Welcome / About This Forum

[Tad Eareckson]

Hey Antoine,

Thanks much for registering.

How 'bout posting on the "Releases" thread 'cause I'd be delighted to help you with that one point AT slack line issue.

[bobk]

Hi Bob,

...I'd like to know if you would mind me linking to this forum.

Not at all.

In celebration of the new users, I've added the "KiteStrings ProPHPBB Forum" to the front page of the USHawks web site under the "US Hawks Affiliates" section.

[bobk]

I've been reading through this forum and it's really amazing how much energy Tad has put into his posts. With that thought in mind, I'd like to suggest that whoever is administrating this forum be sure to do an occasional backup of the MySQL database.

From the FAQs page (http://www.prophpbb.com/faqs.hml):

Can I Get A Back-Up Of My Forum's Database?
Most certainly. While there is currently no payment options available for obtaining a back-up, we can of course export your database at any time. Please contact mdvaldosta on the support forum for details.

Also in the support topic (http://support.prophpbb.com/topic1288.html):

If you are planning to move to another host (like your own) and take your forums with you, here are some helpful tips for you to avoid any errors:

Helpful Hints:

* reset your style to prosilver, including the imagesets as styles & images are not included in the backup
* reset your smilies to the default as smilies are not included in the backup, you will get a nice text smilie instead
* de-assign any rank images set as rank images are not included in the backup so you will get a nice text rank instead
* delete all avatars as these are not included in the backup so all your uploaded avatars will appear as "user avatar"
* when you switch, make sure you update your URL & cookie settings in the ACP, otherwise they will still be set to prophpbb and you could end up locking yourself out by getting stuck in a redirect loop

Things Included in your backup:

* Your forums MySQL Database
* BB Codes & Board Settings
* Users, Forums, Posts, Permissions

Things NOT included:

* installed style files. If you don't pre-install the styles or reset your template to prosilver, you will get a nice error
* any uploaded images including smilies, rank images & avatars uploaded by yourself or on the prophpbb database will not be included
* Mods! Yes you will have to re-install any mods that are installed on prophpbb hosted forums so it might be advisable to re install any mods present on the prophpbb board before reopening your forums

It truly is a very big step when deciding to go advanced so think carefully before deciding to go advanced and leaving the luxury of the free forum hosts.

The information above can also be useful when wanting to import your backup to prophpbb to avoid any errors with that too.

I hope the information above helps you all out and avoids any problems that could occur as I have experienced the lot from experience of attempting to switch. However, it is a switch I have not regretted since and I absolutely love having the powers to do what I like to my forums and i'm sure you will too!

It's clear that Tad and others have put a lot of time into the posts on this forum, so I hope that the database is being backed up. If you have any questions, please post here or contact me directly (858-204-7499). I've been administering the US Hawks forum for about 6 months now, and I've got a little bit of experience with the MySQL database that stores the forum information. I'll be happy to help.

Thanks again for the forum...

Bob Kuczewski

[Tad Eareckson]

Thanks much, Bob.

I'm out of my depth on that so I hope Zack's paying attention.

But I HAVE been meticulously maintaining a backup of all the text from all of the posts in word processing so that work won't be lost unless an earthquake takes out the server and a tsunami takes out my computer.

Can't realistically see a scenario like that ever happening.

[Zack C]

I used a forum hosting service so I wouldn't have to worry about stuff like backups...they've got it covered. Being able to get a backup was one of my criteria when selecting a service, but only for in case we move the forum to a new home.

Zack

[Tad Eareckson]

Welcome Sam, thanks very much for registering. We can use some more surface tow expertise here. Hope you'll be able to participate in some of these discussions and break up some of my monologues.

[bobk]

I'm sorry to bring this up again, but I think it's still a good idea to request (and get) occasional backups of the database...

From the FAQs page (http://www.prophpbb.com/faqs.hml):

Can I Get A Back-Up Of My Forum's Database?
Most certainly. While there is currently no payment options available for obtaining a back-up, we can of course export your database at any time. Please contact mdvaldosta on the support forum for details.

I think it would be wise to contact mdvaldosta at least once in a while to get a copy of the database. I know that Tad is very good about copying the text of these posts and cataloging them (he must have been a librarian in another life), but even with a perfect copy of these web pages, it would still take a lot of work to recreate all of the linkage that ties all these posts together into a consistent forum without the actual database itself. You also lose all the profiles and email addresses of those who've registered, and you lose any PM's that might have been sent. All of that stuff is preserved in the database, and I think it's a good idea to ask mdvaldosta for an occasional copy.

Finally, there are a multitude of things that can happen to a free site like this. There are server crashes, there are cyber-breakins, there are natural disasters, there's the possibility that they could go out of business, there's the possibility that they could decide to charge for future service, or there's the possibility that they could be purchased by someone else who could do any of those things.

If you value all of the work that's gone into the posts on this forum, I think it's a very small price to simply ask for a copy of the database.

My $0.02.
Bob Kuczewski.

[Steve Davy]

Hello folks.

I'm new here, been reading post for hours, it's late and my eyes hurt now. Need to sleep.

Zack, thank you for starting this. Smart move!

Tad, I like you (no bullshit) we need more like you if we are going to survive.

Steve

[Tad Eareckson]

Hey Steve,

Tad, I like you (no bullshit) we need more like you if we are going to survive.

Must caution you... Your eyes probably burned out before you found a character assassination of a good friend of yours, possibly even of yourself. But you're always free to go back and edit your posts.

And you're also always free to do a character assassination of Yours Truly - at least until I can get my ban button working again.

I'd like to think of this forum as a place to go to read and say what the hang gliding establishment doesn't want flyers, next of kin, and plaintiffs' attorneys to be able to read and say. So if you know where any good skeletons are buried...

And each month we award the member with best number of confirmed skeleton reports with a contact for an exiled Nigerian finance minister seeking a secure American savings account in which he can safeguard thirty million dollars of the people's money from the corrupt cabal currently in power until such time as justice can be restored to the government. You get to keep ten percent plus interest so don't worry too much about ratting out any of your buddies.

Thanks zillions and hope to hear many bad things from you whenever you can manage.

[Zack C]

...there are a multitude of things that can happen to a free site like this. There are server crashes, there are cyber-breakins, there are natural disasters, there's the possibility that they could go out of business, there's the possibility that they could decide to charge for future service, or there's the possibility that they could be purchased by someone else who could do any of those things.

If you value all of the work that's gone into the posts on this forum, I think it's a very small price to simply ask for a copy of the database.

Alright, Bob...I'll request a backup.

My take on this...

ProphpBB does system backups daily. Server hard drive failures are rarely an issue due to disk redundancy, and even if their entire array explodes, the most they'll lose is a day. Cyber-break-ins won't affect their backups. In the remote chance they go out of business, they'll almost assuredly provide backups to their customers, as it won't happen overnight. Same goes if they start charging, but even if they didn't, I'd just have to pay to get a backup. Natural disasters are the only real concern I see, and even then they're only a concern if they're not storing their backups off-site (I don't know if they are).

In short, they're going to do a much better job of maintaining backups than me, and if something were to happen, most likely we'll be relying on them anyway, as my latest backup will be much older than theirs.

But, as you say, it's not much effort to request one (so long as it fits in my in-box). I'm just not going to annoy them with frequent requests.

Zack