Well, it took a little longer than expected, but things are now back up and running. I had a pretty good list of things that I wanted to do while I had the servers down, but once I got started I just couldn't seem to stop. I wound up doing quite a bit more than I had originally anticipated. Sorry for the extra delay, guys!

For those curious, the backend server that hosts Free-DC has been upgraded from Mandrake 8.2 to Red Hat 9.0. I almost put it on Gentoo, but decided I was already running behind schedule (Gentoo installs tend to take awhile), so I guess that'll have to wait for another time. Other changes include additional RAM, a change to the system's RAID settings, and some additional cooling for certain hardware components.

Finally, I've moved several CPU and database intensive tasks (mostly Arachnid stuff) from this server to another more powerful system which should make the forums run a little snappier (especially late at night).

Along with the OS upgrade, we've gone from Apache 1.x to Apache 2.x. This, along with some other software 'upgrades' will make the move to the new site design go much more smoothly. When will that happen you ask? That's a good question. Probably not until after the holidays, but almost certainly in the first half of January.

So what now? For starters, everyone needs to keep an eye on things for the next week or two. If you find anything that isn't working like it should, you can either email me or post it in this thread, where I've already had to deal with Paratima's sharp eye.