Still Alive

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.
It's hard to overstate
my satisfaction.

-- GLaDOS

Two days ago I shut the site down due to a recently discovered critical PHP vulnerability. If I'd been keeping up with various software updates, this would have been a fairly straightforward fix, a minor update to the PHP version that the site runs. But I have not, so it was a bit more involved. Fortunately, it went much more smoothly than I expected.

Updating PHP required upgrading the OS to a supported version, which required upgrading the database server which required modifications to the Drupal source. Fate was kind, and I was able to get it all done in a single afternoon. 

So we're back online, yay! Please report any anomalous behavior to the Site Issues discussion forum — updates this extensive rarely go completely smoothly. I've got backup disk images from both before and after the upgrade, so we should be able to recover from even the most dire of mishaps.

And expect additional downtime in the future. In my previous post I mentioned certain issues that are best dealt with when I should rather than waiting until I must. This was a must situation, and it was definitely a warning shot across the bow that I've been putting these things off for far too long, and the hour is late indeed.