Upcoming downtime

I'm considering doing the proposed re-install maybe around new-years, or the following weekend. I'll post a maintenance banner in the site's place when I do, but that will likely be the earliest.

Content

When I do the upcoming blog redesign, the content will temporarily go away as well, as I plan on re-organize some of it into separate blogs with new URL's (for instance, Abuse of Authority and Ghosts of Ohio). LGPedia will also be unavailable during this time as well.

My game plan is as follows:

• Back up the current LGpedia database and file structure.
  


• Back up the current blog database.
  


• Export the blog posts.
  


• Note the installed Wordpress plugins.
  


• Back up the installed Wordpress themes.
  


• Save any custom php code.
  


• Wipe the entire site.
  


• Remove LGpedia's DNS entries and sub-folder.
  


• Install Wordpress and enable multi-site.
  


• Set up LGpedia in Wordpress multi-site.
  


• Restore LGpedia database.
  


• Upload LGpedia files.
  


• Install WPMW (or similar).
  


• Re-upload Wordpress themes.
  


• Set up additional blogs.
  


• Import specific content to additional blogs.
  


• Import the remainder to main blog.
  


• Restore any custom php code.
  


• Set up previous plugins.
  


• Add social-networking plugins.
  


• Open up multi-site for user-created blogs.
  

Some notes regarding LGpedia:

• I am planning on setting up a "blog" for for any news specific to LGpedia.
  


• I am removing the DNS entry for it, as the wildcard DNS required by Wordpress multi-site will handle it.
  


• Editing will be enabled, and controlled via Wordpress login.
  

It will probably be a couple of weeks before I pull the trigger, and can hopefully accomplish everything in one night.

Pi to 10,000 digits

[youtube http://youtu.be/nZXPJyjUINc&w=450]

QOTD

Let's not just make noise, let's make a difference.

Removed forums, chat and wiki

I've just started the site redesign, and my first steps have been to remove forums, chat, and the non-LGPedia wiki. It looks like the way things are configured, the Wiki showed up under ever single site, anyhow. Will look at integrating LGPedia into the rest of the site at some point in the future. For now, I'm trying to separate content without breaking things too badly. Since I have used Categories wisely, at least in specific use-cases, this may be simply a matter of exporting specific categories and then importing the results in a new site on the network. I may have to clean up some links afterwards, but that should be simply enough :)

Site redesign coming (again)

I may have mentioned this previously, but I have decided to do another site redesign. This time around, I'll be keeping all current content, but using the multi-site capabilities of Wordpress to break some items off to their own sub-domain. I also plan on dropping phpBB (and possibly enabling some WP-specific forum plugin, if forums are needed at all), and making LGpedia a more permanent part of the site (but still at its current URL), since it is becoming painfully obvious that the official one is unlikely to ever come back. This will likely involve a re-install of everything, just to clean things up a bit. Hopefully, this will also fix the reported speed issues that only appear to intermittently impact LGpedia.

Some ideas:

• LGpedia will get a Wordpress blog page for any news or updates, though the wiki will remain exactly where it's at. I'll likely unite the logins between the LGpedia blog and the actual wiki, or investigate converting the content to one of the many WP-Wiki plugins (this is less likely, as that would likely cause major speed issues)




• Remove chat, as I don't believe it's used at all.




• Ghosts of Ohio will become its own site, as will Abuse of Authority.



• Additional subdomains for additional topics that I write at least simi-regularly on



• The main blog will likely move to blog. instead of www. and www. will be more of a front page to all the sites. Speaking of which,



• I may open up subdomains for user registration, as long as they follow certain guidelines.

Any other suggestions?

LGpedia Issues

I am receiving reports from a couple of different sources about issues with LGpedia load times. I am unable to reproduce the issue myself (even image-heavy pages are loading within 3 seconds or so for me), and need help tracking down the issue. If you're experiencing problems with LGpedia, are you also experiencing problems with the rest of the site? Who is your ISP? Can you email me a traceroute (or tracert, depending on OS) to lgpedia.nitemarecafe.com while the issue is occuring for you? (wintermute AT nitemarecafe DOT com) This should help me track it down some, and rule out a saturated link or some-such.