worried about the forum

[Old School]

Hi Dok,
I, for one, would be willing to contribute to the cost of this migration and site hosting (if that is what is required, since we don't truly know Peters status yet). But I am totally out or my area when it comes to implementing such a plan. I have no knowledge of website hosting and even less about domain names and website migration and am not ashamed to admit my ignorance. If you can plot a course of action, I will support it and I am sure that there are others who would do likewise. I don't want to lose this source of advice and knowledge and I hope everyone else here feels the same.

Have a blessed day,
Mike

[csp]

Dok,

I am with Mike in wanting to keep the Forum going and would derfinitely contribute.

Because we are constantly hearing about people being able to "hack" into web sites, etc, is the following possible?

You would be well aware of my computer knowledge (or complete lack therre of !!!) and like Mike I have no idea about the technical side/workings of web hosting etc, but am wondering, if a person (or business) that specalises in things like web design and hosting, etc were to be given access to the Forum, would they be able to undertake the upgrading and possibly even be able to set it up so that others with good computer knowledge (such as yourself, Y-my-R, etc) to also be administrators, so as not to have problems in the future should one administrator go missing or worse.

Just a thought !!!

David

[Y-my-R]

While I would be willing to contribute to keep the forum alive, I wouldn’t be too heartbroken if it goes away. There’s also a Facebook group, where you can ask the same sorts of questions (but there are frequently wrong or incomplete responses, there) - so, it’s not that there’s nowhere to go to get help with D8B problems. (I’m in that FB group, but don’t post there since I can’t do so anonymously, to avoid being hit up with tech support questions directly… but it seems more active than on this forum, on the FB group).

Also, as I speculated before, I think this forum really just consists of about one or two handfuls of regulars, and the occasional “new” user who picked up a broken D8B and tries to get it working. But that seems to happen less and less… just a couple new users per year.

At the same time, there seems to be a lot of traffic on this forum (still wondering where that comes from, but I highly doubt that it’s real visits from unique users, but probably rather web crawlers and a couple of users who keep refreshing an open thread to see if a response came in… like, 50 times a day, hahaha).

…and traffic costs money. I haven’t hosted a website or paid for a domain in years, but last time I tried to do that on the cheap, I was always edging on having to upgrade my “mostly free” web-hosting service to something that would have cost “real money” because I was close to the monthly traffic limit. And if I was Peter, I would probably also not want to spend “real money” on keeping this forum alive, for the relatively low activity (but at the same time high traffic) that is going on here.

…and who knows if Peter even still uses a D8B. As those boards get older, they get harder to keep alive, IMO, and we’ve seen a number of regulars say their goodbyes over the past few years, because they dropped the D8B.

Personally, I would NOT want to be the one hosting and maintaining this forum. I’ve got other hobbies, haha

But again, if someone steps up to do this and there’d be an annual “membership fee” in the single digit dollar amount per person, I’d contribute. But IMO, this would close this forum off even more, and it would become mostly a place for regulars… and wouldn’t be inviting for new users to come to ask questions (unless a few of us regulars pay for hosting and domain registration, while new users will continue to be able to use it for free).

I’d just suggest to everyone who doesn’t want to lose the database as a resource, to download everything you think you might need in the future, and keep it locally (like, all the various documents, floppy images, arjepsen’s drive image, etc.), and maybe even save some of the key forum posts locally, so you can revisit if running into the same sort of problem in the future.

…but over-all, my opinion is that the declining user base and activity on this forum, hardly justify to keep it alive. So, if the forum goes offline, soon, I won’t be surprised and won’t be too sad.

I’ll miss the community of regulars here… but we could still just share our contact info directly (I don’t want to post that publicly on the forum), and hit each other up with questions, if something goes awry. Everybody else can just check out the Facebook group, instead, IMO.

Anyway… if someone steps up to do the hosting of a new forum (hopefully while figuring out how to import the existing posts and database contents), I’m willing to make a small annual financial contribution.

Would still be good if someone could get Peter to respond, since I think that it would make things A LOT easier to set up a new platform, if Peter could download the current website/forum content (probably via FTP), and share it with whoever might step up to host a new forum. Otherwise, the “old/existing” content on here would likely get lost, and every question would need to get answered from scratch.

…just my 2 cents.

[Old School]

Hi All,
You are correct, Y-my-R, in that there are not that many people who actively post. But I'm not so sure about the assumption that the traffic is not actual people, as not everyone is comfortable posting their thoughts and ideas online, especially when there are extemely knowledgable people such as yourself, who always weigh in with correct and useful information about the questions asked on this forum. At any rate, traffic is a non-issue as GoDaddy does not charge for volume of traffic. I also found out that they will not migrate the site to any other hosting provider. To continue with them would cost less than $15 per month and the domain name is included for free. I don't know how many people actively visit the forum, but if we charged $2 per year we wouldn't need very many (90 to be exact, out of the over 1700 listed members) to cover these costs. I still plan to have my mexican friend try to contact Peter or his associate to find out his condition. I guess it will all boil down to what we discover about his state of affairs and how much genuine intrest there is in this forum. I for one, don't think I will ever have a facebook account for a myriad of reasons. If any members out there are interested in continuing this forum, please just post a reply to this thread stating "continue".

Have a blessed day,
Mike

[csp]

Continue

David

[Phil.c]

Continue

[studioman3]

Continue, I would gladly help pay! This forum, and the original have been an invaluable source for me and i am sure many others who don't contribute, (mostly from lack of knowledge), but have had many questions and or problems solved just by reading what has already been written.

[Y-my-R]

Continue

...and for anyone who doesn't want to post publicly on the forum, just send me (or Mike aka Old School) a direct message on here to be counted - I will pass on the number of private "continue" responses so we can tally them up and get a full count.

(...and unless requested, I won't start an offline conversation via private message or try to get friendly with you... it's just for the vote count. I'm "lurking" without ever posting on other forums, myself, and totally understand that mind set and will let you stay "in the shadows").

[doktor1360]

I absolutely cast my vote to Continue the life of this site and community moving forward. The data contained on both this site and 'database' site are priceless resources for most people weighing in on this. Good start tho, some of the 'groups elders' are very quickly getting behind this...

\m/

[arjepsen]

Continue!

/Anders