Other Technical issues

[Laurad]

Thanks for letting us know Chris. I guess if several people have a problem then it's the Forum or hosting problems, but if it's just you, then it could just be your own ISP. I'm glad it resolved itself.

[nightengale]

I haven't been able to access the old forum today 

[Laurad]

There is something wrong with the old Forum, Chris, none of us have been able to get on. I sent them a message, but no one has replied yet.

[nightengale]

Thanks Laura   .... I just wanted to one of the Administrators to be aware.

[nightengale]

I realize that the old forum has been having issues. It has now been a couple of weeks. I am concerned that we are going to lose everything over there. Have any of the administrators been successful in making contact with them? It doesn't load at all today. 

[Laurad]

Chris, yes, I have been in contact with some random person in some random country, maybe Asia, I have no idea who he is. Sometimes he responds immediately and did so a couple of weeks ago when we couldn't access any of the threads, it was fixed, but the Forum is incredibly slow. I have sent this person 4 or 5 emails now asking if they know what's wrong and can deal with it, but he is not replying.

That Forum is hosted for free and they have no obligation to help us. It is very out of date software and is no longer hosted by hostingphpbb who must have passed it on to another organisation. Judyb and I have repeatedly asked if we can buy the data, but we get no response from them. The idea was to buy it, set it up on the same server as this Forum and then we would own it for posterity and safety. At one time they were giving the data away, but we asked too late and then they quoted a price, but we dithered and now they're not responsive.

We should have upgraded/updated the Forum software a long time ago, but it's quite a big and time consuming job and I don't have the time or energy to spend on a Forum which is being kept for information purposes only. I would be happy to do it if we were going to own the Forum data, but not if it's on a free hosting site where we are dependent on them.

I hope this explains. I was able to get on the Forum today, but it's slow, so I get on with other things while the pages load. It's boring though. I wrote again to the people, but again, they have not replied.

[nightengale]

Thanks Laura for the explanation

... I know you have been working on it for several weeks now. Is there any means of recontacting the original contact link? ... sometimes these individuals are contracted ... they quit and the host doesn't assign their workload to anyone ... then you are contacting someone who really doesn't have anything to do with the forum any longer.

I've tried loading the old forum 3-4 times a day at different times of the day for 2 weeks .... leave it up, giving it every opportunity to load ... but it never does

If there is ever an opportunity to buy the information again .... we need to jump on it ... I am definitely in on that if it becomes an option again ... at this point I am getting really concerned that all that data is going into oblivion  

I know you have been working hard on this matter ... I'm just trying to brainstorm to see if there is a means at this point to secure the data in that forum if we cannot bring it up ....

  

ETA: 9:10 PM, ET ..... I just tried again to load the old board ... it DID load .... whew, an optimistic sign .... it did take a few dozen attempts over the past two weeks ... but glad I was finally able to get in

[nightengale]

One other item .... not sure if everyone who does manage to bring up the old forum sees the Exclamation Point note on their screen ... the one to click and update your Media Player? ....




... I would be very careful with this. Give it some thought before proceeding. It could download items that may be harmful to your computer ... just a thought ...


... and one more reason to find someway to contact this company and get ownership of our data. Maybe our Administrators could consult with some of our tech savvy members or Administrators of other boards to figure out how to make that a reality. With this recent slow access to the board and potentially harmful notices being displayed .... I think we would have the financial support from our members to pay whatever fee might be required.

[JudyB]

Thanks for the warning, Chris - and I completely agree that clicking anything like that is almost always not a good idea.  

Unfortunately the problem isn't technical or financial - it's that the folks who own the servers have not responded when we've asked to purchase a copy of our data.  If I'm remembering correctly, they initially said that they weren't set up to do that yet.  Then later, they said something else that involved waiting a while.  I didn't get any response the last few times I've contacted them (generally using an online contact form), even though I was asking questions like "what form of payment works best for you - credit card, PayPal, something else?" - which usually will get a response, as most people like the idea of being paid.

If we actually get our hands on a copy of the data, we might be looking for help converting it to something we can install in a subdirectory under WOW - and we might be asking for donations to help with the cost.  But for now the primary stumbling block is reaching someone.  I just tried again - they advise people to use the support forum, but the link to it doesn't work for me.  There's also a chat button, but it has a "currently offline" banner, and pops up a box where I can leave my email address and a brief message - which I've done in the past without success.

I know that sounds a bit outrageous, given the level of customer service we expect (though don't always get) from tech companies - but the fact of the matter is that the original forum was and is completely free to us as users - and to some extent, you get what you pay for.  The hosting company makes their money from the ads that run at the top and bottom of each page - and they've probably realized that not many people are looking at our forum, so not many people are seeing their ads - which makes us not very valuable.  

I had hoped that they would like a lump sum payment for the data - but apparently they're not interested.  And I'm not actually sure how much work it would be for them to make a copy, or how they would be able to package it so we could download it or whatever.  They should know that - but it may not be a priority for them, or something their other clients want.

[Laurad]

Judyb thanks for adding to my own explanations. I did think I had covered most of what Chris was asking again. It is complicated and we have tried and tried, but as Judyb said, we get little or no response. I have had email contact and sometimes this person called Sophian replies, but I have no idea where he/she is and then he/she stops replying. There is nothing we can do except to keep trying.

We are not going to go through the process of upgrading the old Forum, too much effort will be needed for something we're not using any more other than for historical purposes. We would like to purchase it, but many requests have been ignored. We will keep trying.

[nightengale]

Thank you JudyB and Laura ...... it seems that the immediate problem is getting their attention. Would it help to put a request out on the more popular threads of the current forum requesting that members sign into the old board regularly ... let's say at least every other day so that you as Administrators might better win the attention of the host? It might be worth it ... to get a chance at securing our archived data on the old board. I personally will make a point of attempting to sign in there on a daily basis moving forward..

... the data is worth it ... thank you and please keep trying

[nightengale]

It has occurred to me now why I was not able to sign in at all for days..... it is because I was using FF (which does not allow ad pop ups such as their download options)... once I tried loading it with IE ... it did load ... very slowly ... but it did load.

They are definitely in the business of trying to get individuals to download spyware from their alert notice which changes each time you try to log in or view a thread ....

















... they are in the spyware business ... only using the forum as a vehicle to that end

I bet if we could get our visits up to 20-30 a day ... they may pay your requests more attention ... but we would need to alert our members to go over there frequently .... AND .... not to click on their download options.

[Laurad]

Thanks for your input Chris and good point about the Forum being slow because of the AdBlock on FireFox. It hadn't occurred to me.

Personally I never click on any kind of advertising, but have to admit that I have been tricked into it once or twice, so yes, we need to be careful.

As for encouraging more people to log in and use the Forum, Judyb and I think that the fewer people who use it, the less revenue they will get from their horrible advertising and perhaps then they will be more willing to let it go. They have never been clear about why they don't want to part with it, it seems impossible to enter into any real dialogue with them. The only way to communicate is by email or the message option on their website. They sometimes reply and sometimes not and when they do reply, it's very curt. I think they are in Asia or the far east.

I came up with the idea of asking them to simply enable the backup option, which has been permanently disabled due to the fact that it's a freely hosted site and they don't want to lose their revenue. They may or may not comply. If they do, it may be possible to take a backup and restore it somewhere else, but no promises - whatever we do, it's not going to be quick or easy.

[nightengale]

Laura .... I will proceed in whatever way you think might be best ... it you think that posting over there is problematic ... I won't do it.

I know it is a horrendous task .... but would it help to at least try and start to bring posts over here and place them into a special archived thread? If a member had an interest in a specific thread .... they would bring over the posts from that thread and place them in a new 'archive thread over here?

Give it some though. For an active thread like the Daily Chat Thread or Maine Nest Thread it would need to be a work in progress done over a longer period of time.

I would volunteer for the Daily Chat Thread and the Panda Thread if you think it would be a good idea. It may take months ... but at least we would have the data.

It may be the only means to retrieve the information if the new host won't communicate whatsoever.

[Laurad]

I don't think it's a problem if a few of us post there, in fact some of us post every day, just to keep the Forum active, but I would not recommend a lot of people posting - I don't think it will actually achieve anything. I could be wrong, of course. We just don't know.

We have looked into different ways of "archiving" and I think at one time Judy and/or Judyb found a way to save whole threads, but it was a tediously long job and the format in which they were saved was not easy to display and read. We did a lot of work years ago trying to find ways of copying the data. How would you suggest copying it over here? Post by post, copy and paste? It would take a huge amount of time and it would be difficult to put it into a chronological order, but feel free to try and save things if you're worried, even if it's just to your computer. I'm not sure what I would recommend, but understand your concern. This is why some of us post daily, to keep it active.