Impending Downtime

[Ashtagon]

The Piazza has outgrown its current webhost, and will shortly be moving to a new webhost. The exact date is still to be confirmed, but in the meanwhile...

Currently, searching is only spottily effective. For the time being, it is better to use google to search the archives (forum search will work only for searching or posts made since September).

The date of the down time is TBC. Watch this thread for updates. When it happens, there will be approximately 2-3 days in which the forum will be offline and inaccessible. After that, there may be another 1-2 days for the various DNS servers to update their data on the location of the new forum hosts. After that, expect full forum service as usual.

[Big Mac]

The Piazza has outgrown its current webhost, and will shortly be moving to a new webhost. The exact date is still to be confirmed, but in the meanwhile...

V5 is coming.

Currently, searching is only spottily effective. For the time being, it is better to use google to search the archives (forum search will work only for searching or posts made since September).

I've already been using Google with "site:www.thepiazza.org.uk" to search the forum.

The date of the down time is TBC. Watch this thread for updates. When it happens, there will be approximately 2-3 days in which the forum will be offline and inaccessible. After that, there may be another 1-2 days for the various DNS servers to update their data on the location of the new forum hosts. After that, expect full forum service as usual.

But, is The Piazza going to have a 4DVENTURE-style countdown?

[RobJN]

As long as it's not a year+ playtest, I'll be happy

[Tim Baker]

Hopefully, the number of posts and ranks will be retained in v5. Will there be any feature changes, or is this purely a change in hosting solutions to accommodate growth?

[Ashtagon]

This is intended to be purely a hosting change. All features should be exactly teh same, and search service will be fully restored shortly after the move (the server will need to have the search index table rebuilt, which is apparently not a quick process).

[Big Mac]

Hopefully, the number of posts and ranks will be retained in v5. Will there be any feature changes, or is this purely a change in hosting solutions to accommodate growth?

The Piazza has already moved servers four times, since Ashtagon set up the V1 server on Thu May 22, 2008. We still have all the old posts.

As for feature changes, I expect there will be some changes at some point after the V5 move.

The Piazza was originally set up to replace the section of the Wizards of the Coast forums that used to cater for out of print D&D campaign settings. It has already expanded far beyond that, with new bespoke forums for D&D campaign settings that the Wizards COMmunity Boards/Gleemax never supported. The Piazza has also gone beyond D&D rules (and settings) with a percentage of forums that support other things.

The most amazing thing (in my eyes) is the bespoke forum built around the retroclone (Dark Dungeons) that Blacky the Blackball built right before our very eyes here. (That's all down to Blacky's hard work, BTW. He churned out an entire RPG like some sort of roleplaying design sausage machine. )

Oh, and we have The Book-House on The Piazza (which also needs to be moved to V5). That sister site was added to The Piazza on the 18th of February 2012. That's not going away either. It's still a work in progress, but the aim of that project is to collect links for every useful resource available online for every D&D product ever published (plus some non-D&D products too). (Plus it has some affiliate links that allow people to buy products for the same price and get a small amount of money sent to The Piazza by Amazon and/or DriveThru RPG. That doesn't cover the running cost of The Piazza, BTW.)

Anyhoo, the long story cut short is that V4 has stuff going right back to the start of The Piazza and V5 will have those things (and hopefully more things).

[Havard]

Can't wait to see V5!

-Havard

[Big Mac]

The V5 server has already been rented.

We are still working out the best time to do the move (and rebuild the search index).

[willpell]

The V5 server has already been rented.

We are still working out the best time to do the move (and rebuild the search index).

So the fact that I can't search for Whiteleaf topics is just a technical issue?

[Big Mac]

The V5 server has already been rented.

We are still working out the best time to do the move (and rebuild the search index).

So the fact that I can't search for Whiteleaf topics is just a technical issue?

Yes. It's a technical issue that can not be resolved until after the V4-to-V5 move.

Once we are on the new server, we can run the program that will rebuild the search index. That will take a bit of time to run and can't be done before the move.

In the meantime, I suggest you use Google site-search to look for "whiteleaf" at thepiazza.org.

[Arrius Nideal]

Is it possible to have built-in dice roller for V5?
These forums need them dice.

[Big Mac]

Is it possible to have built-in dice roller for V5?
These forums need them dice.

That's already been asked for.

It can not be done right now, but we are going to look into it later, when it might be technically possible. (Right now, it fails on the "feasibility test". Once it can get past that stage, it gets to the "cost vs benefits" stage.)

[Big Mac]

Ashtagon just got the first step of the move started. The URL for The Piazza is being transferred from the old hosting company to the new one.

Hopefully there will not be any disruption, but if there is, it shouldn't take too long for the forum to come back.

EDIT: There was disruption, but Tim Baker and RobJN both reported it and we tracked it down and fixed it within about 20 minutes.

This isn't the actual move of the data, just the preparation for the eventual move.

[Giant Space Hamster]

We are slightly closer to moving, but not quite there yet.

The V5 server now has control of the URL for The Piazza and is currently pointing back towards the V4 servers, where the forums continue to be hosted.

I know that, from the URL move, that it is very easy to be confused as to which server you are looking at, while the Domain Name Servers update and put out the new IP address for a URL. So I have temporarily added a "(V4)" to the end of the description of the site:

The forum for discussing the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons (V4)

The Piazza V4.jpg (20.74 KiB) Viewed 1457 times

Some final research is still being done. Once that is completed the actual move will happen. However, after the V5 server is up and running, there will be a short time, when some people see the V5 server, but other people will still be looking at the V4 server. We will get rid of the "(V4)" when we reopen the forums on the new server, so if other people are telling you that they can post, but you see the forum as locked, look for that "(V4)" to see if you are still waiting for your local Domain Name Servers to get the new information.

[Giant Space Hamster]

The forum move started Thur 15 Mar 2018 and was followed by an Open Test of the V5 Server.

This process is now over and the V5 server is now open to new users.