More Info:

UPDATED

As you have probably noticed, we have had some issues with a MySQL server giving us a hard time. We've spent two days working on the issue (if you were one that tried to contact me you would have noticed I've been up during the whole ordeal) and, honestly, there has been very little progress made. We basically know what the issue isn't and now we are going to take the safe steps in squashing whatever it is. We are rebuilding the MySQL server completely and upgrading the file system and hardware while we are at it.

Coming to this decision wasn't done lightly as uptime is very important...However, that is also the reason we chose to go this route. Uptime is important so we must do what we know will solve the issue, even if it possibly means a whole day of downtime.

Is it worth it? Yes. This upgrade will not only bring back the speeds you know and love but will also add more redundancy and increase speeds to a level they've never been at before.

Let me thank all of our users in advance for being so patient while we looked into these issues and for your continued patience while we finish this upgrade. Your forum members will be glad you have their best interests in mind and are willing to sacrifice a day of posting in order to protect posting for years to come.

--
Chris Davis
President & Founder
Free Power Boards, Inc.
1 (860) 331-8207

UPDATE:

I've had to reply to hundreds of emails talking about how displeased people are that their forums are down and, honestly, we can only say "tough" because very rare downtime like this is what keeps your board actually working safely and fast. If you want a host that cuts corners and never takes their boards down for precautionary upgrades (and then loses all your forum data) there are hundreds out there to choose from.

This hardware replacement requires moving literally millions upon millions of database files. There is no way to make files move faster than they can. All you can do is sit, watch, and wait (and that is what we are doing). The reason we don't keep updating the image and give you the exact millisecond the downtime will end is because there is no way to know. Data transfers at variable speeds so even if we try to calculate how long it will take the number will be wrong and we'll receive another batch of X,XXX emails saying how upset people are that we didn't meet that deadline.

Please, understand I've been running this free service for over 2 years now and I always have your best interests at heart and your best interests are to have a reliable host that will be around for years to come and precautionary measures like this hardware replacement is exactly what is needed to ensure that.

If you doubt our dedication to the users of FreePowerBoards, stayed tuned to see our version 3 which, amoung hundreds of other things, offers a theme builder like no other that cost nearly $5,000 to build.