Rock the boat...

Moving YF to a new dedicated server today. Expect some downtime, but nothing like the past 3 weeks with server crashes, temporary server issues, etc. It took a while to source and prepare the new server, but the new hardware should serve us well for many years to come.

To recap, our dedicated server crashed 3 weeks ago, so we moved to a temporary shared server that could not adequately handle YF's volume. After repeated issues, we moved to a VPS as an interim solution while configuring the new hardware. That server is ready to receive YF & JF now...

Thanks to everyone for their patience. The past few weeks has tested mine!

While JF is finally taxiing to the runway, most folks forget YF started the same way. There were only three of us on YF in the first year... me, myself & I.

Just a head's up... JetForums is being ported to a new a new forum software for security reasons (XenForo). I'm hoping the code work will be complete in the next month or so. If all goes well, YF is next!

Cross platforming a highly customized vB based forum isn't easy. This transition will not be without some pain for ALL of us. We will be operating in a new forum environment, but I'm hoping the transition will be as seamless as possible. Ultimately, many things will be different.

I'm doing this because both sites have some serious vulnerabilities that cannot be addressed with vB, so we must take a proactive approach to protect the collective knowledge you guys have built.

To everyone who has posted over the past 2 days...

Our new server had a newer version of MySQL installed and the system was throwing off database errors all morning. We were previously on MySQL 5.1., so we had to re-copy the database files over from the VPS. In doing so, we lost two days of posts between the time when the site was first moved to the new server and this morning. Unfortunately there was no way around this as downgrading versions of MySQL corrupts data.

This is the first time in 10 years that we have lost any significant data. Please accept my apologies. This has been a real fiasco, but I believe we are stable now.

I appreciate everyone's support, but we haven't reached safe harbor yet...

At some point over the summer, our vBulletin based forum will migrate to XenForo. As I said before, the environment will be quite different but ultimately secure! I know a lot of folks won't be happy about this, but we have NO choice. I'll try to make the User Interface as fluent as possible. The complexity of cross-platforming a huge amount of proprietary custom code to a software program it was never designed for is daunting.

Some of you may recall JetForums was hijacked last summer. I spent weeks trying to isolate the breach. I finally had experts from vB examine our code and they were unable to identify the problem. In a way, this was a blessing in disguise because it exposed a serious vulnerability that ALSO exists on YF. Fortunately, JetForums isn't a high value target, however... YachtForums is!

I need to thank Lars (AMG) for his diligent and fair moderation. I also need to thank Ron (YachtNews) for scouring the net and bringing us the latest news. And finally, a BIG thank you to our Senior Members who have made YF one of the best resources in yachting.

Here's a screen shot of the XenForo version of JF that is being used to test new scripts. The graphics will come later...

Just an update...

JetForums was moved to the new dedicated server today. Although this Xeon-based server has the capacity to handle 100's of websites, we only need it to host YF & JF. Page load speeds should be better than ever. If you encounter any issues, please email me...

YFAdmin (at) comcast (net)

Thanks to all!

Sounds like you need relax your browser security settings to enable 3rd party cookies, but the fact that you can access YF negates that idea. I just made a test post on JF so it's working for me. To anyone reading this thread... if you're a JF member, can you please try logging in?