Spellhold Studios Forum down?

[Salk]

I agree.

I seem to recall that both SHS and G3 used to have the same privider so when one was down the other was too but obviously it's no longer the case (thankfully).

SHS is probably struggling financially and they cannot afford a similar move away from a deeply unreliable service.

[jastey]

As far as i know, the costs were rather astoundingly high, but @Kaeloree always signaled their willingness to pay as long as SHS maintenance is organized. The owners were also considering putting it on read only, because the software is so old and it was sleeping beauty for so long before a new moderation team was gathered. So I think there is the will to keeping the site running, but I guess it's not on high priority so it might well be hosting fee ran out and wasn't renewed on time or something.

[Cahir]

Also, Liam is probably busy with the pre-launch marketing and events for Summerfall Studios first game, Stray Gods. So, I wouldn't expect him to find time to deal with SHS issue in the near future, unfortunately. 

[jastey]

19 minutes ago, Cahir said:

Liam is probably busy with the pre-launch marketing and events for Summerfall Studios first game, Stray Gods.

That's exactly the reason. Newest update: the owners are aware of the problem and will hopefully find the time to look into it next week.

[Salk]

Putting the forum on "Read Only" would be catastrophic.

The activity there is not so low to justify something like that. Capital projects are actively being worked on (BGT, ToBEx AfterLife, Infinity Animations, Baldur's Gate Graphic Overhaul and so many more) and the Forum hosts tools of primary importance like Near Infinity. 

I understand that eventually the owner(s?) will want to cease support for the place. Perhaps they should start considering a migration or a merge with another IE community forum so that costs may be shared (Pocketplane.net?).

Edited May 19, 2023 by Salk

[skellytz]

The new team has done a lot since August last year. I'd go as far as saying that SHS, with all the current forum software limitations, it as well-maintained now as it was back in its heyday. We've had many internal discussions regarding the forums, hosted mods and our future. We've cleaned up a lot of dust accumulated under the rug, checked and reorganized the forums down to meticulously correcting broken links and the capitalization of subforum titles. Spambots have been kept in check. One of our big projects is moving SHS mods to GitHub; a slow process with many obstacles that so far haven't discouraged us. We actively support all attempts to update or resurrect many mods hosted at SHS. All this while we're working on our own projects.

Of course, SHS forum members can help a lot by showing their interest, offering feedback, donating and otherwise encouraging the current staff and owners to continue  I'm grateful for everything SHS modders have done over the years despite obvious setbacks. Thank you for staying on board with us! With active and well-maintained forums, dedicated staff members, a chunk of storage freed up by transferring mods to GitHub, as well as your support, we'll surely prove that SHS deserves hosting optimization and software upgrades.

[Salk]

Personally, I appreciate enormously what is being done at SHS and am very grateful for the current situation regarding active development for essential modifications (to me, at least) and for the good job at keeping the Forum clean, devoting so much energy and time to maintenance.

This has not much to do with what happened, though. The casual visitors of the SHS Forum might be discouraged from visiting again in the future when the Forum is down for 3 weeks and counting.

I will of course try to do my share to help out because that's the right thing to do and because I care. The problem, I think, is: if we count ourselves, are we enough?

Edited May 25, 2023 by Salk

[Endarire]

It's been about a month now.  What's happening with SHS and its triumphant return?

Thankee!

[MacSatan]

Same here, really missing the site.  Would love to know when it will be returning.

[skellytz]

In case jastey's explanation wasn't clear enough:

SHS is on a dedicated server with HDD RAID. If there are any issues, the provider immediately notifies the owners, but any hardware failure must be dealt with by the owners themselves, eg making an appointment with the support team, purchasing and ordering new HDDs, getting them installed, etc.

Liam "Kaeloree" Esler is the current active owner. He's been notified about the issues and confirmed that he'd received the reports. At the same time, as the managing director and co-founder of Summerfall Studios, Liam is currently extremely busy with the release of Stray Gods and will attempt to get the website back online only when his limited time allows, ie as soon as he can.

We apologize for the prolonged downtime, but please understand: SHS is a hobby project. Stray Gods is a career milestone.

Let's try to show our understanding and support

[Graion Dilach]

As a sysadmin who's current workplace is a web development LLC which did started from a basement 20+ years ago... that explains a lot more besides the downtime to me.

I presume it's in a BYOD server room then. I wasn't aware those exists before I was hired to my current job (I've started in enterprise). We do have such devices and I've been told that when our production RAID array died a few years ago, the sysadmin and the CEO had to go to the server room personally to install the replacements. Now depending on physical locations, this can take a lot of time.

Thanks!

[Frenzgyn]

Thanks for the explanation.

[Isewein]

As long as someone has made a backup...

[skellytz]

There are backups, of course. This is nothing new; we've had long downtimes due to HDD failures before. Even in the worst case scenario, when at some point multiple drives failed at the same time, it was possible to recover the website, though with the loss of some more recent content.

SHS is currently on a cheap auctioned/reused dedicated server from Hetzner. I don't know the exact details as to the shape of the deal itself, but apparently to keep the costs down, it requires some busywork on the owner's part to replace the drives.

Back in 2018, G3 migrated to a new host to remedy the long downtimes. Here's what the then-active server owner, SConrad, said about the issues:

On 12/17/2018 at 9:29 PM, SConrad said:

I thought Id stop by to give some context. SHS and G3 are both currently hosted on the same server, provided by the German hosting company Hetzner. They have a program that reuses servers at heavily discounted rates. The upside for us is that SHS/G3 runs on a beast of a machine, more than capable of running both sites when working, for a total of $40/month. The downside is that, well, you get what you pay for. Because the hardware is recycled, it is unreliable at times. If I had time to jump on issues when they occurred, it would be way less of a problem. But due to work, it sometimes takes days or even weeks before I'm able to get to it.

During the most recent downtime (caused by a failing hard drive--the most common reason when the server goes down), the G3 admins contacted me to say they'd like to move G3 off the server. They have an alternative. In their position, Id 100% have done the same thing. And personally, while I've been happy to host G3 for several years now, I prefer to reduce some of the stress I feel when there's an issue and I can't do anything about it. Knowing that one of the sites will be unaffected helps.

SHS will continue to be hosted on the current server until there is another viable option. There's no alternative that I know of that wont cost $150-200+. The difference between SHS and G3 is the size of the mods in the catalogue and bandwidth usage. Its not as bad as it used to be, but SHS still uses 600-800 GB of data traffic per month.

Finally, a note on donations. SHS has long accepted one-off donations and has ads on the download page for each mod. While the contributions from both of these income streams have been appreciated, they have at best paid for half of the overall costs. A Patreon is a great idea that Ill think about, and I encourage the G3 folks to think about it as well.

Edited June 3, 2023 by skellytz

[Graion Dilach]

Yes, that sounds exactly what I assumed so. In our case, there's only like 80 kms between the server room and our office. Now if Kaeloree must attend the replacement personally with flying from USA to Germany... I don't think I need to finish the train of thought.