The forum didn't work for a couple of hours today

Forum Feedback
1

I don’t know if anybody else is having this problem but I cannot get unicycle.com to load either on the app or online. The only way I can respond is directly from my email.

Cheers,

Terry

1 Like
2

Yes, unicyclist.com appears to be currently broken.

I’m sure @canapin will be aware and working on it!

3

Thanks for the confirmation.

Cheers,

Terry

4

And we’re back

5

Yes, it was because of a faulty software update from the Discourse’s dev team.

I wasn’t home but was able to track the resolution of the issue and could rebuild the forum remotely after about 2 hours.

A self-reminder: I should always wait for a few days before upgrading the forum when an update comes out to prevent this potential kind of issue. It can sometimes happen, but it’s rare (and generally doesn’t completely break the forum).

edit: the forum wasn’t completely broken though, since you were able to reply by email, which surprised me. But having a blank page as of a homepage is… What it is. :sweat_smile:

4 Likes
6

Would it work to run a stable release instead of a beta, or are there particular features you need?

1 Like
7

Very good question. By default, Discourse ships beta versions. Most of the time (I mean… 99% of the time), it causes no issue, and can occasionally add neat, welcomed features (see the local image resizing I mention here ; and what to say about this one! :wink:) that would come months later on the stable release.

I’ll try to get some information about that though, that’s an interesting subject.

I got some info:

Main:
When a new commit is added to Discourse it is on the main branch. Main is the absolute latest (most current) branch of Discourse, and we do not recommend anyone run their site tracking the main branch.

Tests-passed:
When a new commit is pushed the to the main branch, our build server automatically runs all our tests against the latest code. Once they all pass the commit is added to our tests-passed branch. This is the branch all Discourse sites run by default.

Beta:
Every few weeks we push the current commits on tests-passed to beta . We use beta as a “milestone” to push out a collection of commits we want more sites to be running and test. We also push a beta if we have an important security fix we want sites to receive. When a beta is pushed all sites running on tests-passed or beta receive the “new update available” email. Sites running tests-passed will update to the current tests-passed commits (including any new commits pushed after the beta), while those on beta will not.

Stable:
Every 4-6 months we release a new stable build. ~2 weeks before pushing stable we release our last beta. We then watch our logs closely to try and catch any lingering bugs that exist, and avoid adding any new features/risky changes. Once we’re satisfied with the state of the current beta, we push to stable.

So for us, a beta is a minor version bump, and a version is a major version bump. They’re checkpoints we give ourselves to celebrate the work we’ve done. We tend to release two major versions a year, but it all depends on feature development and the like. We’re not really into fake deadlines.

That makes sense. I guess the main information here is:

In our case beta does not mean unstable

So for us, a beta is a minor version bump, and a version is a major version bump. They’re checkpoints we give ourselves to celebrate the work we’ve done.

Considering this versioning philosophy, upgrading only to “stable” versions would be of very minor benefits (if there are).

4 Likes
8

Fair enough, although stable still has a feature freeze and bug fix focus before release.

Incidentally I work for Discourse, but I work on the infrastructure for the hosted platform so don’t have much to do with the main release process.

4 Likes
9

That’s sure to be taken into consideration.

Having upgraded forum.monocycle.info in 2018 and unicyclist.com in 2020, I’ve encountered so few issues that I think I’ll stick to their “beta” (but after waiting a few days!) unless things change in the future.

I’m glad you don’t seem to browse meta a lot, you’d see a bunch of weird or naïve topics like “how to do this or that” about unicyclist.com… :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
10

Makes sense.

Well, I’ve only been there for a few weeks, and so far I’ve been familiarising myself with other things :slight_smile: .

3 Likes
11

So a new job? In which case, congrats then!

1 Like
13

I hope you’ll find a welcoming team and an interesting job. I don’t know the dev team, but I like that they are from all around the world, from Asia to America through Africa. Also, I like that they are active as free support on their forum. That’s a very valuable thing to us, Discourse admins.

2 Likes
14

Thanks!

Yes, the team is spread around the world and works very asynchronously. I’m enjoying it so far :slight_smile:

2 Likes
15

Now I’m confused. I always thought you were an older guy ~65? years old but the guy in your discourse link doesn’t look old (maybe 32-40?) I guess your username with “Jim” and the profile pic here just made me think you are older.

Anyway, congrats on the new job :slight_smile:

1 Like
16

And I always figured you worked in the lighting industry.

1 Like
17

I guess I am a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma :sunglasses: :interrobang:

3 Likes
18

Maybe… are you a time traveller? It would make sense that they hire you part of a asynchronous team! :rofl:

2 Likes
19

Maybe he kind of does. As the product he works on failed for a few hours yesterday, my screen stayed black, no lighting.

1 Like