The Enid Blyton Society

At 3.00 PM GMT today (9.00 PM Ming time!) the Forums will be going off air for a while. The reason for this is that we are changing servers and although this shouldn't have any effect on the main site it will effect the interactive parts.

The length of time off air will vary according to where you live in the world, but Keith and Matt will be beavering away to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible. I will be sitting idly by, but I have earned my supper as I have just spent the last two days sending out over 400 Journals.

I am quoting from the Forums Off Air thread in the Admin Announcements section.

Tony Summerfield wrote:At 3.00 PM GMT today (9.00 PM Ming time!) the Forums will be going off air for a while. The reason for this is that we are changing servers and although this shouldn't have any effect on the main site it will effect the interactive parts.

Thanks for letting us know. Helpful about the time, I don't have to work it out now! I hope the changing of servers won't mean posts will vanish, will it?

Tony Summerfield wrote:The length of time off air will vary according to where you live in the world, but Keith and Matt will be beavering away to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible.

Say, about a day or two? Hmm..... I can spend a lot of time in the main site anyway.....

Hope it'll be okay soon! Way to go, Tiresome Three!

I don't think we will be off air for that long Ming, as Keith has been working on this for a while now and has a parallel site set up. The reason for taking the Forums off air is so that Posts will not be lost during the changeover. Think how many Blyton books you will be able to read whilst you are looking at a screen which will tell you that the Forums are off air!!

[edit] to remove my original message - I came in while it was in "debug" mode and got thoroughly !

Tony Summerfield wrote:Think how many Blyton books you will be able to read whilst you are looking at a screen which will tell you that the Forums are off air!!

Ah, that would have been wonderful, but I wasn't at home! I returned at 10.30 pm, and just saw the forums are up again! BTW, some avatars have become enormous!

Welcome to our new home, all the old furniture is in place so you won't notice any difference. We were only off air for 3 hours here in the UK, so the removal firm of Robinson & Roberts have done an excellent job.

I expect we will now have one of Moose's house warming parties.

Just a quick update. Now that I can see the site at its new location, I've been able to jump in and fix a couple of bugs. Messages should post okay now without the "debug" error. We're still working on the avatar problem -- some avatars are showing at their original (huge) size instead of being automatically shrunk, and we need to reinstall a patch for that. Teething problems, but nothing major -- and just to reassure you all, we certainly won't lose any posts because it's all been backed up about fifty squillion times in a hundred trillion places -- well, all the data is safe, trust me.

Update: Erm, no, DEBUG errors still coming up. *sigh*

We were only off air for 3 hours here in the UK, so the removal firm of Robinson & Roberts have done an excellent job.

Oh, Keith did all the work. I am afraid I just stood around drinking tea and watching Keith lug the heavy Welsh dressers and wardrobes around -- making the odd (un)helpful comment here and there.

As for the oversized avatars, phpBB.com would choose this time to crash. I won't be able to redownload the hack used until their site is back up. I actually don't know why the hack is suddenly not working ...

I'm posting and deleting like crazy here just to test for that bug..... Looks like I've got it this time though. Ha, take that, pesky bugs!

This fix hopefully takes care of the errors experienced while posting messages. In fact the messages were posting fine, although it didn't seem like it, and that's why two or three copies of the same message have appeared -- because users are naturally re-submitting the things. Those copy messages will be deleted shortly.

Anything else weird, anyone?

Matthew Roberts wrote:LOL! I see! I was just about to do that myself. Although you'll probably delete your last message in a minute and it will look like I am talking to myself.

LOL! Trust me, I'm talking to myself anyway -- muttering like an insane person.

LOL! And I just deleted that message.

Anyway, thank you, Keith! It seems to be working perfectly now. I just need to work out why the avatars are so huge.

Matt, my avatar is fine again, back to normal size.

That's because Keith uploaded a smaller version of your avatar, Tony. It's no solution because other members might upload large avatars in future and the problem will recur.

*rolls up sleeves and delves into the forum software*

The Forums were off air while I was away, but many thanks to all who gave up their time to put the web site right.

Viking Star wrote:The Forums were off air while I was away, but many thanks to all who gave up their time to put the web site right.

Actually I was going to edit my post to thank Keith who, thinking about it, did much of the work. However this string doesn't have the 'edit' facility....

Edit by Keith: Works fine for me! But then, I am All Powerful...