DV technical issues (Updated September 29th 2019)

[Steve]

We had some technical issues that broke various elements of the site. These issues should now be resolved, but if you encounter any problems, please reply to this thread and let me know.

 

Cheers!

[Solemn]

seems to be working again

[JHouse]

Haven't noticed any issues, other than the site going down on the dates you mentioned.

[Steve]

The issues came back earlier, but are fixed again now.

 

Our web host updated the version of PHP that's used for this site to one that doesn't work with the forum software we're using. I contacted them last Saturday and they reverted to the earlier version of PHP, which made the site start working again, however, PHP was updated again this morning, causing the site to break again.

 

They've escalated the issue for me, but yeah - if you start getting 500 errors or blank pages when clicking on forum sections or usernames, it'll be because of this issue. Hopefully it will be fully resolved soon, but things are working fine again at the time of me posting this.

[JHouse]

I've been updating my clients' websites to the latest version of PHP lately, however, in your case, it's difficult given the forum software version we're using. Is it possible to upgrade to the latest IP Board, without breaking the site or bank, that you're aware of?

[Steve]

Is it possible to upgrade to the latest IP Board, without breaking the site or bank, that you're aware of?

I contacted Invision about this at the end of last year, but I decided against going ahead with it.

 

When we originally bought the forum software we paid for a "perpetual license", except they later decided that this would only apply up to the last 3.x version of the software, not the new version 4.x.

 

They have an offer for people who bought lifetime licenses, so it would cost $25 every 6 months to keep the license active, which is obviously not a huge amount of money, but it was mainly the hassle of upgrading that put me off cos it's a more involved process than previous updates that I've installed, plus the risk of something fucking up.

[Steve]

Bah.....

 

It seems our host changed the way email works in a way that broke email sent by DV itself. That meant that new sign-ups were unable to validate their accounts, if a member forgot their password they couldn't use the password reset option, and anyone signed up to receive email notifications, such as notifications of new PMs, would not receive them.

 

This should be fixed now (fingers crossed).

 

I've manually validated the new sign-ups. Sorry for the delay with that.

 

Also, I noticed that a couple of existing members tried to reset their passwords, probably because they forgot them, so if you're one of those people and you're reading this, try again now and you should be able to do it.