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CHATRO NEWS
Jan 1, 2020
Happy New Year!!!!

Happy New Year everyone! I'm glad to say Chatropolis is still kicking pretty strong heading into the new decade and glad you all are still loving the place! I got big plans, hopeful plans, and glad you all will be along for the journey. 2020 is bringing in some exciting and not so exciting change. Let me tell you what all is upcoming for the new year.

• Sadly, I'm gonna have to move Chatro again. The datacenter the servers are hosted is closing on Jan 31, 2020. It is an older physical location that did the job, but the host is upgrading to a major Level 4 datacenter designed primarily for backbones to the internet. Yeah, big time stuff. They don't host small time stuff and Chatropolis is small time, comparatively. They offered for me to move to another datacenter in another country, rates are approximate. I decided against and thought bigger.
• I'm planning on moving Chatro the cloud. Pretty much I can recreate Chatro on a dedicated cloud instance, one for each necessary server, and keep it going hosted that way. Even the Underground will be included.
• Pros:
  
  • Reliably uptime.
  • Constant power.
  • Better security.
  • Fault tolerance.
  • Capable backup snapshots that can be created on a weekly basis.
• Cons:
  
  • More pricey.
  • Will require some downtime during the transition.
  • More DNS changes with the transition.
  • Unknown territory.
• With the move, I unfortunately will have to increase subscription rates for the first time in 4 years. Chatro has not budged from its pricing in all of this time and unlike some service providers, I won't make it an annual thing. I'm not a huge fan of it but I have to keep up costs that go with the times. I guess I had to adjust with time and inflation eventually. Ehhh. What price increases you get will remain that way for a while at least. Anyhow, the price breakdown is as follows:
  
  • 30 day recurring subscriptions are now $12.95
  • 90 day subscriptions are now $22.95
  • 180 day subscriptions are now $32.95
  • 365 day subscriptions are now $46.95
• Since I have till the end of the month, I'll be gradually moving a server at a time. All environments will have been tested to be working before the move. I will notify you all on the front page on the day of a server transition.
• Once all of these changes are finished, we should be full steam ahead. I have some code change plans upcoming, some aesthetic visual plans upcoming, but nothing that will prevent you from chatting as normal.

Have a happy, safe, and joyous new year!

Dec 25, 2019
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah

I want to take a moment to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukkah! We finally made it here. No more running yoursel ragged shopping and/or dealing with last minute errands prior to today. Now it's time to sit back, relax, enjoy time with family and friends, and then come on back to Chatro for a lil "more" relaxation later. Have the happiest of holidays folks and see you all going into the New Year!

Oct 29, 2018
Spam bot alert

Not that this is really news, but as I'm sure most all of you reading this know, there is a rogue spam bot on the loose. It enters, post some asinine message with a URL or link to click on, then leaves. It rinses and repeats in several rooms all throughout the day and night. I am aware of it. I am working on taking care of this permenantly. In the mean time, beware of that link or any website where anyone is trying to direct you to another site in any Chatropolis room. If you really feel the need to open a URL or click on a link to some random, spam bot generated, not approved by Chatropolis, website from a spam bot with some sketchy, ridiculously simplistic, and non-clever name then you really should get your priorities and your computer checked because eventually you're going to need it for both. Again, I'm working toward a more permanent solution so you would be wise to avoid and enjoy the rest of Chatropolis. Thank you for reading!

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TECHNICAL NEED-TO-KNOW
January 15, 2016
TOO MANY CHAT SESSIONS OPEN

I bet a lot of you have gotten this particular error. This is a simple error with a simple fix. Your chatting in any room is started by a chat session that is created and a session cookie is created for this chat session. However, some times when disconnected abruptly, or upon leaving and reentering too quickly (before the chat session has a chance to end), or just a chat session that gets hung up. The easiest fix for this is merely deleting your cookies. Deleting that chat session cookie will force the server to request the browser to create and store another cookie for that new session. I get this at the Help Desk quite a bit and you all really do need to know what's up with that so you can quickly get back to chatting again.

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DID YOU KNOW?
January 15, 2016
Reserving URLs is possible

Did you know as a member you can reserve URLs the same way you can your screen name? Yes you can. You can reserve up to 5 URLs at any one time. Why would I add this feature? Well we all know of impers that snag your favorite avatar URL and make them their own as they impersonate you. Well that comes to an end. You reserve your favorite URLs and that can't happen. I figure 5 URLs for starters "should" be enough as the life cycle of avatars tend to be short before "on to the next one" but I'll consider upping that limit to accommodate if necessary.

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