Next time you change the Server...

Give people a heads up if you're changing the server and when you do, don't change it abruptly back and cause people to have to wait for their DNS caches to update or going through a short, but annoying, process to flush their DNS manually so we can connect to the PC Forum. Was annoying having to wait 48 hours before I could get on again.

That way if we know ahead of time, we(or more specifically myself) won't be so PO'd if I get the server error(just means my DNS hasn't updated to point to the new server address). I know I wasn't the only one to vent on Discord these past few days.

server issues aren't exactly planned, but next time we have an unexpected 48 hour server outage we will make sure we announce it

lastly, it's a forum with dated software and these things do happen from time to time. my advice to you is just to chill out and do something else, it's not the end of the world

CodeHelmet said:

Give people a heads up if you're changing the server and when you do, don't change it abruptly back and cause people to have to wait for their DNS caches to update or going through a short, but annoying, process to flush their DNS manually so we can connect to the PC Forum. Was annoying having to wait 48 hours before I could get on again.

Click to expand...

So much this, I thought that TCPi has struck PC Forum with DMCA request or even C&D letter.

We had some surprisingly long downtime and a bit too little communication with the server host, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We've tried to make sure that if there will be more downtime that can be expected in advance, we get a heads up so we can let you guys know and everybody plan their time accordingly :) Thank you all for being patient!

Nothing to do about outages and stuff, that's just something that happens and even the best migration or upgrade plans never really survive a bad cache hit or a busy proxy well on the field. I honestly went to the PC twitter and did not see anything about it, figured it was probably a server crash or somesuch and that "if something's really bad they'll tell us soon, or there's no one left alive to tell us". Only later did the information get through.

DNS issues are an oversold beast IMO, usually having to wait 24-48 hours is more an annoyance than the well-documented and time tested procedures to force refresh the DNS record caches. But then again much of that depends on where is one connecting from (I mean, ISPs be like...).

I could advise Magnagement™ (yes I just coined that one) that in case of a planned server migration or a server hiccup that results in having to shuffle things around at the hosting level, they take some time beforehand to drop the pokecommunity.com domain's TTL and or publish the new DNS record and the new slogan in the Twitter or other Official Channels™ so that users can at least check that things are going OK (and power users can pre-fix thing on their own end).