Latest update 27th September 2025
Hi Folks.
LATEST: The website has now been updated and should be ready for the membership new year on the 1st October.
I tested the payment process and everything went through as it should, including displaying a payment receipt which hasn't been seen for a number of years, although it took a while for PayPal to return to FOPS after payment, so if you wait it will display a receipt.
Please let me know if you have any issues when renewing your membership.
I also left debugging enabled, so if you see any obscure web-coding error messages, can you please make a note of it and let me know, thanks.
Update Details
If you viewed the FOPS Website in the past year or so, you may have noticed on occasions that it was offline and a ‘not available’ message was displayed instead.
So, what was the issue?
The web hosting company where the FOPS site is located informed me that some ‘legacy code’ of mine was not working correctly on their old server and as a result the website would occasionally be suspended. I could then go to the hosting control panel and restart it, but I was never told which ‘legacy code’ was causing the issue.
So, the solution. The hosting company said if I transferred the entire website over to a new server it would solve the problem. This involved copying the web code from the old server and uploading it to the new one, which was relatively straightforward.
Of course, it is never that simple! When I designed the online membership system in 2011 I chose a particular database format, Microsoft Access, which was a popular format bundled with the Microsoft Office Suite and I decided it would make it easier to design the membership database on my home PC and upload it to the web server. It also made it easy to download a backup of the entire DB.
However, the new web server doesn’t support Microsoft Access as it is now obsolete and would involve a major rewrite of the entire membership system, which I was rather reluctant to carry out at the time. But, the website crashes have been occurring more frequently, so it forced my hand into upgrading.
I started the upgrade on the 1st September and have now changed over to a standard web-based database format, which should be future proof for some time. I made good progress and the updated site went live on the new server on the 27th September 2025.
I tested the membership system and everything appears to be running as it should, but the renewal process on the 1st October will be the big test!
Another important upgrade is the site is now HTTPS which avoids compatibility issues with web browsers.
Best regards,
Dave Stubbs, Webmaster, FOPS.org