What happened?

[ddmckee54]

Was it just me that the forum hated, or did the forum actually go away for a while?

I hadn't been able to access the site for over 3 weeks, kept getting the message that the server wasn't available. Then yesterday when I checked in the site had started to come back to life. And today everything seems back to normal - What happened?

Or did the forum just hate me, and finally decided to relent?

Don

[Smiley]

I think that the forum crashed for some reason

[CorbettTrailers]

Same for me, I've been trying to sign in for at least 2 weeks. But I did notice the forum agreement expired recently.

[jerry56]

Just Glad it's back

[fhhhstix]

It had crashed hard but it seams it is back up and running for now.

[Blender]

Total relief this place survived

[ddmckee54]

Total relief this place survived

Totally agree, there's a lot of good info on here. (Plus I was starting to get the DT's, needed my construction fix.)

[ddmckee54]

Same for me, I've been trying to sign in for at least 2 weeks. But I did notice the forum agreement expired recently.

Forum agreement, is that something you need money to fix? Do we need to kick in a couple of bucks to keep the lights on?

[Zabco]

Man I am glad to see this back. No other comparable site, at least in english, and Facebook just doesn't cut it.

[frizzen]

I'm glad it's back, i was afraid i'd have to get used to another board, or try to find some of you on that Bookface

No other place in english even comes close!!!

[fhhhstix]

It cost me about $500 a year to keep it going as of now. We will see what happens if we have to do a major upgrade. I wont ask for donations but if you want to message me and I can give you my pay pal address.

[wolfws6]

Travis, Sincerely thank you for keeping this going!

Aka Josh or Jasper! LOL

[ddmckee54]

It cost me about $500 a year to keep it going as of now. We will see what happens if we have to do a major upgrade. I wont ask for donations but if you want to message me and I can give you my pay pal address.

That's not really fair to you.

Some of the other forums that I belong to have "Supporting Members", people that are willing to kick in a few bucks to help defray the cost of the forum. I for one would be willing to do that, and I'm sure many others would be too. We gotta keep the lights on in this place WITHOUT just you having to foot the bill.

Maybe a separate page to become a supporting member, or to just donate a few bucks for the cause? That's not asking for donations, that's ALLOWING us to help.

Don

[Tgrzes]

That's not really fair to you.

Some of the other forums that I belong to have "Supporting Members", people that are willing to kick in a few bucks to help defray the cost of the forum. I for one would be willing to do that, and I'm sure many others would be too. We gotta keep the lights on in this place WITHOUT just you having to foot the bill.

Maybe a separate page to become a supporting member, or to just donate a few bucks for the cause? That's not asking for donations, that's ALLOWING us to help.

Don

I think that's a great idea. I would be willing to kick in. Lot's of great info here. Would hate to lose it!

[frizzen]

Travis, thank you for running this place and keeping the lights on for us to hang out here!

I also wouldn't be opposed to buying some overpriced stuff like stickers or t-shirts with the logo Banner and url or something...

[jerry56]

I'd be in for a supporting member kind of thing.

[trilliwilli]

I had an email exchange with Joe (LilGiants) about a year ago about the login problems I had. He explained to me that the original founder FreddyGearDrive past away and the passwords and licencecodes for the forum went with him.

Basically the forum needs a computerexpert that know how to migrate to new software and the financial side is then to pay for license fees, serverspace etc.

Since the software is very old a crash can happen again. There is already some spamming going on again.

When the forum went blank I emailed Joe again to ask what happened and he confirmed that the forum had crashed. In the same timespan I contacted Bo Wallen through Facebook, he is one of the administrators of the RCTruckandConstruction page on FB, to ask if he knew anything, since Joe’s answer came some time later.

He didn’t know and apperently doesn’t have contact with the forum administrator (my conclusion).
He wanted to take over the administration of the forum some time ago, but it didn’t happen for some reason.

Now I am not in a position to give any opinion about what has happened, all I know is that running a forum is a difficult task that requires a lot of knowledge and if the owner decides to pay for it themselves also a costly one.

I think just spending just some money to keep this forum running is perhaps not the most futureproof thing, since an update to keep it working is almost inevitable. The forum was quit heavy on traffic, but almost dead on new contributions. To make it futureproof and user friendly, with direct photo upload, embedded Youtube videos and hacker safe invirement, so that my email and password is not stolen, is only possible with an active member crowd and modern software.

It is strange to me that the only English forum for RC trucks and contruction that I know of is more a Titanic heading for an iceberg than a comfortable, large, save community having fun.

I like to read here and see the different aproach from what I am used to here, but the current administrator(s) should think if this is just a FreddyGearDrive memorial forum, or should be something for the future.

Maybe I am direct or thinking out to loud, but with just paying the server costs the keep it running, the next crash might be sooner then you think with this old software. Or the server crashed and it is now running on a different one, then it might go alright for some longer, but the one who pays has got to be willing to keep it going as well.

I am glad to see the forum back after one month, and hope it is able to stay.

[Actros4160]

We need to start to donate to this.

Everybody is using this board and a small donation can go a long way. So, please Travis put your paypal account in here and we can start support the Side, I would differently do that.

Bernd

[jerry56]

Or create a "contributing" user account ( or whatever you want to call it) for $25 or $35 a year.... and put up a "donate" button. Explain it's to help defray the cost of running the site or upgrades etc.... then if something comes up you can ask the community for help otherwise use the donations for annual costs.
I'd do $35 a year to keep the site going.....or help anyway....

[Zabco]

Amen

[Brel]

I live in the UK and will gladly donate some USD $ or GBP

[frizzen]

July 2023, i've been getting this error

----

This page isn't working

www.rctruckandconstruction.com is currently unable to handle this request

[ddmckee54]

Oh GOOD, it's not just me it's happening to. This has been going on every couple of days for me where it's off then on, you the same? I sent a PM to fhhhstix asking about this when it first happened, but I never got a response. I feel kinda like SGT Shultz here - "I KNOW NOTHING!" Can anybody shed some light on what's been happening? I'm just hoping that the site isn't going to permanently go dark one of these times.

frizzen - if you want, send me a PM and I'll get you my e-mail address just in case the site does go dark again. I usually check in every day - at least when things are working I do.

Don

[Zabco]

I have found the site to be incredibly slow for several months now. Over a minute just to open a page. I also got 2 or 3 days with no action what so ever, just a blank screen, a few weeks ago. When I logged in this evening there were two members listed as being present, me and someone who I'm sure is not a real member. In fact the opening page stated there were over 16,800 visitors currently looking at the site. I know the site is open for anyone to come and look around but no way is there 16k visitors. As a member I can click on your names and get your member info. If I click on any of these other supposed members I get a screen that says I don't have permission to see that information. I'm no internet guru but I think this site has been hacked and seriously compromised. But since facebook seems to be the main attraction today, no one seems to care anymore about maintaining this site. Absolute shame that literally decades worth of experience and knowledge is about to just disappear.

[ddmckee54]

Zabco:

I don't know about hacked, but I think it is under attack when we can't get in - like what has been happening to frizzen and me. And the site has ALWAYS seemed slow for me. But I usually get impatient after 30 seconds of so and just move on to something else. When I try later it seems like things are back to normal.

I usually see that there's a small handful of members, sometimes only me, and a few hundred guests - which doesn't seem too far out of line considering it's the Worldy-Wide-Web. (At least I think that's what they called it in Gnomeo.) But yeah, 16000+ guests does sound like the site was under attack by somebody.

Don

[frizzen]

Ddmckee, you have a pm.

Zabco, are you possibly using an old link that's not secure the version with. Https
Yeah 16,000 visitors to a zombie board sounds like a DDOS attack, but why would someone bother pointing one at this place?

I was getting a "Database Error" screen earlier today, so i gave it a few minutes and it reloaded alright.

[ddmckee54]

Yeah 16,000 visitors to a zombie board sounds like a DDOS attack, but why would someone bother pointing one at this place?

Probably for the same reason that we were getting those spam printer ads for a while - they think there's a buck in it somewhere.

[Blender]

As far as I know this version of the forum software, vBulletin, is end of life. No security updates to keep the latest bots/spam out. The badguys always get better at being bad.

[ddmckee54]

So.....
1) What needs to be done?
2) Who needs to do it?
3) What can the rest of us do to help?

I know that if you throw time and money at a problem, said problem can usually be made to go away. I know just about enough about this stuff to almost be dangerous, so I wouldn't be of much help - even if I did have the time. But I am more than willing to contribute a few Sheckels to the pot if it would help.

Don

[frizzen]

Currently gettiing this fault:

Your connection is not private
Attackers might be trying to steal your information from

[ddmckee54]

Frizzen:

Like Blender said in Post #28, this place is running on outdated software. Your browser is just confirming that the outdated software is vulnerable to outside attack.

What probably needs to happen is vBulletin needs to be updated to the latest version. This will probably not be cheap. Just the software itself will be anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars. If I remember correctly this forum is funded by one guy, out of his own pocket. Since this a "free" forum I can understand why the upgrade hasn't happened for that reason alone.

Add in the possibility that the "new" version of vBulletin, and our older version may no longer be compatible, and you add in the cost of having someone re-build the forum. That would probably take days at least of somebody's time - if not weeks.

I usetawas a programmer, but not for anything like that. Right below the RC Trucks and Construction logo it says "gFx by MadMax", I'm assuming he built the forum originally?

Bottom line - we're probably screwed if/when this place goes belly-up. A LOT of good information will be lost, just like when Photobucket shot themselves in the foot - only worse.

I don't know if this site's information will be available in The Wayback Machine or not. It looks like ANYBODY can archive a single page to The Wayback Machine at no cost. That's a single page of a site, not the whole site. They offer a subscription service that will archive entire websites - no idea what that would cost/year to archive this site.

Don

[Blender]

I will say the forum has been running like a champ recently. Now we just need some content.

[ddmckee54]

Blender:

Yup to running like a champ, lately. It also has had its' ups and downs, and I don't like the idea that one day it could just go the way of the Dodo.

If we are running on outdated software as you said, one of these days one of Microsoft's many "fixes" is going to break this place. There's just too much accumulated information here that will be lost. Information that's only interesting to us crazies, and not available from many other sources.

[frizzen]

I get that forum software is old, I'm not pushing for changing that. I've been on boards that were horribly broken or completely erased from bad software changes. Even when it goes well, things break and get lost. It's still been running pretty well

I'm reporting having an issue of it flagging for expired Security Certificates
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/in/business/software/how-to-renew-ssl-certificate/

It's not the full SLOW LOADING we were stuck with during the "Http / HttpS" problem , but right now its adding atleast 4 more clicks to open any page. I'm not sure how long an expired cert will count before browsers treat is as no cert

[ddmckee54]

frizzen:

What browser are you using? I'm running Chrome and I get/got the same warning. I went to the "Advanced" tab on the certificate warning page and clicked on the link that said to proceed to RC Trucks and Construction - Unsafe. I never had to jump through any hoops after that when I go to the site, but it does give me a red "Not secure" warning in the site address bar every time I go to this site.

Don

[Blender]

Bumping this relevant thread.

We're back. I'll admit I was surprised to see the page load.

[Zabco]

I am also. For the last few weeks was just getting back 503 error messages whenever I tried to access the site. That usually means that there is nothing there. Don't know what happened but glad to see it back. Hope it holds up. Hate the FB site.

[ddmckee54]

Zabco:

I hate FB with a passion. A few years back I joined FB for the express purpose of purchasing a 1976 IH Cub Cadet that was listed on FB Marketplace. I tried to set up a time with the seller when I could take a look at the Cub. The next day when I tried to log in, I was informed that I was banned for "improper use" of FB Marketplace. I haven't looked at anything on FB since.

Don

[Zabco]

In my opinion the FB version of this site is a joke. It started out well with guys trying to post builds but it is very difficult to maintain any continuity on that site. Everything is just short little bits and pieces. Some assistance is given to users who write with specific problems. But mostly the site has degenerated into nothing but a sales platform. I don't know how many asian based companies I've blocked from my feed because it's nothing but their spam day after day after day.