Important: The Future of the Forum

[OnTheFenceDev]

It's been almost 5 years since a member of this community reached out to me asking me if I would step in to prevent this forum from being lost from the Internet. At that time I was hosting a number of websites that relied on similar underlying technologies and one more wasn't really a problem. As time has moved on those other websites have been migrated elsewhere and the current server is only serving the forum.

In recent years the genuine traffic to the site, i.e. not bots and crawlers, has dwindled to a trickle at best and a handful of outages have highlighted the reliance that the forum has on both Damian (the forum owner) and myself. With that in mind we are wondering whether it's time to close the forum down.

We are aware that this may not be a popular decision and while some may argue that it is still a valuable resource, accessing the log files shows that the primary traffic to the site are just bots indexing/scraping the content or bots hammering the registration process to create accounts and spam the boards.

I would also say that the existing forum is hosted using phpBB which has arguably seen it's day, is not straightforward to update/maintain and doesn't really provide decent protection against spam and other forms of attack.

Now, before you head off to get your digital pitchforks and light the torches I'd like to present the options:

• Someone else takes over the forum in it's entirety (domain and site/email hosting) and bears the associated costs and maintainance responsibilities. Ideally this should really be someone who is demonstrably familiar with hosting websites etc.

• The community moves to a new (potentially free) home on the internet, e.g. Reddit, although this will result in the loss of the existing content and users will need to register for the new service, whatever that may be.

Finally, this won't happen overnight and the current plan is to close the forum at the end of October - that's a full three months and change from today.

In the meantime I have disabled registration for new users - almost all of the 100's of new accounts lately have been bots anyway

For the handful of you that will see this message in that time, we invite your feedback.

[Gilbertd]

Personally I would like to see it continue. Admittedly it has been very quiet recently and may stay that way, but there is an awful lot of information on here that should remain available. Unfortunately, I don't have the experience to run it myself so it needs to be someone that does. My greatest objection to the likes of Reddit and facebook, is that it isn't possible to search and find information posted in the past, for this reason a forum, using whatever software is current, if by far and away preferable.

[LPGC]

I too would very much like to see it continue.

Same thoughts as Gilbertd. But I don't have the experience to run it myself either.

Is there no way to port the forum and user accounts to a newer platform?

Gilbert - Did Gordon once offer to host and look after this forum?

[Gilbertd]

Gilbert - Did Gordon once offer to host and look after this forum?

I think you are right, it might be worth having a word with him. I know he has said that he has masses of hosting space and he created rangerovers.pub from scratch after a drunken conversation in a pub in Glasgow when I was up there for the Commonwealth Games . He commented that the domain name was available and said "how difficult can it be to create a forum?". A couple of months later he sent me an email saying, "here it is, try and break it". That's why, if you look at the memberlist, it shows him, then his cat, then me.....

[LPGC]

Gilbert - Did Gordon once offer to host and look after this forum?

I think you are right, it might be worth having a word with him. I know he has said that he has masses of hosting space and he created rangerovers.pub from scratch after a drunken conversation in a pub in Glasgow when I was up there for the Commonwealth Games . He commented that the domain name was available and said "how difficult can it be to create a forum?". A couple of months later he sent me an email saying, "here it is, try and break it". That's why, if you look at the memberlist, it shows him, then his cat, then me.....

Great, definitely worth having a word with him then. Do me a favour and remind me (maybe a PM) of his username on this forum and the Rangerover Pub forum in case it turns out I'm slack enough not to be able to find them! I do have his mobile number but I'd rather only pester via PM than a phone call. Or you bring it up with him lol

[Gilbertd]

Emailed Gordon and he is up for it. As he said, the Tooless thread alone is a good reason to keep it.

@Dave, Gordon's reply was:

I'm up for hosting it. If I can get a copy of what's on the server I can set up a prototype, and once everyone's happy we'll talk about getting the domain transferred across. It would be a shame to lose all that history, even if a lot of it is ephemera. The Toolless Thread needs to be a book :-D

I don't mind even taking over the server it's on in the short term while I back it all up.

If you can set up a discussion around it and let me know, you know Dave more than I do, but I'll definitely have a shot at hosting it.

[OnTheFenceDev]

I've dropped some details into the RR forum to get the ball rolling

[LPGC]

Emailed Gordon and he is up for it. As he said, the Tooless thread alone is a good reason to keep it.

@Dave, Gordon's reply was:

I'm up for hosting it. If I can get a copy of what's on the server I can set up a prototype, and once everyone's happy we'll talk about getting the domain transferred across. It would be a shame to lose all that history, even if a lot of it is ephemera. The Toolless Thread needs to be a book

I don't mind even taking over the server it's on in the short term while I back it all up.

If you can set up a discussion around it and let me know, you know Dave more than I do, but I'll definitely have a shot at hosting it.

Great!

[kbs]

Sad to hear the forum is not getting the visits it deserves. A great resource both in the historic posts and current members.

[Pinger]

Just noticed this thread. Really hoping the forum survives. Just paused for a second and realised I'd never have got my Chevy running as it does now without the help from this forum. There will doubtless be others like me.

[Hloni]

For some strange reason I couldn't login for about 3 months, albeit visiting a number of times during that occasion. Was able to login about a month ago and updated my thread.

Should the forum stay open...oh yeah baby!!!! I've genuinely valued the insights from this community. As you gathered, autogas is a rare fuel option in South Africa, and so my source of truth really is here. Unfortunately on the FB LPG Auto Supply my posts, questions or contributions remain pending and are never approved, so I can never get answers. This form has therefore remained my go to. It'd be sad loosing it.

[hitman2]

Would have liked the forum to continue, there's lots of useful tips and information hidden in the depths here

Would it be possible to port it onto another forum?

(obviously I haven't the skills or knowledge about this)

Be a real shame to lose it...

[Gilbertd]

It looks like Gordon will be taking it over so while it may be updated in the fullness of time, it will remain.

[robertXX]

well done everyone , definitely a valuable library of info ..

[CNG]

Thank you for this, I've a great love of this forum. I came back a few months back and tried over several weeks. I thought it had gone. i now understand we suffered an outage.

I'm pleased it goes on. If for the Toolless thread alone, "You've got balls, I'll give you that..... "

Still cheers me up.

[OnTheFenceDev]

Well it's been about three months since I posted this and I'm afraid very little appears to have changed in that time.

Despite someone offering to take over the forum in its entirety (hosting, domain registration and administration) I've heard nothing back from him directly since making the backup files available.

I've spoke with the current forum owner (remember I only host and administrator the forum, Damian owns the domain name) and he is of the opinion that we just close it down at the end of the month as planned.

I've looked at ways to try to create a static, readonly version of the forum that could be downloaded and accessed locally but these have proved unsuccessful.

However, all is not lost - nothing is ever lost on the Internet after all - at the 'Wayback Machine' on the Internet Archive site has a snapshot of the forum which may be from 2022 (the 2023 ones don't appear to be accessible for some reason) => https://web.archive.org/web/20220817171 ... rum.co.uk/

Yes it's slow and it's only readonly but it is at least an accessible point of reference going forward.

I do hope the community finds a new home on the Internet and may the odds be forever in your favour.

[LPGC]

I don't mind taking over any hosting implications / costs, my son is more than capable of administering it and won't mind doing it.

Don't close it down or make it read only even for a while, let me and my son get involved before doing that if Gordon isn't available to do it...

Cheers, Simon

[Gilbertd]

I've dropped Gordon an email pointing him to Dave's most recent post but I know he has been on holiday for the last couple of weeks. He did say he was having a bit of trouble untangling what is there (as it uses older software and has been added to bit by bit over the years) but hoped he would be able to spend some time on it when he wasn't busy with the day job.

I suggested that if he couldn't transfer it as it is, one option would be to restart it using the same software as he uses for RR.pub with a link to the Wayback machine so the older stuff could still be accessed. That's a worse case scenario as far as I'm concerned and it will take time for content to fill up again, but it will at least keep it going.

I don't know enough (anything) about it but I would have thought that if the complete forum, using the same software was simply copied to a different server and the DNS address amended to send it to the new IP address, it should just work surely? It may be @!## but it has been for a long time so what is new?

[OnTheFenceDev]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for throwing your hat into the ring - I'll contact you directly via the email address registered here about what needs to happen next. In the meantime I suggest taking a look at my initial 'Forum Transfer' post on rr.pub to get an idea of what you're taking on and make sure that your son is happy with the tech stack.

Looking at Gilbertd's comment you may think you are taking on a nightmare but the forum is in fact a pretty standard, albeit dated, PHP web application. The rr.pub forum is running on Python so Gordon may not be familiar with a PHP setup which could explain his difficulties.

I've spoke with Damian and he is happy to transfer the domain over to you so you will have 100% control of the forum going forward - and the associated costs and admin etc.

There will be a period of downtime for the forum while the transfer takes place which may be a few hours but could be a day depending on the speed of the migration and subsequent DNS changes and propagation.

I'll be in touch shortly (probably tomorrow)

Dave

[LPGC]

Hi Dave,

OK well if that is what has been decided between you and Damian then that's what will happen, rather that than it disappear. The forum will come to me (more my son than me) for the time being but I will consider us the forum's guardians with a view to eventually letting someone else take it over. I'll have another look at the forum transfer thread on the pub forum but it might all go over my head, it won't go over my son's head though!

Cheers, Simon.