I have 2 things going on...

1) I am starting another community.

2) The current community is potentially interested in moving to the cloud.

 

If we migrate our existing community to the cloud, can I repurpose my self-hosted license for the new startup effort?

Yes, that's an option.

Awesome. I think we are really leaning towards this route. I have my own VPS where the community currently resides. But if something should happen to me, the other Admins don't have the technical know-how to deal with managing a server. Even I can barely do it, lol.

Do we, or can we, use our own namerserver? Or do we use yours?

There are 3 domains associated with the community: mySite.com, mySite.net, and mySite.org - We only use mySite.net and typing the other 2 in your address bar simply redirects to mySite.net - We intentionally squat on the other two. Can our community in the cloud be set up to do the same redirection?

If you maintain control of DNS, the biggest problem will be dealing with the domain apex. 

domain.com (the apex) cannot be a CNAME according to RFC standards. www.domain.com (or any subdomain) can be. If you control DNS, it’s not easy to point the apex to IPS as they use load balancers to distribute load to multiple servers. 

You could create a redirect on your current VPS to take domain.com and issue a redirect to www.domain.com or use cloudflare simply to have a rule to direct domain.com to www.domain.com. 

For most people, this is too much work and headache so it’s easier to have IPS manage DNS so they can handle all of the changes themselves. They can map the apex through AWS since they also manage the load balancer. 

I have both cloud and self hosted like you are proposing and it works just fine!

Edited June 26, 20231 yr by Randy Calvert

If you are referring to just redirecting the other 2 URLs to your site on our hosting, then thats something you would of course do on your end

 

 

If you are referring to just redirecting the other 2 URLs to your site on our hosting, then thats something you would of course do on your end

Okay. It looks like I can do that at the registrar. I previously have done it in cPanel.

 

What about extra directories containing images?

When we migrated from Phorum to IPB 3.? we use a third party service to convert all the posts, etc. All the images from the previous message board were saved in a directory and are hotlinked in those early posts. Can I ensure that this (or these) directories get uploaded so that images in these old posts are not broken?

 

What about extra directories containing images?

When we migrated from Phorum to IPB 3.? we use a third party service to convert all the posts, etc. All the images from the previous message board were saved in a directory and are hotlinked in those early posts. Can I ensure that this (or these) directories get uploaded so that images in these old posts are not broken?

This would not really be possible without modifying that to a custom S3 storage location or something similar. Our Cloud would not support rouge images stored within it, which are not in our software itself. They would have to be external or a custom migration to bring those into the software.

 

That's too bad. We have a few topics dating all the way back to 2008 that are picture heavy. When the 3rd party conversion service converted it to IPB 3, all the images were put into a directory like this and hotlinked from the post itself...

/uploads/converted_files/

I can't imagine having to manually edit each post to fix the broken image after migrating to cloud.

 

That's too bad. We have a few topics dating all the way back to 2008 that are picture heavy. When the 3rd party conversion service converted it to IPB 3, all the images were put into a directory like this and hotlinked from the post itself...

/uploads/converted_files/

I can't imagine having to manually edit each post to fix the broken image after migrating to cloud.

I would recommend sending an email in to our Sales team, they may be able to work something out.

Out of curiosity, what if a Cloud hosted client needed to run an SQL query?

 

Out of curiosity, what if a Cloud hosted client needed to run an SQL query?

Not to be rude here but exactly why? We do not allow direct access to the database for security, performance, and, well, we're a SaaS platform rather than a hosting provider. We handle the structure and security side of the database so you don't have to. Think of us more like Outlook email or any other platform rather than hosting. If you need to obtain data, you would use either the available APIs or have a custom application/plugin coded to do that function.

If there is data that you require for reporting or something of that nature which is missing from the core product, of course, suggesting that in our Feedback forum could see that also be added to the software or Cloud platform. 

One example of an ability we need to do from time to time is to search Custom Profile Fields. This was easy to do in the previous SQL ToolBox that existed prior to 4.7 and now I can only think to do it via phpMyAdmin.

What exactly are you searching? You can search custom profile fields on the front-end if you're looking for certain data.

 

What exactly are you searching? You can search custom profile fields on the front-end if you're looking for certain data.

A certain phrase or key words. I just found a way to do it in the AdminCP as well. I didn't realize this function existed.

 

Glad you found what you were looking for 🙂

So I was looking over the Cloud options again (this is something our community administrators are seriously considering), and then I noticed that 3rd party apps are only available for the Creator Pro level. We currently integrate Tapatalk in our self-hosted community. Am I to understand that we would lose Tapatalk integration unless we opted for the Creator Pro level?

If it’s an app from the marketplace, you can install it. If it’s not from marketplace, you need at least the Creator Pro package. 

Honestly, we moved away from Tapatalk a LONG time ago.  It’s something that was relevant a decade ago, but with IPB having better PWA support… we have not looked back at using it.