Greg

Ok, the forum SHOULD be wider now. Make sure you select the "Wide Forum Format" - bottom left hand side, and refresh your browser. Is this close to the way it was before the upgrades? Also, I'm also eagerly waiting for a fresh maintenance release of the new 3.0 version of the Invision Power Board forums software. So we'll be going through the upgrade process again in a few weeks (possibly months). However, free free to contact me with your errors or issues you might have. Thanks!

An upgrade was made to Drupal, the content management system that powers Maple Leaf Web (everything but the forums) and it looks like some of the stylings for the forums was affected. I am working on this issue and I will update this thread when I know more. There has also been some reports that the forum search isn't working. However, it works fine for me, will someone confirm? http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums//index....=Search&f=3

The new software patch is in place - it limits members ability to send PMs to one ever 5 min. I have also lifted the restriction on the use of the PM system.

I've updated the thread on the recent spam being sent through the MLW forums.

A new spammer has managed to get around our defenses. I've applied a second patch to the forum software in an attempt to stop this nonsense. I have also suspended the PM system for ALL members. This will probably just be temporary - just until we can get a handle on everything and make sure this doesn't happen again. I simply can't allow dirt-bag spammers to use this website/forum to send their garbage. Thanks

Ok, the spammers have been removed and additional security measures have been implemented. New forum members will have to post 5 times before they are given the ability to send PMs, or post new topics. However new members will be able to post replies in existing forum threads. With this new graduated posting method we should be able to cut out most of the spamming that has become a problem over the past few months. Thanks!

It's the last day to submit questions to Mr Klein. If you want your question considered, make sure to submit to TODAY! Thanks

Mapleleafweb is scheduled to do an interview with Honourable Ralph Klein, former Premier of Alberta. We are providing members of the MLW discussion forums the opportunity to submit potential questions to Hon. Ralph Klein. Your questions can be emailed directly to me, or you can post the questions in this forum thread. To post your questions below, you will need to register or login. Your questions can be submitted until Friday, April 3rd, after which I will select three (or more) interesting questions and include them in the batch asked to Hon. Ralph Klein. The interview will appear in the Interviews section of Mapleleafweb. Any off-topic or disrespectful postings or questions will be deleted without notice.

The upload function has been restored. Some of the old profile photos have been restored, but some were not. If you were one of those whose personal photo was not restored, please either upload the photo again, or email with with a description of your photo and I'll try my best to restore it. Thanks!

Hmm, no - at least not intentionally. This looks like an issue with the recent migration. I will look into this issue and update this ticket when I know more. Thanks for pointing this out.

Problem solved - everything should now be working properly.

Thanks for the update, I'm looking into this problem and I'll update this thread when I have it resolved.

A .htaccess file in the images folder was given the wrong permissions. We did some admin work on the server late Friday - that involved modifying permissions on the mapleleafweb.com domain account - and this must have caused the problem.

Everything should be working now.

Thanks for notifying me. I too am seeing a problem with the images on the site and I am working to fix this issue. Thanks!

From what I understand, this happens when a router fails to update itself. The fact that you can still update to the old version of the site is because I have allowed that server to remain operational - mostly for those visitors who visit the site via a cached version, but are viewing static sections of the website: political cartoons, features, interviews, etc. Perhaps I'll shut down the forums on the old server and put a 301 redirect to the new server's IP address. That should force anyone who sees the old site to be refreshed to the new one. I'll update this thread when I'm done. Thanks for the update.

Just an update on the migration to the new server. Our original attempt to migrate from our older server to a new server failed due to some issues with capability between the old server and the new server. It took a few weeks to iron out these issues, and now we've successfully migrated the data over. For those of you who are interested, our hardware specifications changed slightly. We're now running the following: Dell Quad Core - PowerEdge R200 Seagate - 146GB:SAS:15K Dell - 9G Drive Controller - SAS/SATA Intel 2.40 GHz 1066FSB - Kentsfield \ Xeon 3220 (Quad Core) 4 GB DDR2 667 ECC Cheers!

Please note, to enable a major upgrade of the server, the MLW forums will be unavailable between 8PM and 11:30PM MST on Friday February 6th. Thanks,

Right now we transmit around 60 GB a month of traffic - not much. We're primary a text based website. However, CPU load is a funny thing. You can have a site that receives 100k + unique visitors a day and it will have a negligible impact on CPU load, while another can only have a few thousand a day and it can bring a server to its knees. It really depends on how the site is build. If the server is serving static pages - which apache (the webserver) prefers - then a normal server can usually withstand an impressive amount of traffic. However, if the site is build with PHP/ASP/etc via a MySQL/MSQL database, then things can get a bit more tricky. Things will get even worse if the site is designed and coded poorly, which means the database and apache have to work even harder to serve each page. Drupal, the content management system that drives MLW, is an enterprise CMS and it can do amazing things. However, it can be a resource hog if not handled properly. Shortly after we migrate to the new server, I'm going to be upgrading Drupal, and removing some of those modules that could be causing load problems. However, considering that we are attracting between 60,000 to 80,000 unique visitors a month to MLW (and seeing 10-20% growth each month), I'm not overly worried about dealing with these issues!

Nope, I've never heard for using solid state drives in a enterprise server environment - however, that doesn't mean it isn't done! In our particular situation, we lease out server from a large datacentre in BC, which means we're limited by the hardware they provide for the servers. However, we do have the option of purchasing our own server and then colocating it in the same datacentre - which would mean we could build and use any hardware - but that significantly increases the cost of operating a server. Right now we're operating on a single core, but we've moving to a quad core system. Ha, that's certainly more than we'd need! As I said, we don't actually own the hardware, we just lease it. Owning and collocating is just too pricey at this point. We considered buying our own server and putting it in the datacentre here at the University of Lethbridge, which was an option when we first started in 2000. However, after much consideration, I decided that the University IT department has better things to worry about than a box in the corner; particularly a box that isn't part of the universities core network. If, after moving the site to a new server, we continue to see increased loads, we'll probably have to move to a two server configuration, with one server handling the http side of things, while the other handling the database. Our MySQL database is huge - 400,000 posts plus from the forums + everything else on MLW (drupal, our CMS can be hard on a database, particularly with alot of modules loaded). So I maybe going through all of this again in a few months.

One suspension and one banning resulted from the nonsense that previously occurred in this particular thread. I've since cleaned out all the off-topic and disrespectful postings and I hope that everyone will try to discuss this issue with a reasonable level of decorum - otherwise, I'll be send a few more forum members packing.

This isn't the proper place to be having this type of discussion. If you would like to create a new thread - in the appropriate forum category - please do. However, I'm closing this thread. If someone does start a new thread relating to this topic, send me the link and I'll include a link to the new thread in this thread.

So would I... The questions were sent to Mr Dion but unfortunately he never responded and shortly afterwards he resigned from the leadership of the Liberal Party. A interview request has been sent the new Liberal party leader, Michael Ignatieff, but we have not heard back from his office.

I don't disagree with you - however, in the case of a forum signature, there isn't sufficient room to provide context to that particular statement. You're free to start a forum thread to discuss whatever opinion you might have, but we ask that forum members refrain from stating opinions in their signatures that can - without sufficient context - be considered disrespectful.

The rules and guidelines are pretty clear: Comparing the "Gay Rights Movement" to the "Nazi Movement" (even indirectly) isn't respectful, therefor we expect you to edit your signature to comply with the rules you agreed to when you signed up to participate in these forums.