Moving your Anyboard forum to a new server

The following intructions and related information are drawn fron an actual experience in moving to a new server, with feedback from forum members.

An assumption is made that you have your own domain name that you will be transferring. Another assumption is made that you have established an account with your new host and have not yet closed the present (old) account nor transferred your domain yet.

If there is no domain name being transferred, then certain parts of these instructions may be ignored as they are not relevant.

Here's what you do

1. Download the files, including messages, retaining the forums directory names and structure, to your hard drive, using an FTP program.

2. On the new server, create the same directories and upload the files for each forum you have. Include the posts and postdata directories (messages are generated from both of these), .fYz (passwords and registration information), and any others, like archive, uploads, and polls.

3. Make any required changes in your anyboard.cgi script, like a different path to Perl, and the path to the master config directory.

The following instruction is very important.
Substitute your IP address on the new server for your domain name. If you miss this step, you may be accessing your old server from the new one. Your forums will also be inoperative for a few days once you have transfeered your domain name if you forget.

4. Upload the anyboard.cgi file to the new server, set permissions, and check to make sure your forums function (using the admin screens).

Since new messages can continue to be posted, you may want to accomplish the final changeover late at night, especially if you have a busy site. The actual change can be accomplished in a few minutes, but novices may want the comfort of knowing they are not incoveniencing users by making the change at night and not feeling rushed if they experience any problems.

Here's what you can do:

When you are ready to make the change to the new server, do the following:

5. Disable posting on the old forum(s) by checking the
Disallow posting.
Freeze the forum
selection under Posting Policy on the Admin screen.

6. FTP the remaining messages posted since the last transfer, to the new server, along with the latest index.html main forum page (or regenerate it once all messages are in place on the new server). Be sure to transfer the data.txt file, which is the one that keeps track of the lat message number used.

7. Be sure to post a message on the new server explaining the change in servers, why your users will need to use the IP address for awhile, and that there may be access problems for some for a short while. This will also serve as a test of posting on the new site. It can help if their ISP's clear their own cache. When we made the change, some of our members with access problems found access restored when their ISP put them on a secondary server.

8. Put up a redirect page (see below) on the old forum that automatically redirects people to the new site using the IP address rather than domain name. Note: if you are not transferring a domain name, then substitute the domain name and URL of the new server instead of IP address).

Users will now be redirected to your new server. It takes a few days for any transfer of domain to work its way completely through the DNS (Domain Name System). Some users will be able to access the new server with your domain name earlier than others. Until the change over is complete, using the IP address is the best way.

10. If everything is working properly, you can intitiate the transfer of domain name to new server with Internic. It will probably only take them 2 days to transfer your domain name, and you won't be able to use it until then. It will take you to the old site.

11. Regenerate the main index page (including individual messages) from the admin panel on the new site. All site references (links) will be corrected after that.

12. You may delete the files from the old server, with the exception of the redirect page, or let your old host delete them when they close your account. Wait until your domain name has been transferred before you close it. Otherwise, some people will think your server is down.

13. Once your domain name has been transferred to your new server, you can replace the IP address in your anyboard.cgi script with your domain name once again. It is not necessary, and you might want to do it just because it's easier to remember.

With a bit of work and planning, you can make the transition as easy as possible for yourself and most of your users, and not skip a beat.

Some issues to be aware of

You should check file permissions on the new server (see the posts about file permissions and ownership).

There may be greater difficulty if changing to a server with a
different operating system. Moving from Linux to Unix, or vice versa, will probably not present any problems, as Linux is a freeware variant of Unix (and they are close enough). A change from Unix (or Linux) to Windows NT would have other associated problems. Make sure the forums on the new site function properly before shutting down the old ones.

Redirect Page

On the redirect page below, uou'll need to edit both the hyperlink that
appears in the HTML and the META tag that does the actual redirection. Replace newsite.com with the URL of your new location. Note that if you are transferring a domain name from one server to another (as in changing providers), newsite.com should be the new IP address rather than your domain name.

The last step is to rename the page and drop the -redirect from the title, making it index.html (and copying it to any other name you might use as the main page of your site).