Should we do a check of the kitty? Jesse?

We have that kind of money on hand, but it will just mean we'll need more sooner. Maybe I'll do a tax refund ask...

it hasn't been determined if the MySQL bug has been fixed

There's a claim it's been fixed, but that's no reason to go back to a shared host again. I'm sure there's another problem waiting after that one.

Which MySQL release would that put the fix in?

Though I do agree--shared is just one VIP visit away from trauma.

Which MySQL release would that put the fix in?

[Editing because that came out more brusque than I wanted]

I don't, but I can spend a few minutes trying to find out if you'd like.

Don't worry--just idle curiosity, really. I'll track it down myself when I have a moment.

Unrelated to that, in terms of board development, I tried to strip the formatting out into CSS, and did reasonably completely. Well, unless you use IE. Could not position that posting box for the life of me.

If you'd like to see what it looks like, it's at css.buffistas.net. It runs on the same database as the main site does, so you log in the same way and see the same stuff.

I know there are fixes that need to be made to the board's code, but this CSS stuff has been sitting there for a few months, and I'd hate to have the development tree fork dramatically. So I would appreciate formatting feedback--it will not be exactly the same, but I hope it will still be as streamlined and readable. These changes will make it easier to skin the site for stripped down browsers in phones and PDAs, for instance. Or to take graphics out (I've been using a modified style sheet that's mostly black and white, no graphics other than the form buttons) to make it more work-friendly.

The next step would be to move the code around to isolate the content generation from the presentation, if that makes sense. When showthread calls for the posts on a given page, they come back already HTMLed up. That's not philosophically all right, although it's been serving us plenty well so far. Moving things around will make further development easier, especially when it comes to farming bits out to members of a coding team.

Wow. That was a lot longer than I intended. Go. Have a look at the new version. Talk to me about it.

Though I do agree--shared is just one VIP visit away from trauma.

From experience, yes and no to that. I used HostGator for a while, although they suffered issues periodically. UH have been exceptionally good over the years, and I'm happy enough with the stability of them for my sites. It's working out at around 99.5%, which is fine for me.

I used to have the various sites I run on dedicated, and if I had the money still I'd keep it that way. Although I had to do all the server admin stuff myself, which was a pain.

It does seem a bit wacky that the hosts want to upgrade you to CentOS 3.x, which is quite old. Although Redhat 7.3 is really ancient, so it's better.

From experience, yes and no to that

Ours has been pointed enough I don't want to gamble. I mean, ours as a board. Mine as an individual with sites hosted around concurs.

If CentOS 3.8 is supported and stable, I don't care if it's old. RH 7.3 was doing us just fine, after all.

One minor formatting thing with the css site: The taglines below the username and date are too big. Or bigger than they are now, in any case.

If CentOS 3.8 is supported and stable, I don't care if it's old.

Security upgrades til 2010, according to the website. So you'd get at least 3 years out of it.

ETA: Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say how to run this site re shared, just throwing my coins in. Or whatever the expression is.