I can confirm that hosting fees with our new hosting company are now paid up until 18th July!
I spent Thursday/Friday testing various things and getting used to the new interface, which I must say is far more flexible than our current hosting company provides and has some great features which automatically deal with day to day admin and other common issues.
Me and DigginChickin spent virtually the whole of today testing the new plugin setup and tweaking the related permissions. To give you an idea of how big the changes are we have removed 9 of the plugins in use on the current server and added in 6 new ones, 4 as direct replacements for much of the functionality of ones we removed (as well as adding some new features) and two that add some entirely new features which we have big plans for and are sure you're going to love!
I know you have a lot of questions so here are some answers to common ones:
When is the switch-over taking place?
We will be moving over to the new server on the 26th at the latest, hopefully a day or two sooner.
Why is it taking so long to switch?
We decided to use this opportunity to make some significant changes to the plugins we use which means we have to do a lot of testing to make sure we don't have serious issues when we move the world & data over, we'd hate to have to roll back the world after a day or two because of a problem we missed. It'll be worth it in the long run though!
Will we loose anything when the switch takes place?
On the day of the switch the server will go down straight after the daily backup, the world and player data from that backup will then be used for the new server, which means in theory that nothing should be lost. Alchemical bag data can be temperamental though which is why we've asked everyone to empty the bags into chests, read the last couple of posts on here for more information.
What do the plugin changes mean?
That would be telling! I can confirm that ranks and their chat colours etc will be staying the same, although new benefits for Member rank and above have been added along with some new tools for Helpers & Moderators.
One big change is that banned items will be automatically removed and notifications sent to Admins & Moderators, in some cases players may even be automatically banned, if you currently have any banned items you'll want to get rid of them before the switch over to avoid this possibility.
I'll post another update tomorrow!
