Please add readonly mode

[blair]

Sometimes it's necessary to take a site offline. Whether it's a forum upgrade, MySQL optimization/repair/backup, or other maintenance. It would be useful to have a "readonly" mode. The database would be readable, but saves wouldn't be allowed. Preempting poor user experiences like errors while trying to post, or adding a reply.

[Robulosity2]

Sometimes it's necessary to take a site offline. Whether it's a forum upgrade, MySQL optimization/repair/backup, or other maintenance. It would be useful to have a "readonly" mode. The database would be readable, but saves wouldn't be allowed. Preempting poor user experiences like errors while trying to post, or adding a reply.

This feature already exists, it's seen when turning the board offline..

If your DB is down, or MySQL isnt available.. how exactly do you purpose a Query be made to pull it? Best way.. create a secondary index.html and put some note there since most WebServers tend to favor html over php as the initial check point..

[Canal World]

But could you not have a read only mode, where the database is available and viewable, but cannot be edited and hence will not loose posts during a move.

Obviously if MySQL isnt available this cannot work, but for migration and the like? Maybe we are mistaken?


Daniel

[PatrickRQ]

For front end contest you can use e.g. Cloud Flare with 'always available' option on and aggressive caching, most of topics etc will be possible to read even when server machine is off.

[Michael]

There'd be a lot you need to take into consideration for this. It may be simple enough as just having a check around a few key functions in the database class (inserts, updates, deletes, etc.), but this would lead to a few oddities. Even when no one is posting, there are updates to the database which occur regularly, such as various 'last visited' timestamps. If a site was truly in a read-only mode, it likely wouldn't be able to store info about topics you have now read, or when you were last online, or when you last viewed a PM, etc.

But it does sound like a useful feature to add, I can definitely see use cases for needing to perform zero database updates.

[Gianpiero L.]

"Reading only" means that you can leave visitors see the board, that have not previleges ( in my board and most of board ).

Put the announcement LOG OUT or cleaning cookies on browser and you have done :smile:

The name of this "solution" is WORKAROUND ...