Hello everyone,
Our scheduled maintenance ran longer than expected, but the work is now complete and the forum is back on a modern, more reliable foundation. Thank you for bearing with us.
What We UpdatedStorage Engine (MyISAM → InnoDB)We converted all 259 tables to the InnoDB engine (over 21 GB of data). InnoDB uses row-level locking instead of table-level locking, so one post or update no longer stalls an entire table. Expect smoother performance during busy times, better crash recovery, and ACID-compliant reliability.
Character Set & Collation (utf8mb3 → utf8mb4)We standardized all tables to utf8mb4 with a modern Unicode collation. This ensures consistent handling of international text and emoji, with improved sorting and searching.
Why It Took LongerOur largest tables—messages and personal_messages (together 14 GB+)—required careful, staged conversion. We prioritized data integrity over speed so nothing would be lost or corrupted.
Maintenance Mode StrategyFull maintenance mode (no access) during the initial heavy conversions.
After the primary forum database (spboards) finished and passed integrity checks, we opened limited admin access for live testing.
Secondary databases continued converting in the background while admins verified the main forum's functionality.
This staged approach let us validate safely while continuing the remaining conversions.
Risk Reduction MeasuresGiven the size of our databases, we took a safety-first approach: staged conversions (database-by-database, table-by-table), integrity checks and repairs after each phase, and live monitoring with conservative pausing to prevent server overload.
Post-Upgrade MaintenanceWhen the conversions finished, we ran a full forum maintenance pass to verify integrity, repair any inconsistencies, and clear application caches. Search-related caches (like log_search_subjects) were fully rebuilt.
What You May Notice- Faster, smoother performance under peak load thanks to row-level locking
- Better handling of international characters and emoji
- Improved resiliency if the server encounters issues
If you see anything unusual, please let us know so we can take a look.
Sorry for the long downtime—this upgrade took much longer than expected. I am heading to bed!
— Susan & the Admin Team
