Server migration - status, discussion

gaekwad · 2018-08-20 09:22:01

Per philwareham’s announcement, I intend to use this thread for status reports on site migrations.

To expand on Phil’s post, the overall aim of the server migration is to make things more up-to-date, increase security, performance, and other factors. A lot of the work — most of the work, I hope — has been front-loaded to make the new servers more maintainable, and I’m confident you’ll notice some subtle and not-so-subtle improvements in the coming weeks.

Steps are being taken to minimise any downtime, and also to ensure search engines are informed of relevant URL changes for continuity.

There will be an ‘all done’ announcement at the end, along with a summary blog post, but for now please leave questions below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Website / Property	Status / Timescale	Comments
forum.textpattern.io / Textpattern forum	Planned / October or November 2018	done
rpc.textpattern.com / Textpattern RPC	Done	migration complete, pending feedback
docs.textpattern.com / Textpattern User Docs	Done	migration complete
textpattern.com / Textpattern website	Done	migration complete
textpattern.net / Textpattern User Docs	Done	migration complete
textpattern.org / Textpattern Resources	Done	migration complete
txpmag.com / Textpattern magazine	Done	migration complete

Last edited by gaekwad (2018-10-14 18:23:53)

gaekwad · 2018-08-20 12:29:11

The first property to move is textpattern.org, which commences at 1300UTC today (about 30 minutes after the timestamp on this post.

Please expect some mild turbulence on that site over the following hours as the various components are slotted into place.

Refer to original post for current status.

Last edited by gaekwad (2018-08-21 08:45:24)

colak · 2018-08-20 18:17:47

Just a heads up to say that

forum.textpattern.com returns a 500 error.
textpattern.org is loaded without the stylesheet.

I guess that the migration is still under way

philwareham · 2018-08-20 18:53:48

We haven’t migrated the forum yet – it’s happening later in the week.

gaekwad · 2018-08-20 19:05:19

colak wrote #313538:

Just a heads up to say that

forum.textpattern.com returns a 500 error.

That’s scheduled for later in proceedings, at least a a few days away. That said, it should return a 200 right now because the scaffold is in place, but there’s no content.

Edit: the 500 errors have gone, should be 200 for the root and 404 for everything else until the forum is migrated across.

textpattern.org is loaded without the stylesheet.

Correct. It’s…quite unique behind the scenes. It was running a very old version of Textpattern (was 4.4.1, now 4.7.1) and it has 80+ plugins to go through, many of which are abandoned or superseded by native functions.

I’m hoping it’ll be functional and reasonably pretty before I go to bed tonight.

Last edited by gaekwad (2018-08-21 15:31:45)

gaekwad · 2018-08-20 19:13:23

Addendum: I’ve found a couple of interesting bugs/quirks going from 4.4.1 to 4.7.1, too.

Second pair of eyes appreciated on this if you can test it (I’ll attempt to reproduce with fresh eyes soon): 4.4.1 allowed form names beginning . and *, and 4.7.1 doesn’t, so the form names are carried over in the upgrade, but the form content isn’t viewable in the UI. Renaming the form to have a non . or * leading character in the database solves the issue, but there’s a heap of find & replace to do in pages and other forms.

Last edited by gaekwad (2018-08-20 19:28:14)

jakob · 2018-08-20 21:02:55

Thanks for your hard work on this Pete!

I’ve done upgrades form 4.4.1 before and did it slowly in steps, often with some manual edits. But 80+ plugins sounds incredible…

gaekwad · 2018-08-21 07:24:12

jakob wrote #313544:

I’ve done upgrades form 4.4.1 before and did it slowly in steps, often with some manual edits. But 80+ plugins sounds incredible…

I’ve culled a few that were just not working at all, but here’s the list:

ajw_admin_workflow
ajw_clean_feed
ajw_comments_feed
ako_social
anc_hide
asv_breadcrumb
asv_message
asv_plugin_installer
asv_random_article
asv_recent_comments
asv_tracker
asy_category_tags
asy_wondertag
cbs_gravatar
chh_article_custom
chh_article_lib
chh_related_articles
dca_pop
dru_chatometer
egl_filelist
gbl_blog_stats
gbp_admin_library
gbp_permanent_links
glx_hl_current
glx_if
glx_image
hak_textile_tags
hak_tinymce
ied_hide_in_admin
ied_plugin_composer
mdn_count
mdn_if_custom
mdn_if_section
mem_akismet
mem_self_register
mrw_spamkeywords_urlcount
nko_spamurl_blocker
ob1_googlenav
ob1_if_section
ob1_modified
ptv_if
ras_if_dates
ras_plugin_credits
rei_show_custom
rss_admin_db_manager
rss_admin_quikpik
rss_admin_show_adv_opts
rss_article_edit
rss_auto_excerpt
rss_category_cloud
rss_linkcat_list
rss_live_archive
rss_live_search
rss_suparchive
rsx_request_count
rvm_activity
rvm_admin_articles_trv2
rvm_admin_write_trv2
rvm_article_custom
rvm_css
rvm_if
rvm_maintenance
rvm_plugin_diff
rvm_url_handler_trv2
sgb_error_documents
sgb_url_handler
smd_if
smd_query
smd_where_used
swf_if_empty
tru_tags
wet_slimpattern
wlk_helpful
zem_article_info
zem_cache
zem_contact
zem_contact_lang
zem_contact_reborn
zem_ir
zem_link
zem_nth

Clearly a huge portion of these have been built-in and so are no longer required, and many just aren’t referenced in the code either. So, they’re disabled. I’ve switched to Testing mode, navigate around the site, and enable the plugins that are required to make it (roughly) work, disable the plugins that fail GDPR checks (and the data is purged) and now I’m in the final stretch.

Perhaps the 4.4.1 -> 4.5.7 -> 4.6.2 -> 4.7.1 route would have mitigated the forms naming issue I found, but I’m not even sure it’s worth reporting.

colak · 2018-08-21 08:30:55

.org site looks good from here. I can spot two errors: Error: The server is missing the specified font '/BAARS.ttf'. & Error: The server is missing the specified font '/GothamNights.ttf'.

Last edited by colak (2018-08-21 08:36:39)

gaekwad · 2018-08-21 08:38:07

colak wrote #313547:

.org site looks good from here. Only issue I can spot: Error: The server is missing the specified font '/BAARS.ttf'.

Yeah, loads of those. That’s a side effect of zem_image_replace which uses a TTF to generate a PNG in place of text. There are some issues with the cache directory and the fonts are free for personal use only (oops), so they’re gonna have to go. It’s a 2004-era plugin, it was a different time back then.

gaekwad · 2018-08-21 12:25:07

The next property to move is docs.textpattern.com, which commences at 1330UTC today (about 5 minutes after the timestamp on this post).

Note: docs.textpattern.com is a 301 redirect to docs.textpattern.io – the actual documentation is unaffected by this migration at this time.

Refer to original post for current status.

philwareham · 2018-08-21 12:35:57

I want to eventually move docs back to .com namespace when we are ready.

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