Upcoming server move (Dec 2020)

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Please be aware that the server that hosts the International Simutrans Forum, Simutrans.com/.org, and a number of subdomains (Most, but not all .com/.org things) will be let go hopefully in December, but possible January if I'm not done in time.

I am moving to a new server — in fact, I'm partly through the move already, having my personal sites moved over.

Unlike previous moves, everything is being moved manually, because this is not another cPanel server. The entire reason for the move is that cPanel has increased their prices yet again, but DirectAdmin has done nothing but improve massively in the past year. It is to the point of being usable and stable, so I'm cutting my monthly cost by more than half.

As I said, I've moved my personal sites over. I'm about to start on the long list of Simutrans sites I host. I'll be doing the ones that change less often as it'll be a week or two before I'm ready to move this forum, the two Japanese sites (forum/wiki), and possibly other sites needing a last-minute move (I haven't checked for this yet because it's not important yet).

Alas, to move the sites over, I will be changing the nameservers for simutrnas.com/.org for this move. That means there will be propagation time. Further, in this world of SSL certificates (sites need https now), I can't get certificates issued until the certifying authority sees the site at the new server. Thus, there will be some time for propagation, but also some time when it points to the new server but everyone sees warnings in their browser because there's no valid certificate yet (which cannot be transferred).

Thus there will be some downtime at some point upcoming. I'll post an update to this announcement when it's closer to happening to try and give a day's notice or so, but just be prepared if you see things "down" or get a certificate warning.

Communication during this time can easily take place on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/simutrans or https://reddit.com/r/simutrans - or the Discord, for which there's a link on reddit. I'll be monitoring both places during that time.

If anyone would prefer, I can also be reached by Facebook Messenger or Telegram - PM me and I'll send you contact information.