I decided to rent a dedicated server for now, to quickly end the outages.

If you are reading this, you're reading it on the NEW server, hosted on LiquidWeb. This company came recommended by a CathInfo member, who hosts "dozens of sites" with them. He spoke highly of their customer service, and how you're never "on your own" when dealing with them.

I might point out, the site is much snappier now, as expected. Just now, the homepage took 0.00778293609619 seconds to be generated by the server. It used to take 10 or 20 times that long!

A big THANK YOU to all who expressed their support and gratitude during this outage, both in words and in donations.


And in the coming days, to make it up to you all, CathInfo will be upgraded a bit to have more features (that we used to have, before I had to make things "lean and mean". Features like more posts per page, more topics per page in the subforums, letting the LIKES/DISLIKES database grow to infinity, as well as letting the "PM" database grow much larger. I shouldn't have to "trim the database tables" any more. Go ahead, treat CathInfo like Gmail! The moderators (MaterDominici and I) will also get more moderating helps that we used to have, which had to be turned off months ago to save server (CPU) resources.

And maybe I'll even ease the restrictions on guests -- eventually. Again, I can't be too nice to guests, because I make registration SO easy. And any DoS attacker is a "guest"! That's why I beg the regular lurkers to pick a random name, get a throwaway e-mail account, and sign up already for an account! I like to be able to distinguish my silent readers from random attackers and bots.

Indeed, everything I've experienced so far with them confirms this glowing review. When I initiate an online support chat, it takes about 1 minute to get service rather than Hostgator's 20 or 30 minutes!

Not saying that the DoS attacks are over, but at least now I have the tools at my disposal -- including decent tech support -- to quickly and efficiently deal with each attack. Just going by the attacks we've experienced so far, this new server could have dealt with each within SECONDS and perhaps caused a slower site for 10 minutes. With Hostgator, each attack resulted in 6, 12, 18 hours of downtime!

So it doesn't matter how much more my hosting costs now: something that doesn't work isn't an option. This setup "works" for CathInfo, the old shared hosting was frugal and all, and worked MOST of the time, but it allowed for massive outages.

I had to end the outages.

P.S. I had to upgrade some of the site's PHP programming code to be compatible with the latest version of PHP. Unfortunately, the fix wasn't perfect and the job was quite complex -- even though I'm a decent PHP programmer, this particular puzzle blew my mind, so to speak. So a few things don't work:

the [url] tag
the [youtube] tag
the [img] tag

P.P.S. My CathInfo e-mail accounts (news@cathinfo.com, matthew@cathinfo.com) might not be working yet. It's possible some messages will end up on the OLD server and I won't be able to check them. So just be aware of this.

1. Blue text


2. How about larger


3. How about in a font.

4. How about bold?

5. Or Italic?

6. Or Underlined?


7. Or Struckout?

8. Or PHP

9. And here's a quote.

10. Here is a link to a site:
10. CNN

Youtube video:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/embed/-3cb7C_FbwA[/youtube]

Img tag:


Testing an attached image:

What about links?

This should say, what about links? (I put the link to this thread in blue)

By the way, many people have expressed concern about the archive of posts on CathInfo, going back almost 10 years.

Some (rivals/enemies) have even quoted a post of mine from months ago, when a minor, pro-Pfeiffer, +Williamson/Fr. Zendejas/CathInfo-hating forum had just shut down. I posted about this on CathInfo, talking about how long CathInfo had been around, and how all the posts on those lesser, "free" forums are now gone and all the time spent composing them wasted.

I just want to point out that there never was a question of losing CathInfo altogether, or its posts. I have the entire database -- all the content of CathInfo -- more places than you can count. Even an EMP shockwave wouldn't totally destroy the posts you've made, since I have the database burned to several DVDs. DVDs are strong against floods and EMP shockwave.

My point from a few months ago (when I was talking about those anti-CathInfo fora which closed) was that CathInfo respects and values the posts you make here (of course, I'm referring to posts that aren't garbage. Slander/libel (lies) against priests or bishops do not qualify as valued posts, of course!). We know that you can't expect a forum to just "start over" from scratch.

The CathInfo archive is part of Traditional Catholic history.

That's why the only issue, or question, was WHERE "CathInfo" (which includes its long history of posts) was going to be moved to. A dedicated server? A physical server at my house? etc.

Starting over at another website and/or with new software never crossed my mind for an instant.

And if we ever happen to change software in the future, one requirement will be keeping *all* of the existing posts.

Old posts that include images or youtubes are gone.  At least for now.  Not sure if Matthew is able to bring those back or not.  Would be nice.  Thank you, Matthew, for trying.  Was looking at my Lent thread from last year.