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Turning your forum offline?
- Thread starter Nebulous
- Start date
The only time I think it would be appropriate to turn a board offline is if a person was going to install a mod that was going to take a while to install. That'd be the only excusable reason in my book. I mean, I'm sure there are other exceptions as well, but still.
I had to turn it offline for about five minutes the other day for an upgrade to IPB 3.0.5 from 3.0.4. If someone says that it's dumb to turn a forum offline for any amount of time and for any reason, they're an idiot. I think that it's fine for some reasons (if you're doing a major layout revamp, so as to not confuse the members), but you should keep it to a minimum.
Depending on its activity and the reason, if you have less than 10 active members and you are about to take a break for sometime. You can put it offline for longer than few days unless they requested for it to stay online..
Since mine is Zetaboards, I had to turn my board offline to install ZbAIO system. It took no longer than 5 mins.
Since mine is Zetaboards, I had to turn my board offline to install ZbAIO system. It took no longer than 5 mins.
aka do it at 2am in the morning
What skillet said.
When working with vB, the best thing to do is upload everything to another dir, turn the forums off, shift everything into root, then run upgrade.php mega swift. No more than 7 minutes downtime whenever i've done it.
When working with vB, the best thing to do is upload everything to another dir, turn the forums off, shift everything into root, then run upgrade.php mega swift. No more than 7 minutes downtime whenever i've done it.
Skillet said:Not necessarily. People are from all over the world.Like here at Off Topix, lots of people post around 3AM my time. So it all depends.
Whenever you do it, just don't do it for too long.
So then figure out which time has the least amount of people on. But yeah as long as it's not down for long then it's all good.
Ive seen people turn their forums offline for the dumbest reasons like....
We are currently revamping.. We will be back in 3 days to a week
I think to myself, they cant work out their revamp on a test board 1st?
Great way to discourage people from visiting your forum.
We are currently revamping.. We will be back in 3 days to a week
I think to myself, they cant work out their revamp on a test board 1st?
Great way to discourage people from visiting your forum.
Same. Incredibly stupid thing to do.
Nebulous said:
Yeah it's so dumb. With proper planning, revamps can be completed very quickly.
Investah Sci said:
Truth. A test board gets everything done faster. Speaking of which, I should probably put my test board back up. Hm...
If the members have some other place to chat with one another I don't see why not.
Good members are patient enough to wait a few hours. For me, I'd just set up a chatroom account for them to converse in while I do whatever it is I need to do.
I think sometimes one turns their board offline for a revamp because they don't want to be distracted by their members. I've seen people revamp while being online while being bombarded with comments like omg there are no matching buttons! blah blah blah ..it's kind of annoying.
Good members are patient enough to wait a few hours. For me, I'd just set up a chatroom account for them to converse in while I do whatever it is I need to do.
I think sometimes one turns their board offline for a revamp because they don't want to be distracted by their members. I've seen people revamp while being online while being bombarded with comments like omg there are no matching buttons! blah blah blah ..it's kind of annoying.
The reality is though, an upgrade will never take more than 20-30 minutes if planned ahead of time. I still think keeping it offline for more than this is not good. Remember, your also driving away members who link to the site. I'll let you know something. Never when a site says, be up in a day or two have I came back. First impressions really matter.
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