To all LiA readers, commenters, and supporters, I want to apologize for the downtime the site suffered these past few days. At the moment we appear to be back (obviously, if you’re reading this) but there are still some issues to be worked out. A brief chronology:
Is essence, this site’s WordPress theme is outdated. I love it, but it’s no longer supported and crucially, it does not support 8+ versions of PHP. As such, there have been some ongoing stability issues which crescendoed this past Friday. As a stopgap measure, I was forced to migrate the site to a new and faster server with updated versions of its own OS. The hope is that this will address the issues – time will tell. Because the site is so large and the old server was so unstable, the migration took longer than expected.
The longer-term solution is to update the theme, update PHP, and clean up the database as thoroughly as possible. A big job that I’m not personally equipped to handle, if I’m honest. If there’s a developer out there who’s interested in helping out with that, I’d certainly be interested in connecting to discuss it.
In the meantime, you have my everlasting gratitude for your patience, and hopefully the sailing will be smoother going forward.
Stay frosty,
Guardian Enzo
Nicc
March 26, 2024 at 3:14 pmWelcome back! Unfortunately, I won’t be any help with the under-the-hood work for the site, but perhaps some fellow Lostinanimers can help out. It’s been a little while and no TV and no beer make Homer something, something… Oh no, I’m fine, but when I don’t get a writing outlet for a while…
So, I was watching the series finale for “Kyuujitsu no Warumono-san” and my mind was on the tree kiddos. That was the most unexpected ship of the season for me. That reminded me that we’ve got three cherry blossom trees at the office. They’re still young trees and so they don’t have a lot of flowers yet, but they still did bloom nicely this year. There aren’t any oak trees, and their closest neighbor is an English Hawthorn tree, which is a non-native species. That’s an older tree which was planted around 100 years ago and according to lore it is a type of tree that is protected by fairies. That’s the kind of tree that might be better suited in a different series like “Mahoutsukai no Yome”, but I think it works for this series too.
So, what we got are Sakura triplets and an English chap, Hawthorn. That works pretty good except, 3 girls and 1 boy? I don’t like where this is going. What other trees there nearby? Okay, how about those conifers? This state is full of evergreens, and I can’t really tell what those are, but they look like Western Hemlocks to me. Right, now it’s the Sakura triplets, Hemlock twins and the limey Hawthorn. Where am I going with this? Nowhere, but coming up with nonsense fiction is something that happens when I have to let off writing steam.
Well, I better get back to finishing the post for “Sengoku Youko” and the posts that I missed and I’m glad to see that the site is back up! Here’s to hoping that you can get some help with bringing the systems up to date.
Raikou
March 26, 2024 at 3:21 pmI was worried something happened, good to see you’re back.
Too bad I can’t help for the site, hoping you could get help soon.
Guardian Enzo
March 26, 2024 at 3:31 pmThanks, much appreciated. If possible, follow me on twitter or BlueSky as I use them for updates and such (and general observations too small to merit a post here).
Lurk-chan
March 26, 2024 at 7:51 pmHi Enzo, glad you are back!
I have ample experience of running Linux servers and wrangling with ancient, deprecated dependencies lol
No promises that I can find a solution for your problems, but I might offer to take a look.
Is there a way to contact you directly?
Guardian Enzo
March 26, 2024 at 7:59 pmSounds good. Are you on twitter, Bluseky, or FB? You can DM me there (links in the sidebar).
Guardian Enzo
March 27, 2024 at 8:12 pmOr email me – miller dot matthew 85 at gmail dot com
Nadavu
March 29, 2024 at 2:10 amThe important thing is that you never figure out it’s okay to take a few days off and that you won’t lose all your following if that was ever to happen..
Guardian Enzo
March 29, 2024 at 10:25 amThanks, that means a lot to me. Unfortunately Google SEO doesn’t have the same sense of loyalty!