

I created an account so I can continue to not post much in both places.
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hentzau
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by hentzau »

I signed up too. It had been a very long time since I last jumped on GT, but I felt the need to be a joiner.
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by JCC »

JCC has re-registered.
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by wonderpug »

dobberhd wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 6:45 pm I created an account so I can continue to not post much in both places.
You talk as if we don't all remember that time you bought the Thai edition of KOTOR 2 and liked it even more than KOTOR 1.
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Baroquen
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Re: GamingTrend offline for a short time

Post by Baroquen »

I registered just to see the new software. I'm trying to decide whether I like the tutorial or not. Either way, the new forums do look slick. Hope it goes well for you!
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