Forum Restoration (+ why does it look so different?)

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

Monotoko

Administrator
Staff member
Dash Core Group
Hi All!

Over the last week or so we've had a fair amount of instability with the forum, mostly due to lack of maintenance of plugins, themes etc. The TLDR of what started this is we attempted to add some tracking code to the forum which then, inexplicably, made the forum look 5x larger than it actually was.

We reverted the change, but it was still broken and this led to a 5 hour restoration process where we tried to merge an old backup with current data. That worked well enough as an emergency measure and allowed people to view/comment again.

We then attempted to fix it long term, and had multiple engineers look at it. Unfortunately it broke again if we so much as looked at it the wrong way, and we couldn't figure out which plugin/theme/etc was causing this, but this helped us gain insight on how unstable it was.

Today I started looking at our options and settled on attempting to set up a new forum and import the data, ensuring the base was clean and could once again be built upon, I'm happy to report this was a success. So welcome to the new Dash forum, pretty much the same as the old one.

The theme is the default, we'll start looking at options to make the forum more "Dash" in the near future.

Things we have learnt as the infrastructure team:
1) Keep the forum updated, and any plugins we decide to install. If a plugin doesn't update just discard it
2) Backups that aren't checked aren't true backups at all

Admittedly no-one in the current team is too familiar with XenForo and it fell by the wayside, and going forward I will be taking responsibility for ensuring we're backed up, updated and learning it's quriks.

Thanks,
Monotoko (latteisnotcoffee)
 
Last edited:
To all : Don't forget to enable two-step verification, which can be found at Password and Security.

To Admin : Thank you for the heads-up with regards to the Dash Forum restoration.
 
Note: We're shuffling some categories around, so things may look a little different than you're used to! Don't panic :)

(Also there's a new archived section right at the bottom now)
 
scratchy said:
man this is now weeks...

This forum looks like a spam webseite... since weeks
Click to expand...
Think of the forum situation like having a library burned to the ground but saving all the books, Infra is spread thin so they are doing what they can, all the threads are intact, but the Library has to be rebuilt. Be patient.
 
So this is easier / cheaper to manage?

Personally, I'd like to see a custom dash forum but, of course, that comes with security and update issues.
 
GrandMasterDash said:
So this is easier / cheaper to manage?

Personally, I'd like to see a custom dash forum but, of course, that comes with security and update issues.
Click to expand...
Infra is working on checking for stable plugins, but they don't have much time to devote with Testnet being a priority. At least we didn't lose any of our threads in the upgrade/migration.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top