I hope everybody had a good holiday. Welcome to 2025. :)
As I've mentioned before, the software that this site runs on is being put out to pasture. No more security updates, the development community has moved on. I've held this site back as long as I've felt like I could, but it has come time to get the site onto the newer platform.
Dorota and I have spent the better part of the past few weeks tweaking and testing the new site. It is far from perfect, but I think it is ready enough to make the move.
The tentative plan is:
- January 3, Friday, in the evening (Pacific time): I will take a snapshot of this site. The database, the files, etc. I will put a note on the homepage of this site making clear when I have done that because, after that time, anything posted on this version of the site or any accounts created will not be migrated to the new system.
- Overnight Friday into Saturday: the migration scripts will run. It takes about 7-8 hours.
- January 4, Saturday morning: Dorota and I will make the post-migration configuration changes that are necessary and test the site as thoroughly as we can.
- Assuming it looks good, Saturday midday we'll switch over so that thefreshloaf.com takes folks to the new site.
If something goes wrong in the process, we can run the existing version of the site here a few more days or weeks, but it is going to get tougher for us to find the time to make these changes. I'd really like to get it over with so we can focus on supporting a single version of the site (and hopefully making it better!).
I'll remove access while the migration is running, but for now if you want to have a peek at what the updated site is going to be like, it is at https://refresh.thefreshloaf.com/. Use freshloaf/refresh to get past the password prompt. The content should be up-to-date through yesterday morning.
Also, thanks again to everyone who tested the new version of the site already. A number of significant issues have been fixed as a result of that (and others noted as potential improvements going forward).
I appreciate everyone's patience and understanding. I know there will be some glitches and probably some annoyances with the new system, at least until we get comfortable with it. I'm hopeful we'll be able to iron most of those out in the next few weeks and am optimistic this new version of the platform will serve the community better going forward.
-Floyd
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One note to mention -while the test site is up and running - same rules apply as previously - old accounts have scrambled emails and you cant create new ones (because the email part is turned off) - but as before, your existing passwords will work and anything posted there between now and when we do the final migration is going to get blown away when we flip the switch.
Thanks again Floyd and Dorota, been looking forward to and expecting your announcement! Appreciate the work that has gone into it.
One thing I didn't notice in my initial testing is that I use /comments quite a lot to see the latest happenings and it isn't working on refresh yet.
Good luck, may we migrate smoothly
-Jon
Thanks. We'll try to get /comments back in place ASAP.
hi JonJ - I am working on setting up that page. It still needs some work to get it looking right - it's in the works but probably will have to be a thing we clean up after the site is properly docked at it's new location. It may take a few days as we're approaching things a little more with one-thing-at-a-time mentality here - trying to keep the number of moving parts at once to a minimum so we're not breaking things as we rush to rebuild all these listing pages.
So, yes, we are moving ahead with the migration this evening. To repeat:
My hope is by noon or so tomorrow (Pacific time) to be making the switch, but we'll see how it goes.
This is very exciting Floyd and Dorota. I hope everything goes smoothly for you. Thank you again for taking care of TFL.
Benny