News

A lot of people have noticed that the site has been having serious issues as of late. These outages will appear slightly different depending on web browsers used or other slight differences from user to user, but generally take the form of:

• A "connection refused" error;
• A blank white screen when loading the site;
• Clicking a link on the page will act as if the link is loading, but will eventually stop without loading anything new;
• A "timeout exceeded" error;
• And, most often, a SQL error that results in data not showing up on a page (on the main site) or a white screen with lots of text you probably can't decipher (when on the forums).

I want you to know now that the reason for these problems is simple. I'm jerking all of you around for my own personal amusement.

No, not really. The real reason that the site is going down at random times is that for some reason there is a fluctuating server load on our the computer that holds all of the CoN data (as well as the data for my personal site and other projects I have going, so know from that I take this issue quite seriously). As you may know, CoN hosts on a shared server that, by nature, other sites "share." See where they get the name? As best as I can discern, one of the sites on the server with us is doing something that is causing the high load from time to time. It could be a matter of some web developer who simply doesn't know what he or she is doing, and has coded a script that overloads the CPU. It could be something more nefarious, like someone using an account fraudulently to bounce spam. It could be someone using the control panel to back up their site much more often than is necessary. It could be a lot of things, and unfortunately I am not in a position to research and resolve the problem myself - or else it would be done already.

It seems that the host has some idea about the source of the problem and the staff are actively working to resolve it. I don't have a better timeframe than that at this time. At this time, I have two options to proceed and am weighing them to see which will be most beneficial to us.

And that's about it. I just wanted to let you guys know that we're not leaving you out in the cold here. But there might be questions still, and I welcome those. I'll start.

Q: What are the two options you have?
A: Simply put, stay on this server or ask to be moved to another server on the farm. Each has pros and cons.

Q: Why don't you buy a better server?
A: Again, to put it concisely, money. I'd love to have a virtual private or total-private server, but those are quite expensive; generally they're two to three times the cost per month as what I pay now. Maybe someday fibreoptic will be nice and affordable and I can set up an *nix box in my home office, eh?

The floor is yours. Discuss.

This one was a beast, guys. It took a team of three people to get it going. Sorry it took so long, but the forty-six new entries should be worth it, right? Right?

We've got a wide array of long-time, prolific artists and CoN newbies this time around, too.

• Aora


• bratkitty


• Bum's' Rush


• Hikaroo


• Kame


• Lucas Cersaine


• Narratorway


• Nekki


• RelmArrowney


• Riona


• Rujuken


• ShiroiOkami


• SilverFork

The voting is open, so check out the gallery and make sure you hit them all! This time around, let me also give special thanks to Mimic and Hanyou for their great help in preparation; also thanks to Mr Thou for testing help. Remarkably, all three, including Hanyou, managed to stay sober throughout the task.

If you have registered in the last week or so, you may not have gotten your validation email; if you have signed up for topic subscriptions, email notification of new PMs, or any other email feature of CoN, you may have noticed the same.

We appear to be having some sort of issues with email sending at the forums right now, and we are trying to track down the source. In the meantime, here is what you can do:

• If you signed up but did not get a validation email, please send an email to climhazzard@cavesofnarshe.com from the email address you used to sign up. If Clim is feeling benevolent, he'll forward the message along to the admins for manual validation.
• If you have signed up for some other sort of email notification but are not getting the emails, also email Climhazzard using the email address you used to sign up. Include your forum username so we can track the errors.
• Ensure that your ISP or email provider is allowing email from the cavesofnarshe.com domain.

My hope is that we can diagnose and fix this issue before anyone even has a chance to respond to this message. But feel free to email if you have any problems at all.

Tiddles and I have been in the process of moving CoN to a new box for the past week or so. We think the thing is just about ready to go, so we're going to fieldtest it by directing traffic to it starting tomorrow. We're planning on porting the DNS over early tomorrow morning on the American east coast, but that's contingent on me waking up, really.

Those of you who have been with us for a while are probably have a vague recollection of the routine. But here's how it will go.

• We will first close the forums.
• We will back up an absolutely current database for the forums, and copy that database to the new machine.
• We will open the forums on the new machine.
• We will move the DNS entry for cavesofnarshe.com to point to the new server.

Now, this is technobabble to most, but what it boils down to is this: for a while, the forums will be closed. They will appear to reopen for different people at different times, due to differences in ISPs updating their data. Everyone, assuming all goes well, should be back in no later than Monday morning EDT.

So, there's not much to discuss here, so just let me know if you need clarification on this move or if you want anything explained. It makes me feel like less a nerd if someone actually wants to know more.

I normally don't use news to draw attention to site polls on the main site, but in this case I'd like to. Please visit any page of the content area of the site, and vote on the poll regarding Adopt a Chocobo. We're reconsidering its place and future with CoN, and we'd like your input. Thank you.

The CoN image demons have been hard at work again - you might recall us adding sections for "Official Art" for Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy VII all pretty recently. Thanks to Neal and Kame, though, we've added even more art in the form of bonus art captures from FF Anthology and some scans from Nintendo Power magazine. The affected galleries include those for Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI.

In the realm of Final Fantasy VII, again thanks to Neal (and, of course, myself), you'll see filmstrips containing selected frames from every Limit Break in the game. You can find them on the Limit Break and the Characters pages.

Hope you enjoy the new eye candy we've given you, and as always watch this forum to find out what we're doing as we do it.