DonationCoder Temporary Emergency Backup Forum URL -- make note of it

[mouser]

Ok gothic and I have set up a temporary bare bones backup forum on our member server, which will be enabled whenever the donationcoder.com main website or forum ever goes offline.

Please make note of this URL:

• http://forum.dcmembers.com/

The idea behind this is to have a place where people can go to learn more and discuss problems if the main website/forum ever goes offline unexpectedly, or gets hacked, whatever.  It will provide both a place to chat while waiting for the main site to come back online, as well as a place to get updates about any problems affecting the main server.

This backup forum will only be enabled when the main website goes down, and when that happens you won't be able to find this message (except maybe through google cache) so please make a note of the URL now, and put it someplace safe.

[app103]

Great idea! 

[lanux128]

cool, bookmarked it!

[gexecuter]

Pretty cool! thinking ahead is always a good thing tough i doubt someone would want to take us out of the picture.

[nosh]

I tried to login once so Roboform would remember the details but got an error. Are the old logins carried forward there?

[mouser]

old logins are NOT carried forward (for security reasons -- no need to have twice the risk of email leakage).
but also, the forum should be in maintenance mode and not let anyone login or register.
it won't be usable until the main forum goes down.

[CleverCat]

[steeladept]

Might I suggest a test then sometime so that people can verify they can access it before it is needed?  Also, isn't there some way to put up a default message to tell people instead of the default 404 error message?  Or is that a local system thing?  Maybe I am wrong here, not sure on that side of things, but if so it seems it might be helpful and that way you don't have to rely on the end user to remember it/where they put it.  Not that I ever loose things like this....

[mouser]

there is no 404 error, you should see the page.

[steeladept]

Ah, now I follow.  This only would be if the forum was affected, not (necessarily) the entire site.  Got it...

[mouser]

i think i misunderstood what you were saying -- i was confused because i think you were talking about 2 different things.

let's take your comments one at a time.

Might I suggest a test then sometime so that people can verify they can access it before it is needed?

the backup forum is online, you can go now and verify that you can access it, and bookmark it; it's on a different server and so should be available even if main server crashes: http://forum.dcmembers.com/

Also, isn't there some way to put up a default message to tell people instead of the default 404 error message?

if you're point is that when the main donationcoder server crashes, couldn't we put up a link on the main donationcoder.com server to the backup forum that people could click.  this will depend.  if the entire server crashes, this isn't easily possible because of DNS/nameserver propagation delays, etc.  If we can, we will.  But if things go really wrong, it won't be something we have control over.  that's why it's important for people to make note of the url now.  Also pays to remember our irc chat channel (#donationcoder on efnet) which is an alternative place to go.

[steeladept]

Sort of.  I was thinking if the entire site went down, the ISP would serve up the 404 that may be customizable.  Again, I don't know if that is true, but that was what I was thinking.  As for the testing, you are correct on all counts of what I meant.

[mouser]

Sort of.  I was thinking if the entire site went down, the ISP would serve up the 404 that may be customizable.

a 404 is a page served up by the web server when a page is missing -- when a server goes down, so goes the web server program, making the server completely unresponsibe.

now, what *should* be commonplace, but is instead completely unheard of for reasons beyond my comprehension, would be a system by which a hosting company or parent network, or indeed a centralized service, which could be informed of network problems/down servers and show specific information to the user about where to go.

perhaps this would be a nice opportunity for a trusted 3d party browser plugin and web service.