If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at stararmy@gmail.com or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
I've set up a new system for automatically backing up the forum database each night. For the integrity of the backups it temporarily disables the forum when it's running. This took about 2 minutes and 11 seconds the last time it happened, so if you see a message saying that the forum is busy making a backup of itself, just wait 3 minutes and it should be open again. I think I set it to run at 4am Eastern.
Okay, so that didn't work as intended. Apparently the forum disabled itself for far too long last night and I had to manually re-open it. I've made some adjustments so (hopefully) that won't happen again.
It's an extension (add-on) for XenForo but I think it's having problems. I think I to increase the PHP max execution time variable for it to finish before it comes up with a 500 error.
It's hosted by our webhost, Dreamhost, on a separate SQL VPS.
I have been backing it up manually (Google calendar reminds me via my phone) and I was trying to set up an automated solution instead so I don't have to worry about it.