Server Maintenance - PMs AKA Private Conversations - 10 DAY NOTICE (1 Viewer)

Tommy

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10 DAY NOTICE - On MAY 8th, 2020, PMs that have not had a reply in more than 750 days (just over 2 years), will be deleted from the database.

We upload a lot of photos and files here. Many times the same photo over and over in different threads and PMs. I do the same thing too. It's just what we do.

Using the Gallery here to create albums and organize all your pics is a great way to re-use images in your posts and pms. Just click on the Photo Icon when creating a new post or pm and pick the photo you want to use. Be sure you do not have the photo or album that it's in, marked private if wanting to share it publicly. (more on that below)

PCF is currently using close to 70% of the server SSD storage space, which is over 240GB. I estimate by the latter part of 2020, I will have to move the site to a new server as there are no more quick upgrades to gain more storage space. At the moment, zip and PDF attachments are temporarily disabled until the next 2 phases to optimize server storage is carried out.

On MAY 8th, 2020, PMs that have not had a reply in more than 750 days, will be deleted from the database.
If the last message in the PM is ON or BEFORE April 19, 2018, the PM will be deleted. The last message can also be the first message if the PM has no replies.


Once that is done and the database is rebuilt, additional features will be added to the Gallery. Media can be assigned to albums and showcases, then made public or private for discussion.

Maintaining a balance between site options/features and server resources can sometimes be a challenge. 10 years ago, phone weren't taking 20MB images that are over 5K pixels wide. Hosting companies aren't willing to sell you more storage space without the CPU and Memory upgrades too. PCF doesn't need 16 core Intel Xeon processors.

I still encourage users to upload images here to avoid losing the photos when the next 3rd party photo storage service (ex: photobucket) decides to kill all the linked images until you pay their new prices or get on a new plan.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you. The goal is to keep PCF running the best it can for many years to come.

Thanks,
Tommy
 
@Tommy, will all messages that are 2 years old be deleted as they reach that age or is this a one-time purge?

I also want to say that from a technological standpoint PCF is quite literally the best run forum I've ever been a member of. This site always loads fast and renders properly no matter what device I access it from - and that doesn't just happen. There is a significant investment in hardware and optimization required to make that happen. So thank you for making the effort to provide the best UX possible.
 
@Tommy, will all messages that are 2 years old be deleted as they reach that age or is this a one-time purge?

One time for now. Will revisit in 2 years if the core software doesn't offer some better management. There are over 15,000 PMs older than 2 years.
 
10 DAY NOTICE - On MAY 8th, 2020, PMs that have not had a reply in more than 750 days (just over 2 years), will be deleted from the database.

We upload a lot of photos and files here. Many times the same photo over and over in different threads and PMs. I do the same thing too. It's just what we do.

Using the Gallery here to create albums and organize all your pics is a great way to re-use images in your posts and pms. Just click on the Photo Icon when creating a new post or pm and pick the photo you want to use. Be sure you do not have the photo or album that it's in, marked private if wanting to share it publicly. (more on that below)

PCF is currently using close to 70% of the server SSD storage space, which is over 240GB. I estimate by the latter part of 2020, I will have to move the site to a new server as there are no more quick upgrades to gain more storage space. At the moment, zip and PDF attachments are temporarily disabled until the next 2 phases to optimize server storage is carried out.

On MAY 8th, 2020, PMs that have not had a reply in more than 750 days, will be deleted from the database.
If the last message in the PM is ON or BEFORE April 19, 2018, it will be deleted. The last message can also be the first message if the PM has no replies.


Once that is done and the database is rebuilt, additional features will be added to the Gallery. Media can be assigned to albums and showcases, then made public or private for discussion.

Maintaining a balance between site options/features and server resources can sometimes be a challenge. 10 years ago, phone weren't taking 20MB images that are over 5K pixels wide. Hosting companies aren't willing to sell you more storage space without the CPU and Memory upgrades too. PCF doesn't need 16 core Intel Xeon processors.

I still encourage users to upload images here to avoid losing the photos when the next 3rd party photo storage service (ex: photobucket) decides to kill all the linked images until you pay their new prices or get on a new plan.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you. The goal is to keep PCF running the best it can for many years to come.

Thanks,
Tommy
Long live PCF :tup:
 
Hey @Tommy, I think I already know the answer, but is there a way to export PMs to a text file or something similar?
 
Don't forget it's racist, too.
85% of new members don't know shit. I try not to hold it against them. I was there not long ago
I was only kidding.
It doesn't bother me honestly, new members dont know, it's only a little awkward lol
 
I was only kidding.
It doesn't bother me honestly, new members dont know, it's only a little awkward lol

I offer to settle your complaint out of court. In a couple weeks you and every other member of PCF will get a chance to receive a gift from me. But first, lawyers must be paid.
 
8C7FDE22-043A-4619-9512-D4BA8EDC94CF.png
 
Thanks for the heads up @Tommy.

I'm not sure if you've looked into it before or not, but if you're looking into options, you might want to check out Digital Ocean. They have some pretty good server offerings. I use them for my data science R, SQL, and Python servers. They have several different pricing tiers based on your memory, cpu, and storage needs. Then you can add additional storage on top of whichever 'droplet' (server) you choose to go with. Last I checked, I think it was an additional $20 per mo for 200GB of additional storage.
 
Thanks for the heads up @Tommy.

I'm not sure if you've looked into it before or not, but if you're looking into options, you might want to check out Digital Ocean. They have some pretty good server offerings. I use them for my data science R, SQL, and Python servers. They have several different pricing tiers based on your memory, cpu, and storage needs. Then you can add additional storage on top of whichever 'droplet' (server) you choose to go with. Last I checked, I think it was an additional $20 per mo for 200GB of additional storage.

Thanks. I'll check them out to see the details and their packages in general. Usually the add-on storage like that is block storage or NAS and that type creates substantially higher latency vs local SSD. Serving cache files from a slower volume would be a big performance hit on page loads among other things. It's worth a look though at that price.
 
Thanks. I'll check them out to see the details and their packages in general. Usually the add-on storage like that is block storage or NAS and that type creates substantially higher latency vs local SSD. Serving cache files from a slower volume would be a big performance hit on page loads among other things. It's worth a look though at that price.

Ya, check it out. Looks like it is SSD based though. Here's what I see when I log in to my account and try to add on storage.


Screen Shot 2020-04-27 at 6.51.47 PM.png
 
:( Block storage though and the volumes are not included in auto backups. My current host offers something similar, not included in auto backups there either. Maybe I setup a test site just to mess around with it. Not having them included in the auto backups is too risky for me. I have the standard daily backups every hosts offers but also add on daily auto offsite backups too. A missile can hit the data center and destroy it but PCF will be up and running before the 2nd news cycle about the missile. :)
 
I'm currently at 80 pages, but it only goes back to 2017...... and I've already done a lot of deleting of old messages in the last few months. o_O

Everything from page 42-80 is past the cut-off date and scheduled for deletion. Guess I've got some work to do.
 

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