[dod]

Periodically, I cannot access PriusOnline, getting instead a PLESK page. This has happened 3 times this year, each time lasting 2 or 3 days. I discovered that PLESK is the website administrator. Has anyone else had this experience? DOD

 

[DanMan32]

Interesting. About 5 minutes after reading this, I got an error stating the PHP could not reach the SQL database.

Seems PriusOnline is starting to experience the same growing pains PriusChat is experiencing. Seems to mostly be because of the SQL database that PHP relies on.

 

[dod]

DanMan32, please forgive the ignorance of an old guy from the slide rule generation, but what are PHP and SQL? DOD

 

[Paradox]

I leave for work at 5am and try to check in here every morning right around 4:45 and I get the plesk page, but thats the only time i ever have gottn it. So i'm assuming its when the hosting company or something like that backs up servers etc... Whatever a hosting comp would do at the same time each day...

 

[riscky_*]

DanMan32, please forgive the ignorance of an old guy from the slide rule generation, but what are PHP and SQL? DOD

Of course I'm not DanMan... but...

PHP is

PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.

it is another scripting language to build websites... the granddaddy of PHP is Perl... while the "modern" equivalents would be Python (Django), Ruby (Rails)... PriusOnline uses the phpBB bullten board... personally I like PunBB and Lussumo Vanilla...

SQL is a query language used to access relation databases like MySQL (used to run this board) SQLite and my favorite PostgreSQL. The basic syntax is a long the lines of

SELECT LastName FROM Persons WHERE city IS Denver

each relations DB works a little different... and does stuff a little different...

 

[Diana_04Prius]

Periodically, I cannot access PriusOnline, getting instead a PLESK page. This has happened 3 times this year, each time lasting 2 or 3 days. I discovered that PLESK is the website administrator. Has anyone else had this experience? DOD

PLESK is the control panel software package that the server is running and it is on a Linux Operating System using Apache

 

[janets98]

I haven't got the foggiest clue what you people posted. :lol:

 

[DanMan32]

Let's make an analogy to a car. A car has several components that make it useful. You have an engine to provide power, but just an engine will not make it go. We need a way to transfer that power to the wheels, controlling its speed. We also need to control the directon. So we have transmission, which controls if the engine is connected to the wheels, and at what ratio. It even controls if the wheels will go backwards in relation to the engine rotation.
Then we have the steering system. This allows the wheels to turn in different directions to make the car go in different directions. There may be a device to assist the user in turning the steering wheel to turn the driving wheels.
Now we may want to stop. For this we have a brake. This puts resistance to the wheels making it harder for them to turn which makes the car slow down.

In the same way, we have various components to a computer system, both software and hardware.
SQL is indeed a standardized way to make requests from a database, but it has been so widely used, that it often describes the database itself. MySQL is very popular, as it is opensource. OpenSource means that one can get to freely and without cost, look at the design of the database and make changes to it that might improve it.
PHP is a website scripting language. A programming language who's purpose is to provide web pages. PHPBB is a bulletin board system written in PHP.
Now such a bulletin board needs a way to store and retrieve information, mainly the posts that we make. This is stored in a database. The bulletin board retrieves that information using SQL calls to the database.

Linux is an operating system that is also opensource. It could be equated (in functionality) to Windows. Windows is not opensource. You'd have to pay Microsoft to the nose in order to glimse at their source code.

Apache is an open source web server. Its job is to provide web pages that you and I request. Apache usually runs on Linux, but has been ported to other operating systems.

So, PHPBB runs on Apache, which runs on Linux. PHPBB uses MySQL (in this case, there are others) to retrieve data that we want to see. MySQL also runs on Linux. It is possible to have MySQL and Apache to be running on two different machines, just as you could have a Records department and a Sales deparment either in the same building, where a sales person would walk to Records to get information he needs, or in separate buildings, where a telephone call might be made to request and retrieve the information.

 

[pete]

PLESK Info

Wile PriusOnline is being backed up you will see the PLESK notification during part of the backup process. This occurs daily at 3:15AM EST and usually lasts around 15 minutes. Most likely what is happening when you see the warning up for longer periods of time is either you are accessing the site through a misconfigured proxy server or your browser cache is not functioning properly. The other possibility is that you accidentally typed in https://priusonline.com which attempts to access a secured version of the site which does not exist.