We’re working on an upcoming update to PattayaTalk that I wanted to give everyone a heads-up about.

New PattayaTalk Portal (Root Domain Change)

In a future release, pattayatalk.com and www.pattayatalk.com will no longer simply forward to the forums.

Instead, the root domain will host a portal-style landing site that will:

• Act as an information and help hub for visitors to Pattaya, Bangkok, Phuket, and other major destinations in Thailand

• Serve as a central repository for Thailand-related information

• Link directly to relevant public forum posts and discussions

• Promote the forums and help introduce PattayaTalk to new visitors

The forums themselves are not going away and will continue to live at forums.pattayatalk.com exactly as they do now.

The goal here is visibility, organization, and growth — not disruption.

Forum Access Policy Change (New Members)

We’re also simplifying how forum access levels work for new members.

Previously, access to the members-only (private) areas required sending a specially formatted email to the forum administrator. Going forward:

• Members-only access and other access levels will be granted automatically

• Access will be based on reputation and post count

• No emails, no manual requests

Important:
This change does not affect any existing members.
No one will be downgraded.
Reputation will not be used to remove or reduce current access levels.

This is strictly to make it easier and more transparent for new members to become full participants in the community.

Moderator Tools

We’ll also be adding additional moderation tools to make content moderation faster, easier, and more effective for the mod team.

More details will follow as features roll out.

Thanks to everyone who’s helped make PattayaTalk what it is. This update is about building on that foundation and setting things up for the long term.

--Frosty

Been a while since ive posted here.... sorry about that! Been super busy for the last year. 

I am getting some failing hard drive notifications on the server this site is hosted on, and I fear the backup is out of date. So I am going to move it asap. 

Not sure that will happen today, but it will be very soon... and there will be no further notice. When I start I will take the site offline and you will see a message saying the site is offline... and when it comes back up it should be on the new server, provided the hard drives last that long. ?

Will update here as soon as this is finished. 

Frosty

I will give a longer explanation as to why later, but the short version is the datacenter I have hosted my dozen servers with for the last 15 years is closing down on short notice and I must move all my servers to a new datacenter... and while this website is personally important to me, the other sites and services hosted on the other servers are what makes me the money I need to keep living the good life... so I have to prioritize those ? 

Once I start moving this site it will go offline and stay offline until the transfer is complete. If I had to estimate I would say 4 hours? But that is just a "pull it out your ass" number as I have no idea what the network on the new servers is like yet... I wont know until they are online sometime in the next 48 hours. AS soon as they re online I will be moving sites over in the order they come up in my server list, which is kinda random. Bear with me and ill have it done as quickly as I can ?

Hi guys. Just a quick note to let you know that there will be some changes to the board email notifications system coming in the next 48 hours and that starting tomorrow your thread notifications may be missing or delayed for up to 24 hours. Hopefully just a matter of minutes but it may be longer. I'll post a longer explanation of what I did and why tomorrow.

Frosty

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

So earlier today I took the server down for normal maintenance (installing updates) as I do once every 3 months. Since my last update in November (ya ya ya I know, but come on... things have been fucked up. So I'm a little late!), one of this servers 2 power supplies has stopped communicating with my control suite. That probably means that the power supply has failed. I have redundant everything on my servers, so it didn't just die... but that power supply will need to be replaced, which unfortunately cannot be done while the server is turned on. I have asked my data center to secure the needed parts and schedule the downtime with me to perform the install... as soon as I know a date and time I will let you guys know. Likely to be a 1 hour downtime as I am going to have a couple other things replaced at the same time. 

When I have the time and date I will change the title of this post and pin it. 

I am about to reboot the server hosting this website. Sorry I did not give more notice... I am doing my bi-yearly maintenance and didn't notice this was the server housing Ptalk. Its ready for the reboot now, so im afraid most of you won't see this message until after the server is back up from its downtime. I expect downtime to be less than 30 minutes, but more likely just 5-10. 

A comment was made by Teelak earlier today about the state of the board and the number of COVID and Political posts going up on it right now. 

This is a really hard topic to police in any real way for a couple reasons - first because COVID is a very important subject and has a very huge impact on all of our lives and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Its a health matter, and a science matter... and in a perfect world it would NOT be a political matter. But it has been hijacked by politicians around the world and made in to a political matter. 

I will not be banning COVID related posts or removing them to purgatory because the subject is of such importance to the entire world right now - but going forward we are going to have a strict no politics rule on all posts outside of the politics section of the forums, including the COVID threads. This is going to be super-hard to moderate because there is so much misinformation out there which is politically motivated. We will err on the side of science. Meaning that if a post contains content that is being used by a politician or group of politicians to try to steer conversation in a particular direction, then its political be it true or not. For example: hydroxychloroquine. No matter which side of that fence you sit on, that entire subject is too highly politicized to have a place in COVID discussions outside of the political forums. So are any other drugs (if any) that are touted by politicians. Those subjects are now taboo outside of the politics section, even if there are studies backing their use. If politics are involved, it does not belong on the open forum, period. 

Threads that are political in nature (such as topics regarding hydroxychloroquine) will be moved to the politics section.

If a post is made in a non-political thread about things that are political in nature the post will be hidden/removed. If the poster keeps posting stuff like that they will receive a warning, and eventually be banished to the purgatory section where they can post that crap to their heart's content. 

Political jabs are also hereby forbidden from outside the politics section. Even veiled ones. No comments about how this or that politician or group are better/wiser/stupider etc. If you really want to play those games, do it in the politics section. 

I will leave it up to the mods as to the removal/moving of threads that already exist, or the posts inside those threads. If they are overly acidic, move them. If not, then not. But new threads going forward will be handled with the above ideas in mind. 

This "rule" will not be posted to the board rules page, at least for now. We will relax it again after the November elections when things quiet down and there is a little less hatred being spread around (we can only hope). Until then lets consider it a temporary rule brought on by the times. 

Problem is... it should be. And I do not fully understand why its showing an expiration date of tomorrow, since the files that do expire tomorrow were deleted as part of the install process, and the server has even been rebooted since then... so I am hoping that it cycles over once the expiration hits? if not, it will go down temporarily until I can fix it. 

If that just happens to happen ~12 hours from now, the downtime may be a few hours. I will be at a concert and inaccessible. I think we have more time than that... and I will continue looking at it for the next hour or so, but wanted to post a warning just in case. 

So... taking control of this site and the associated server was quite the learning experience, as many of you remember. I know much more about how it all works and more importantly what it needs to do that work than I did when I first set this server up. 

The result of that is that the server itself - the hardware and core operating system - are not very well optimized for running this forum software. 

On top of that, there is a pretty large update available for the forums that I need to upload. 

So... I have decided to try to upgrade the hardware at the same time. The bad part of that is there may well be as much as a hour of downtime when I do the move. There will not be any DNS issues since it will still have the same IP address, but with new hardware and new OS come new potential problems to solve, so... we will see. I will update this post when I start the process, and when its done. 

Another security update is available for the board, and I intend on attempting to install it sometime tomorrow. With any luck the downtime will be very minimal, but you know how these things go. 

Ill post here just before I start the update, and when I finish. Ill keep this post pinned until the update is complete. 

Frosty

Pattaya.

Nikkei Asian Review released an article this week in which they stated that the head of the cities Business and Tourism Association has forecast a total of 19 million visitors to the city this year, a 5% total increase, which is nearly half of the total predicted 40 million visitors.

Significant work is being done to draw Indian, Muslim and Chinese tourists to the city as a quick walk down Walking Street will show any visitor.

CP, a $63 billion food and retail group, intends to reshape the flows of people and goods through the region of Chon Buri. A high-speed rail and related projects are designed to attract business professionals, entrepreneurial talent and tourists to the area. CP decides the number of train stations, giving the group the power to determine which areas will be developed.

Nikkei Asian Review wrote:

Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group plans to build a huge commercial and residential complex in the beach city of Pattaya, the Nikkei Asian Review has learned, a project expected to boost the profitability of a $7.3 billion high-speed rail line that the company has been chosen to construct.

The complex, on a size larger than 480,000 sq. meters will include a shopping mall, hotel, cinemas, and a convention center. The investment budget will be at least 10 billion baht ($327 million), a Pattaya city source said.

Though CP lacks railroad experience, it has won a contract to connect three international airports, two near Bangkok and the other south of Pattaya. The railway is expected to start operation in 2024.

The planned mixed-use complex offers a way to boost the line’s profitability. Tourists could take the train to the shopping and entertainment destination, while residents could commute to the airports or other parts of Thailand.

Pattaya, about 160 km southeast of the capital, serves as a gateway of sorts to Thailand’s eastern seaboard, where automobile, consumer electronics, and other manufacturing industries began concentrating in the 1990s.

The original article can be found here: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Thailand-s-CP-plans-330m-seaside-hub-linked-to-high-speed-rail?fbclid=IwAR0ILznGlLIL34bFJ-6PLJ6PD0OjZ7WEMfeQ4ciHu2tBbgr9zxybaMrqwH4

The Thai cabinet approved the train deal between CP and the State Railway of Thailand in June. The contract is due to be signed by both parties this month. The China Railway Construction company is also involved in a consortium to build the railway. The rail is expected to be finished in 2024.

Will try to make sure that does not happen in future! Only takes me about 10 minutes to update the cert - I just totally spaced it. Getting old sucks. lol. 

Just got notice that a new version of the forums is available and that it includes important security updates, so I will be upgrading us in 2 days time. Just wanted to give a little warning since this will be the first time I will be using their new automated "no downtime" upgrade system included in this new version of the forums. 

With any luck at all, nobody should notice anything. There are a number of new features and fixes listed, but from the look most of it is behind the scenes or not applicable to us for the most part. 

For those of you curious, here is a list of changes in the upcoming patch:

Good news! Version 4.4.1 of Invision Community is now available.

This includes a security patch and we recommend you upgrade as soon as possible.

Due to multiple requests I am adding a way for members to donate to the board's server fund.

Donations are NOT necessary, and will not grant any additional access whatsoever - this is a free site, and always will be. That said, nothing in life is truly free and the board itself (and its dedicated server) do cost money. I have been paying that fee myself for the last year and more, and Martin paid it for years before that. I will be working on getting some advertising sponsors to defray the costs, but in any case the board is not in any danger of being closed down - I will not let that happen. Help will be graciously accepted however :)

The link below (the button I wanted to add made me lose my last post' text when I tried to add it in here and go to post preview - stupid me), will take you to PayPal and allow you to make a donation in any amount you wish. Any amount is acceptable - even as little as $5 will add up very quickly and is greatly appreciated.

When you do go to that link, there will be a textbox that asks for your board name. Only put this in there if you wish your name to appear here with the amount you donated. Alternately you can PM me and I will put something custom or nothing at all.

A huge thank you to anyone willing to donate.

Frosty

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=UUKMRXXYC397W

Donations to date:

Was told a few minutes ago that the site was down... when I went to check, sure enough the DNS was not resolving.

The issue was twofold. First, my primary DNS server hiccuped. Second, the secondary and tertiary servers did not pick up the slack, though I still do not know why yet. I am looking in to it and will make sure it does not happen again. I suspect I will be able to find the answer fast enough as those other 2 servers are still not serving pattayatalk.com addresses for some reason. 

Frosty

I just put the first new ad online, and you should have seen it by now, assuming your not ad blocking. 

Everyone that comes here needs a hotel to stay at. And getting a good deal is much more important than helping the board keep costs covered... now that said, in most cases you can find as good a deal or better using Agoda, so please give it a look for your dates. If the price is the same or better than where you usually book your tickets, please consider using it. We get a commission of the sale price, and while its not very much, it does add up. Over the last year with the ad being located inline in a single forum only its made about $100. Hopefully with the ad more prominent it will get some more activity and actually be worth the hassle. I will monitor it and decide if it needs to stay or go away based on its performance. And annoying PMs saying "wtf is that ugly thing doing in my way" haha. 

Please understand that this is NOT a porn site. If you are looking for porn you will be disappointed. Save yourself and the Webmaster some time and don't apply. Membership is restricted to people over 18 years of age, and is subject to verification as detailed below. Membership is free.

Here is what you need to do to get in... 

Step 1:

Before you apply for membership you must register for the open forum. The Registration process can be started by clicking on SIGN UP button in the upper right of this website. Or you can Click Here

You will be prompted to supply an Email Address, which will require verification before the account is approved, so it must be a real and working email address. Please note: At the time of this writing, Yahoo.com email addresses are experiencing a problem receiving emails. If you use Yahoo, and do not receive a email notification, please send a email to me directly at flbbar@gmail.com and I will manually approve your registrations email verification. (Email from the same address, of course). If you do not follow the instructions in the Validation email (or the alternate step of emailing me directly), your account will not be approved. 

Once your account is approved, you will be able to look around and post in the Open Forums. Posts in the Open Forums by level 1 accounts are moderated, but our moderators are world class and usually pretty fast on the ball, so posts will be approved fairly quickly. Responses to posts are not moderated. 

After following Step 1, you will be a Level 1 member and eligible to apply for full membership by following Step 2 below.

Step 2: 

1. Send a email to flbbar@gmail.com

2. Place the word "JOIN" in the subject line (this is an important step that will prevent your email from being sent to SPAM and highlight it as important).

3. State clearly in the email, what your registered User Name is, from when you registered for the Open Forums in step 1. Please write it exactly as you did during that process including any Upper and Lower case characters. If you do not provide your User Name in the email, we cannot process your request.

4. Write a short explanation of why you would like to join the Member's Site.

That's it. Within a short time you will get an email confirming your membership and explaining how to access the site. 

here is an example email to guide you through the process:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: flbbar@gmail.com

I wish to join the Pattayatalk Members Site. I have registered for the Pattaya Talk Forums and my User Name is XXXXXXXXX

The reason I wish to join the Pattaya Talk Members Only Site is .... (give reasons)

Regards,

<your name>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

One more important point.... The process works by sending and receiving emails. If you can't receive our emails and follow the instructions in them, you will not be able to register. A large number of the replies we send get bounced by spam filters. You must allow your system to receive emails from flbbar@gmail.com or you are wasting your time. We never send spam or pass on email addresses to third parties. 

1. No flames ever for any reason.
2. No posts designed to upset other members. If you enjoy upsetting people even if you stay within the rules, you will still be warned.
3. Absolutely no discussion on girls under 18 will be allowed. It's not my thing and I don't want to hear about it in any way shape or form.
4. Please do not post explicit x-rated photos or videos. Nude r-rated ones are OK but any  showing explicit sexual activity will be deleted and the member warned. This is not my idea but a requirement of Thai law.
5. No racist or bigoted comments. Comments which criticize specific group of people such as all Thai's are, all bar girls are, all Germans are - will not be allowed.
6. Posts attacking individuals are not permitted. You may disagree with anyone's opinion but not bag the individual. I disagree with what you say, is fine. You are a moron, is not.
7. Do not post excessively or overuse features of the board. Polls, signature files and avatars all help make the forums user friendly. When these features are over used or abused they detract from everyones enjoyment.
8. No photos or special characters in your signature line please.
9. Avatars should be PG rated only. More racey ones can cause embarrassment to members when they have shoulder surfers.
10. Discussion of other Pattaya forums and what they may or may not be doing is not welcome here. Some time the politics gets out of hand. This forum remains focussed on Pattaya.
11. Posts about non-bar related issues such as hotels, transport, restaurants etc, should be placed on the open board. This does not mean such details cannot be included in trip reports, but it helps keep the open board alive if we post questions and answers about day to day living arrangements where newbies can easily find them.
12. The parts of this site that require a password to access may not be shown to any person who is not a member.
13. If you have a problem with the moderator or his actions, you may email your view to flbbar@gmail.com. The moderator's actions are not to be discussed on the board. No warnings will be given and no correspondence about deleted memberships will be entered into.
14. As we pay the bills, we reserve the right to delete any post that for any reason we find objectionable.
15. Thai authorities do not appreciate open discussion of prostitution in Thailand. For that reason I want this site to remain secure. Please do not share your password with anybody else. If I see hits on the site from many different locations with one User id then that ID will be immediately deleted. The best way to keep the site secure and therefore operational is to keep the info completely to yourself. If you have a friend who would like to become a member then refer him to the open site which has details on how to join.
16. Negative discussion of the current political situation in Thailand jeopardizes the board and its continued accessibility in Thailand. If you want to talk about Thailand politics, do it somewhere else please.
17. Never, never, never ... Show these pages to a bar girl. Some times some very stupid Farang thinks it's fun to show a Bar Girl a site on the internet that features her picture. Please do not do this as it can cause a lot of strife for everyone. If you show or discuss any content of the Member's area with any non member, you will be permanently banned.
18. Copying or crossposting information from the member's section of this site to any other website, without first gaining approval from the author of the post(s) is not allowed. If you see such a crossposting of your work or another's, you are invited to bring it to the attention of the moderators via PM.
19. Most of us like to see pictures...a picture is worth a thousand words, as they say. This forum encourages picture posting, be it ladies of the night, group photos, photos of travel scenes, pictures of daily life...generally anything pertaining to Thailand that entertains or educates. Any board member who criticizes the very act of posting pictures, if they are within the bounds of legality, will be dealt with strongly. Obviously, such a person does not belong on this forum.
20. The yellow card warning system is in operation. It's works like this:
    • 1 warning - nothing happens.
    • 2 warnings - your will not be able to post for 7 days
    • 3 warnings - you will not be able to post for 14 days
    • 4 Warnings - you will be banned from the forums permanently

Please Note: These rules do not cover every possible transgression. The mods interpret the "spirit" of the rules as fairly as they can but in the end their decision is final. The mods do not generally report their actions or the reasons for the decisions they make. Warnings or bannings are kept confidential to the member concerned and the moderators.

The background processes have finally finished, so all old posts should now appear properly (photos, links, etc). That makes the upgrade finally complete. 

I have also turned on enforcement of SSL, so all parts of the forum should now show as SECURE in your browser. This is something pattayatalk has never had, so please let me know if you have any problems because of it. 

Moving forward the costs for the site have gone up quite a bit, with the SSL and Email solutions (and I am working on doing email locally instead to save that cost), I will be looking in to putting some banners of some kind up. But I will keep them out of view if possible (down at the bottom of the page for instance). The exception to that being in the Open Forum for people not logged in. For some reason we get a LOT of google referral traffic to the open forum from people that never register for an account - somewhere in the neighborhood of 15000 page impressions per week. I am going to try to leverage that if I can. The costs for the site are still fairly low - less than $300 per year, so with any luck I can find a good solution that doesn't inconvenience any of our members. So... if you see something annoying, please tell me. Ill need feedback on this if I'm to make it work. There is also the possibility that the ads will eventually be banned because of the website content, though the provider I am looking at say that's not the case. Will also be looking at other solutions that are more in-line with what our members need - like the Agoda link that is now outdated (I will replace it), and I will start looking for local sponsors as well. This stuff will start to pop up in the next few days.... All I ask is that if you have no major objections, please turn off your ad-blocker for this site. I will not be adding any code to detect and enforce that like the asshats over at Thaivisa do, so this is the only request you will see... if you ignore it, I will never know or judge you for it. That you know of anyway. lol. 

Now as to email. As I was performing this upgrade I found out one really weird fact. While martin was really good about answering emails sent to his pattayatalk related Gmail account, for some reason he had the boards email blocked (admin@pattayatalk), and moreover, the old server was not even configured to receive mail from admin@pattayatalk, which means that all of the times someone hit CONTACT and sent a message, or all of the times someone responded to any of the emails sent by the forums, Martin never even saw them. Since fixing this problem yesterday I have received about 8 contact forum requests - 3 of which were for problem signing in where their email was no longer valid, so I don't even want to guess how many went unanswered over the last couple years. That will not happen again. I am still unable to receive mail to the admin@pattayatalk address (I am working on that), but in the meantime I have redirected the contact form and response emails to use the boards gmail account. So far that seems to be working. So if any of you send a request via any method and I do not respond, please let me know via PM and I will find and fix the problem.

Another change coming soon will be the addition of some sort of chat system for the board. I have not found one I like yet, but if nothing else I will design on myself. Will have something in place in the coming weeks. 

Anyhoo... the site is now fully functional and hopefully issue-free. And a full 2 days before the barcrawl. ?

I will be taking the current site down at some point on Saturday Dec 15 (no set time - just after I wake up), and I will be doing the upgrade to the latest forum software.

I expect the downtime to be less than 6 hours, and with any luck only about 2-3. If any unexpected issues arise during the transition, I will cancel the upgrade and re-activate this website.

After the upgrade, the URL for the forums will change slightly, but going to either www.pattayatalk.com or www.pattayatalk.com/forums will automatically forward you to the new URL. I do not want to give out the new URL just yet because I do not want any traffic at all hitting it until I know the upgrade worked, but I can tell you that the URL will be on the pattayatalk.com domain and will be just as easy (if not easier) to remember... Immediately after the upgrade the web page that is currently at www.pattayatalk.com (the FLB Bar one), will be gone - but the new website may not be in place yet. Eventually there will be a landing page there for the pattayatalk forums that will include some information, a memorial page for Martin and various other links and services for expats and tourists alike. That website is in development now, but I doubt I will finish it by Saturday, so I will simply forward all that traffic directly to the forums.

If you try to visit any pattayatalk.com domain URL while the upgrade is happening, you will see a blank website with a simple warning saying that the website is down for maintenance. Once the site goes live, you can refresh the page to be forwarded to the new forums (hopefully).

I am also going to hire a graphic artist to re-design our pattayatalk logo. I will use the same exact theme, but update it a bit for a more modern look. Until that is done, the new forum will not have a logo, but instead just say "pattayatalk.com".

Will keep this notice up for the next couple days as an advert, so it will be very visible.

The upgrade process has been successful. It was started at 3am Thai time, and it is now 6:13am as I write this. The forum is up and seems to be working fine, and as soon as I submit this post (and assuming it works - this is the last test), I will be redirecting all old traffic to this new forum post, so you will see it first if you are visiting from the old URL. 

So, first off. The new URL. I have changed the forums URL to https://forums.pattayatalk.com  (it used to be pattayatalk.com/forums).  This change comes with some drawbacks, mostly involving google and content already indexed, but the advantages of having it greatly outweigh the negatives. The largest of these allows me to host the forums on a Linux server, which is very fast and good at hosting php forums, and the front end website (not yet completed) that will be visible at pattayatalk.com on a windows server, which allows me to develop a rich website in a language I am more familiar with. 

Second. The new logo. I paid a Pakistani guy for this logo upgrade... but I have had a mixed review on it. I am totally open to changing it, and its been suggested by Keyman that we ask you guys if one of you is a graphic artist, if you want to give the creation of a new logo a shot. If you can and feel like giving it a go, please do! We will have a public poll on logo entries (including this current one) and let you guys decide which to keep. 

Third, please note: it can take up to a week for the upgrade process to fully finish processing old posts. Until that process is done, posts may have messed up quote markers, bad or poorly formatted photos, or other issues that make them look wrong in some way. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do to speed this process up. I was able to run it manually on the test server which took 3 days, but doing that here now with a live forum would result in speed issues that are just not worth it in the end. The process works by processing approx. 50 items every time someone visits the forum. (provided that one group of 50 is not currently running when that visit starts). There are about 3 million items to process, so obviously this will take some time. Be patient ?

I am going to wait until those background processes completely finish before turning on other new features, and I will create a new post describing each of those as I turn them on. The exception to that wait is the new SSL certificate. That is active already, but not enforced. So you can manually browse to https://forums.pattayatalk.com for a secure session. I will enforce HTTPS traffic exclusively after the background processes complete. (HTTPS does take more server processing time to process, and slightly slows down downloads). 

So... so far it appears my months long practice sessions worked pretty well. I am happy with the outcome, so far. I was able to take the process from 12 hours (first attempt), to 3 hours, and with 100% of the errors and issues (there were over 200 of them), handled by my scripts during the upgrade. So we should be good to go. 

Let me know what you think, and I will update again once the background processes are completed.  As I understand it the more traffic we have the faster that will go ?

Frosty

I got a test copy of the board working after a successful upgrade some months ago that we tested a bit and announced ready to go... The only problem being the skin, which I worked on when I had time over the last several months.

Well, low and behold in that time another version has been released, making the last obsolete.... and the new version does not like us very much. It seems it thinks we are worthy only of a 500 server error and nothing more. (no logs, no way to find the root of the problem, etc). lol.

Today I was cut off from IPB's tech support with them saying that they would agree to perform the upgrade on our live site only, and not on a test site that I set up to make sure it works. I am simply unwilling to do that at this point for a number of reasons, the foremost being that I want this site moved to a server with more resources (more RAM and HD space available). I am going to continue working with it over the next few weeks in hopes that I can find and fix whatever issue is causing the errors so we can move forward with the live migration. Once that time hits, I will try to warn everyone ahead of time and schedule it to minimize downtime.

So... the fight continues.

Frosty

Just got a notice that the server I have the PattayaTalk VPS hosted on has a very critical piece of hardware that is failing. Usually when something like this happens I use a feature called Migration to move the server from one physical machine to another with no downtime (it quite literally keeps the server running while its being moved). The issue with that method is that it takes a really long time (like 12+ hours), and from my testing I do not think we have that kind of time available before the server fails.

To that end, I am going to manually shut down this server and move it to another server and bring it back online again. That process is much faster, but will still result in some downtime - perhaps as much as an hour, but hopefully more like 30 minutes. With any luck most of you will never notice, but undoubtedly some will - it is my hope that most of those users will see this notice and not worry :)

This will be happening in the next couple hours. Not sure of the exact timing as I need to prepare the new server and all that jazz. I will post a update to this thread once the move is complete. While the move is happening this whole domain will be unavailable.

Frosty