How long genrally would this take

[Frozen Tears]

I run a guitar forum with my friends, and i was wondoring, i have an insanely large forum [stats shown at end]. Anyone know how long this would generally take to basically, get backups, switch servers, and restore the backup, and etc etc. Our current stats are:

Threads: 251,318, Posts: 3,916,138, Members: 601,884
Welcome to our newest member, WiganMack_15

We have hundreds of members register in 6-9 hours. And around 1.5 - 2.5 thousand posts a day. Soon we'll have 4 million, we're going to have a party at 5 million, but thats not related to the topic. Forget i said that.

PS - We also have around 1350 - 1600 people online at a time, around 400-500 members. Do you guys think closing the forum for a day or two would affect that?

[raiderlax]

Hey cool I don't think it would really have a huge effect.

Whats the url of your site, I wouldn't mind checking it out.

[Lynne]

I hired someone to move my forum. He made it totally seamless, people had no clue we moved servers (even though I made sure to post again and again about when it was happening). If you do it right, they won't notice (although there is nothing wrong with shutting down a forum for a move). Stats for our forum then: 35,000 threads, 500,000 posts, 70,000 users. (Much smaller than yours, but still, get someone who knows what they are doing and it will go fine.)

[HMBeaty]

Probably a couple hours. At least the way I do it, it shouldn't take more than that.

[Frozen Tears]

Hey cool I don't think it would really have a huge effect.

Whats the url of your site, I wouldn't mind checking it out.

www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum

PS - Thanks for help guys =]

[G0F0RBR0KE]

Before switching, you should do the following task.


Inform users that they'll need to put their valid e-mail to get notification when the site/forum is up and running again.
Tell them that it will take about 2 or 3 days or less to get it up and running


Doesn't take that long to get back up and running...The uploading the backup might take time depending on your connection.

[Frozen Tears]

I have a 56k connection right now. I wont get back my DSL until like another month. So i'll have to wait until then. :(

[G0F0RBR0KE]

Wow, I perfer you wait till you get ur DSL or a better connection..

That 2 days will become 2 years if you're using Dial Up.

[Frozen Tears]

True that. I guess ill just have to upgrade for now. Or would you not reccomend that?

[no mods]

I made a complete back up once on 56k, I had 70 members and about 5000 posts. Took me 11 hours. So who knows how long it would take for you possibly days. I would wait or get somelse to help you.

[G0F0RBR0KE]

True that. I guess ill just have to upgrade for now. Or would you not reccomend that?

You can upgrade, just don't let your connection die on you when uploading files :D

[gray]

A little off topic, but I'm amazed that you only get that number of posts per day! The forum I run gets around the same amount at the moment with only 80 or so active members. I guess you get a lot of lurkers though who are after the tabs/reading though... plus the community I run is based around discussion, lol.

Anyway, to the point - definitely wait until you have DSL, and it might be worth while uploading the DB in smaller chunks with the SQL Dumper application, unless you have SSH.

[alessai]

hmmmmm wait a sec i have a great solution for you

http://www.rapidleech.com/index.php?showtopic=37

you will love me for this :D:D:D

[markbolyard]

If you are using Cpanel / WHM with both hosts, why would you do this, when you could just do an account copy. If this IS the case, you won't have to get backups or transfer anything to your local machine. It would just copy from one web server to the other. Only downtime you may have is during this process and for domain propagination, which can take 24-48 hours, but my experience has been more like 30 minutes to a hour.