Hi everyone,
As many of you know, the Lead Adventure Forum has been plagued with outages over the past few months. The initial culprit was a surge in AI-driven bot crawlers, which we managed to fend off with Cloudflare’s security tools (have no fear, none of your data has been compromised; that’s not what these do).
Unfortunately, the deeper problem lies with our hosting: the site still runs on IONOS’ now-discontinued Managed Dedicated Server package, which has grown increasingly unstable.
We’re now seeing daily downtime, and the support from IONOS has been, frankly, unhelpful.
We need to act and fix a forum that has not had any meaningful updates for about a decade! Before that, I want to answer a few inevitable questions:
Q: What’s the situation right now?
Despite repeated attempts (and chats with IONOS support), we haven’t been able to properly diagnose or fix the errors that are ongoing. The limitations of the package the LAF is hosted on mean we have no direct access to the server, logs, or core tools we need.
Q: What’s the plan?
We’re not giving up. Instead, we’re moving the forum to a new Bluehost unmanaged dedicated server. This will finally give us full control: direct access to logs, the ability to restart the server ourselves, manage server requirements, keep things up to date, and handle issues ourselves, without being stuck waiting on poor support.
Q: What does this mean in the short term?
The migration is a big step and will require the forum to go offline. This could take upwards of a week while we transfer all files, move the database, and configure the new server.
During that time, you’ll see a holding page and will not be able to post; this prevents new posts or uploads from being lost when the switch completes.
If the migration runs longer than a week, we’ll keep you updated via the Wargames Illustrated and North Star Facebook pages, so make sure to give them a follow.
Date for migration: Monday 8 September
Expected downtime: up to one week
Q: Will everything be fixed once the LAF is live again?
We’d love to say yes, but realistically, we will need to do more work. This is a very old Simple Machines Forum installation (last updated in the mid-2010s), and moving it to a new server will likely surface quirks and issues we’ll need to iron out. That’s where you come in: once we’re live again, we’ll need your help stress-testing and reporting problems.
The good news: once the dust settles, we’ll be ready to update the look and performance of the forum. We’ll talk to moderators about their requirements, share previews of the forum’s possible new look, and get your feedback on which features you’d like us to keep whilst we upgrade to the latest Simple Machines Forum version.
This process may take a while, but it’s the only way that we can keep the LAF going, maintain the huge archive of posts and uploads, and add stability to the forum overall.
Thank you all for your patience during these rough months and for the extra patience that will be needed ahead. We know the outages have been frustrating; we’re confident this migration is the first big step toward getting the forum back on solid ground.
Joe
Web and Media Developer
For Wargames Illustrated and North Star - joint operators of the LAF
12 January 2012, 03:21:13 PM
