Server move tonight (June 4, 2026) -- MOVE DONE

[Nathaniel]

Just a heads-up that conwaylife.com will be moving to a new machine at my web host tonight (somewhere around 10 - 12 hours from now), so there will likely be some weirdness and downtime around that time. It shouldn't last more than an hour or two.

[B468S02357]

Good to know

[Nathaniel]

The move has been postponed until tomorrow. The weirdness will have to wait another 12 - 24 hours.

[I6_I6]

Looks like everything's back to normal now. (The website looked funky until just now.)
I was so confused when nothing worked until I saw this post.
Congrats on 900 posts, Nathaniel!
Edit: I noticed that the little up arrow button that appears in quotes has changed.

[Nathaniel]

If you see this post, you are now viewing the new server. Sorry for the headaches, the server move was much more involved than I had hoped it would be. Please feel free to report issues in this thread; I'm currently squashing problems and expect I will be for the rest of the day.

What happened: The phpBB forum software and MediaWiki software were both horrifically out of date on conwaylife.com, so I decided to tie updating them in with the server move (these updates were necessary for security reasons). Updating them never goes smoothly, so I figured it was better to do the update on the new server and then just point the URL to that new server when ready. There were more problems with the software updates than expected, so this took longer than expected, so some hours of content from today (forums posts and wiki edits) were lost. I'm sorry about that.

Current issues: There are a few issues on the server now that I am aware of, but which don't have easy fixes. For example, the MediaWiki "DynamicPageList3" and "Tabs" extensions are both used by LifeWiki... but they don't work with our new up-to-date MediaWiki installation, since they haven't been maintained in several years. As such, I had to disable these extensions (DynamicPageList3 is used on the LifeWiki homepage, so I'll have to make some changes there).

Anyway, please feel free to let me know of problems on the new server, and I'll keep plugging holes.

[hotcrystal0]

Congrats on 900 posts, Nathaniel!
Edit: I noticed that the little up arrow button that appears in quotes has changed.

Just wondering, was the arrow change intentional or just a result of updating everything?

[Nathaniel]

Just wondering, was the arrow change intentional or just a result of updating everything?

Not intentional -- I can probably switch it back if people prefer.

[I6_I6]

One of the bullet points under Pattern collection in the main page of LifeWiki, it says this:

Glider syntheses for {{#dpl:categorymatch=Patterns_that_can_be_constructed_with%|resultsheader=%TOTALPAGES%|format={{#if,:,,:|}}}} patterns.

I think that weird bit in the middle is supposed to show the number of patterns in LifeWiki that are glider constructible, but it isn't working.

[hotcrystal0]

Just wondering, was the arrow change intentional or just a result of updating everything?

Not intentional -- I can probably switch it back if people prefer.

I don't really like it that much, because it feels somewhat intrusive, but I'd have at least a few people agreeing to change it back before you actually go forward with it.

[TheWayOfTheCon]

I don't really like it that much, because it feels somewhat intrusive, but I'd have at least a few people agreeing to change it back before you actually go forward with it.

I vote we revert it. Maybe its recency bias, but it feels a bit off, and besides the normal arrow served us well.

[wirehead]

oh dear. it's throwing errors already

Screenshot 2026-06-05 at 8.32.45 PM.png (246.25 KiB) Viewed 499 times

[Nathaniel]

oh dear. it's throwing errors already

Screenshot 2026-06-05 at 8.32.45 PM.png

Not so much "already" as "for now". These errors are a result of a weird caching issue, and they should go away after each page is viewed once (if you see it on two separate page loads of a page, let me know).

[wirehead]

Not so much "already" as "for now". These errors are a result of a weird caching issue, and they should go away after each page is viewed once (if you see it on two separate page loads of a page, let me know).

It happens on every page that redirects i think, such as Nora_Brown --> Category:Patterns_found_by_Nora_Brown or David_Raucci --> Category:Patterns_found_by_David_Raucci

The full message is:

Notice: Unexpected clearActionName after getActionName already called in /home/njohnsto/conwaylife/w/includes/context/RequestContext.php on line 318

[mmmmmmmmm]

I don't really like it that much, because it feels somewhat intrusive, but I'd have at least a few people agreeing to change it back before you actually go forward with it.

I vote we revert it. Maybe its recency bias, but it feels a bit off, and besides the normal arrow served us well.

I also vote to revert it. We should probably make a poll for this to stop the thread from being clogged up.

[tommyaweosme]

oh dear. it's throwing errors already

Screenshot 2026-06-05 at 8.32.45 PM.png

my post about grid-blind L-systems is completely gone, that picture is of a pattern from it.

here's the repository, i don't feel like rewriting the entire post again: https://github.com/tommyaweosme/hash-ra ... /tree/main

[unname4798]

This image still uses the old arrow.

[hotcrystal0]

I feel like it's been long enough since the arrow changed that recency bias doesn't matter, so can we hold a formal discussion for whether or not to revert to the old arrow?

[TheWayOfTheCon]

I feel like it's been long enough since the arrow changed that recency bias doesn't matter, so can we hold a formal discussion for whether or not to revert to the old arrow?

Honestly it doesn't matter to me, we can keep the current arrow.