Hey all! We wanted to update you on the site migration from our old host to our new home. As you all know, the process wasn’t as smooth as we would have liked (which would have been impossibly smooth, no hiccups at all) but it went much more smoothly than we feared it could.

We faced three main issues: many users were unable to access the site for a time and saw a lot of Fatal MySQL errors; comments weren’t always posting, again showing Fatal MySQL errors; and email notifications were down.

The first two were because we were on our old host for all 17 years the site was live and in a couple spots, the code had gotten old without our realizing it. We’ve updated the code (some of this is ongoing work, but it will help future-proof the site). The commenting issue, for instance, is because of how the emoji were stored on our back end. We’ve updated the way they are stored for comments (though we have some work still to do in some of the less critical areas—please let us know if you use an emoji anywhere and see a Fatal MySQL error after). That being said, we are still experiencing an issue where some emoji are not displaying correctly. We do not have an ETA for a fix for this issue, but we are actively investigating now.

Also, related, oddly enough, to the emoji issue, we have noticed display issues with some characters stored in the database, such as smart quotes (when single and double quotes curl in toward the word). We will be running a script on the back end later today (October 15) to address this issue, but authors should check their story titles, chapter titles, summaries, and all chapter notes. The text of your story should be fine, as chapters are not stored directly in the database in the same way.

The email notifications were mostly due to the move breaking connections between the email servers and the code; this is all resolved now and all email alerts should be going out. Please let us know if you are not receiving them. We have email alerts for password resets and private messages, and you can also opt-in to receive a Daily Digest of all story updates from the day before; new stories from your favorite authors; story updates from your favorite stories; comments on one of your stories; and author responses to one of your comments. (If you didn’t know about this before, you can turn notifications off in Account Info > Edit Preferences; if you already receive notifications and no longer wish to, you can turn them off at any time in the same place.)

At this point, we believe all of the major migration-related issues should be resolved, so if you or someone you know is still experiencing any bugs, major or minor, please let us know ASAP by emailing us at elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.com and provide as much detail as you can as to what is not working. We love screenshots!

Thanks for your patience with us throughout this process. A site this large and established has a lot of moving parts to worry about. We love the Elysian Fields community and are excited about the opportunities to grow in our new home. We have already made a couple of minor improvements thanks to recommendations by our new host that should start to speed things up and have many more planned, both in terms of optimizing and new features.