Upgrading while GFF gasps

Monitoring

Martin Joergensen

If you are a regular on GFF, you may have noticed that the site hasn’t exactly been responsive or fast these first weeks of 2025.
I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but improvements are on the way!
For some reason the server that runs GFF has been struggling with very high loads, and constantly emits errors - or just doesn’t respond at all.

Alert overload

I have a couple of monitors set up that watch the server and mails me when it’s down. They will usually alert me maybe once or twice a year, but right now it’s almost once every five minutes! I have had to decrease alert thresholds in order not to flood my inbox.
All this takes place while I’m upgrading the site to a newer version of the publishing system Drupal, which is the engine that has run GFF for almost 10 years.
That task alone had been more than enough on my plate, but of course the server decided to act up in the moment that I started working on the upgrade. There’s no connection between the two incidents, because the upgrade is done on a completely different server, but still they synchronized in the most inconvenient way!
That just motivates me further to get on to a new server and a new version, but it’s also slightly stressful, because the site usually runs smoothly and takes well care of the fairly high traffic it sees.
Well, not so right now.

The conversion

Still, the conversion is well underway, and on my local computer there’s a new, sleeker and much better version of GFF running.
It’s far from ready to launch, but some of the significant parts have been taken care of.
Content
Basically all content has been converted and imported. Altogether close to 160,000 elements have been handled. Articles, reviews, videos, blog posts, user accounts, pictures, files, comments and a lot of internal data too. It’s all been through my custom import code, and has been adapted to the new system, and all seems to behave as expected.
Before the launch, the last new bits will be added from the old site, so that nothing is lost before it shuts down.
Design
The design has also been updated. Or rather: I have built a new version of it from scratch. It’s very much like the old one, but has been simplified and technically modernized.
LeaderCalc
I have LeaderCalc running on the new system. There are some parts still missing, but altogether the major functions are ready. LeaderCalc is a very popular part of GFF and needs to work perfectly.
Tying thread data
Another popular part is the tying thread data, which appears in the large table of threads drawn from a custom database. That has also been ported to the new system and works.
Inner mechanics
Quite a few things are automated on the site, and most of these functions have had to be upgraded. It seems to play right now, but I know I will run into more bits that need a hand to run on the new system. There are probably dozens of them hiding in the remote corners of the site, and while many can be left out of the upgrade, quite a few need to be remade for the new system. Each of them aren’t huge tasks, but together – and added to all the above – it’s most likely quite a bit of work.

New pages

Martin Joergensen

What’s missing?

I need to build all the blocks that make up the front page and the sections. These are various collections of content from the database, organized in blocks and presented together with other blocks to form the pages.
Most of these blocks are automated and will adapt to new content, statistics, visitor behavior and other things once they are made, but some need a bit of work to function.
I also may also build the menu that’s on the old page. It’s a homemade mega-menu system that I developed for a client many years ago, which is really smart, but also quite complex. I would like to adapt it to Drupal 11, but that could be a dire task. There are some mega-menu system out there already, but none of them really suit me, so I’m on the job now, upgrading my own old code.
I may end opting for another and simpler solution. We’ll see.

The fly stuff suffers

I’m afraid that it’s the fly fishing and fly tying that suffers from my focus being somewhere else, but that’s the price.
I need to finish this upgrade so that the site – which is currently on its knees – can be moved to a new an snazzier server and become a whole new version of itself.
I have a few things that I might publish before that, but for now it’s coding and converting.
I hope I can draw on your patience while it lasts.