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Time for another update on the forums, financial and otherwise. Income: January 2021: Raw store revenue: $8,922.35 Processing fees: $627.44 Hosting cost: $1,156.97 February 2021: Raw store revenue: $6,301.55 Processing fees: $480.14 Hosting cost: $1,026.24 March 2021: Raw store revenue: $6,394.30 Processing fees: $478.02 Hosting cost: $1,096.97 The forums store is chugging along, with a spike in January. This corresponds possibly with the capitol riot, possibly corresponding with the previous State of the Forums. Our costs have stayed about the same server-wise, but are going to be higher for April as we have rolled out some new servers without taking down any old ones. This quarter saw follow through on many of things promised last quarter. Astral is officially an employee of Something Awful and has been kicking rear end, right out the gate. Together we've made great steps in modernizing our infrastructure. Astral is going to follow up this post with details about what's been going on, server-wise - I've had him take the lead on the project and it's best you hear it straight from him. This was first on the agenda for good reason. There is still much to be done - the site architecture will look rather different from where it started after we're through with it. Gonna quote myself from last quarter: quote:I think this has the potential to be a really good year for something awful. I intend to be proactive in growing this place, be it be enticing old users to return or attracting new ones, and I intend to do so without compromising the culture here. I think old-style internet forums are the best way to communicate online and I think a lot of people who have never posted on a forum would use them if they knew they were there. This very much still holds true. I've spent much of the past quarter getting a handle on the here and now, but the time is here. We already have a couple Photoshop Phridays posted, thanks to GRINDCORE MEGGIDO, and I intend to have the frontpage up for real in the coming quarter. I've reclaimed the @Something_Awful twitter account, which I can use to do outreach to goons, past and future. I want this place to be fun and happening as always and intend work out how to get new people to come look at our site. Last time I asked about opening a Patreon to cover the cost of development. The money made by the forums store is being spent on development and there is a lot of room for more. In addition, I would like to pay artists and writers to contribute to our front page. Any money spent will go directly towards these things - namely paying for labor from goons to help the site! You can contribute here: https://www.patreon.com/SomethingAwful Oh I almost forgot - one last thing. Not all the changes we've been working on have been under the hood. After so much time, I am super excited to announce DARK MODE. LITERALLY A BIRD and I have been working like crazy on this and we hope you enjoy it! Being such a long-awaited feature, we didn't want to half-rear end or disappoint - thought and effort were put into every page, and we hope it shows. You can turn it on here in your forum options. Let us know what you think and see known issues, here in this feedback thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3965797
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Everyone, thank you again for bearing with us during the various site maintenances of the last week or so. You might not be surprised to learn that there were some missing pieces in SA's infrastructure. Perhaps most appallingly among those, there had not been a database replica server running for several years. Further, if the site had a backup process in place before, it must have lived on that missing replica; there did not seem to be anything configured. You read that correctly—for many years, these forums were one malformed shell command, bad SQL query, or hardware failure away from vanishing in a puff of magic smoke. Over the last week we've largely rectified this. We've taken backups, spun up three new database servers (2 live forums, 1 archives), imported all the data, set up replication (meaning changes to the main database server are sent to the replica database server), and after the cloud provider maintenance is behind us we'll work on migrating the forums from the old database servers to the new (timeline TBD). This will involve an easter egg hunt as we migrate all of radium's little cron scripts over, but thankfully Jeffrey already has a good handle on where these live. One of those new servers is already in production and handling database queries for things like displaying attachments, calculating the results for the "Who posted?" feature, as well as for various administrative tools. With this work—and more—completed, we have the utmost confidence that we'll be able to recover from several potential worst-case scenarios, both in the upcoming downtime for cloud host maintenance and as we proceed onward into the future. Thanks for loving the forums.
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Apr 23, 2021 07:56
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Hello. 
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Apr 23, 2021 09:12
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lol at the completely expected lack of backups
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Apr 23, 2021 09:15
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Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:lol at the completely expected lack of backups That's what the Library of Congress is for. Duh.  But seriously, the upgrades to the forums are nice, and I really like all the communication about what's going on and why. Thanks!
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Apr 23, 2021 09:24
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The lack of backups is genuinely horrifying. SomethingAwful is, bizarrely, bafflingly, a site with real historical value, and its preservation is crucial for historians to be able to study not only this period of the internet, but of American political history. God help us. Anyway, thank you for starting to run the backend like people who give a poo poo, you're doing important work.
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Apr 23, 2021 09:24
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I wonder if the old owner knew or cared about the missing backup? Oh wait who cares. Thanks for trying to keep this place alive mods, admins, owner, you people are amazing.
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Apr 23, 2021 09:25
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Dark mode. I've waited decades for this.
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Apr 23, 2021 09:26
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Charles Bukowski posted:I wonder if the old owner knew or cared about the missing backup? Oh wait who cares. Wasn't there a "delete the forums" button for several years until Jeffrey quietly killed it in the backend?
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Apr 23, 2021 09:28
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Wasn't there a "delete the forums" button for several years until Jeffrey quietly killed it in the backend? 
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Apr 23, 2021 09:29
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I am glad the SA Forums didn’t vanish in a puff of smoke.
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Apr 23, 2021 09:40
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Did it need a dual key system to unlock the button? I can imagine two big fuckin' dorks living their pathetic lives with mastercraft padlock keys on chains around their necks, waiting for a sign of the end times. Fyad burns while they sing 'god bless America' poorly.
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Apr 23, 2021 09:42
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this is all fantastic news, and SA is good, throwing in a couple bucks a month for pay goons to be goons
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Apr 23, 2021 09:43
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the pink forum is not dark when using dark mode thank god
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Apr 23, 2021 09:50
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SA has entertained.me for years and the forums have helped me a great deal over the past awful year, so thank you for actually giving a poo poo about it.
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Apr 23, 2021 09:50
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Thanks to the official dark mode I can finally uninstall Stylus thank you literally a bird and jeffrey
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Apr 23, 2021 09:51
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Dark mode has changed my life. I will now uphold Bird Thought with Jeffreyist characteristics. Thanks for your work!
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Apr 23, 2021 10:08
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Dark mode absolutely rules, thank you for improving the forums instead of ruining them.
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Apr 23, 2021 10:08
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Inching closer to finally getting my  worth. Thaffrey.
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Apr 23, 2021 10:09
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astral posted:... I don't know what I expected you guys to find in the back end cruft, but I really should have seen this coming.
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Apr 23, 2021 10:14
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quote:how to get new people to come look at our site. oh no
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Apr 23, 2021 10:15
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This dark mode, these numbers and this thread in general arouses me
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Apr 23, 2021 10:34
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Tested out dark mode. It looks actually great. Thanks for maintaining this hunk of junk!
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Apr 23, 2021 10:40
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Wait, LAB is back? I was sad/angry when I read about that, so very glad to hear this news. The other updates are nice as well, thanks Jeffrey!
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Apr 23, 2021 10:41
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Wait a minute. I thought I was visiting a dead forum. This doesn't sound dead to me at all. It's alive? 
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Apr 23, 2021 10:41
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quote:You might not be surprised to learn that there were some missing pieces in SA's infrastructure. Perhaps most appallingly among those, there had not been a database replica server running for several years. Further, if the site had a backup process in place before, it must have lived on that missing replica; there did not seem to be anything configured. You read that correctly—for many years, these forums were one malformed shell command, bad SQL query, or hardware failure away from vanishing in a puff of magic smoke. 
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Apr 23, 2021 10:41
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I love Dark Mode, I have a feature request - Twitter detects when my system (OSX, if that matters) automatically switches to dark mode when the sun goes down and adjust accordingly. Some other random websites do this. Is it possible for SA to do it too?
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Apr 23, 2021 10:45
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lmao @ no backups. That's some poo poo. Dark mode's great, now we just need optimization for mobile. Great work LAB, Astral, and Jeffrey!
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Apr 23, 2021 10:47
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I have signed up for your patreon. I would like my general support in the form of a jock strap. Thank you.
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Apr 23, 2021 10:53
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can you make it so yospos is amber on white if you enable dark mode? instead of green or amber on black
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Apr 23, 2021 10:56
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Posting from the dark dimension, what a world we live in 
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Apr 23, 2021 11:03
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I look forward to astral posting in the "dumb poo poo your work does" thread.
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Apr 23, 2021 11:03
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You don't need backups when your site is to big to sink 
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Apr 23, 2021 11:14
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Forums had no backup, Lowtax had no back, it's like poetry
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Apr 23, 2021 11:19
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Flayer posted:Dark mode. I've waited decades for this. Feels like I'm posting in the future. This is great.
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Apr 23, 2021 11:26
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astral posted:Thanks for loving the forums. You too pal, you too.
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Apr 23, 2021 11:27
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Having no backups is just more hardcore like when you do a no deaths run in video games imho
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Apr 23, 2021 11:32
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I myself am looking forward to the new front page plans.
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Apr 23, 2021 11:32
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Rarity posted:Forums had no backup, Lowtax had no back, it's like poetry lol
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Apr 23, 2021 11:33
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Keep up the beautiful work you absolute legends.
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Apr 23, 2021 11:34
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