Admin Post: SWG Site Is Back Up!

[dawn_felagund]

The site is back up and live! As is probably evident from the fact that this took FOUR DAYS (I'm not sure the site was down that long when we moved from eFiction to Drupal!), this was a labor-intensive upgrade for us. We updated our software from Drupal 8 to 9, which was itself an important change. However, in doing so, the directory structure changed, which meant that all old links would not work. We were not okay with that. So we attempted to redirect the old links to the new, which to be blunt about it, turned out to be a massive pain in the ass. At multiple points, we discussed restoring the D8 site and going back to the drawing board with redirects (which is now a four-letter word to Russa and me).

I think we are, at last, there. I will be fixing broken links and images in the days to come. If you run into a broken link or image (or anything else that is weird), please let me know in the comments here. (If you are on our Discord, I am keeping a running list in #town-hall.) If you get an error about "redirects to external URLs are not allowed," please clear your cache.

To make this whole situation even more interesting, our host has been promising for months that we are due a major upgrade, which they have decided to do tonight. So the site will go down again, briefly, sometime in the next day, and we may see even more odd behavior.

Of course, we want you to go back to using the site right away. But we also know we're going to run into problems in the days to come, so now might not be the best time to spend four hours archiving your epic novel with us. Just in case!

Finally, so much gratitude to Russandol, who has been researching and planning this upgrade for weeks and gave up most of her weekend to struggling through it. Again, please reach out to me with any questions and please report any issues in the comments.

Comments

[sauronnaise]

Thanks for the update. My first instinct was to put the blame on the server, then, I reasoned it was my wifi being cocky again.

Have fun battling with technology and all that jazz, and hope to see the site reborn!

[erulissedances]

Congratulations to all who have been involved in this massive enterprise. Thank you for doing this for those of us who have neither the expertise nor the time.

- Erulisse (one L)

[chestnut_pod]

Excellent news!