Bandit Alley
GENERAL MOTORCYCLE FORUMS => GENERAL MOTORCYCLE => Topic started by: stormi on March 27, 2007, 12:48:29 AM
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Hey Everyone,
I've managed to talk to Pete, and I've also rescued all the posted messages from the old board.
The only thing missing is people's PMs from between March 20, 07 at 9:09pm to March 22 at 5:33pm. So if you were conducting business with world wide ramifications, and haven't heard back from your business partner,... sorry. It's my fault. :wink:
So,.. who wants all of the news?
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OK, so give me all the news. (its ok, you can tell me. I wont tell anyone) LOL
Blue
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Well????
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You and Pete? I'm shocked! Say, aren't you *already* marred...er, married! Wow, those Canadian laws are really liberal!
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Well????
GEEZ!! YOU should know by now! :stickpoke:
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You and Pete? I'm shocked! Say, aren't you *already* marred...er, married! Wow, those Canadian laws are really liberal!
LOL!! Marred, probably,.. Married? Who ever said that?? :wink:
Naw,.. Pete has his hands full without me. I'm pretty high maintenance.
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So, I talked to Pete on Friday night. He said he's sorry he left us in a lurch, and has no problem with me taking the Alley off his hands. We talked about the site, and he mentioned that he was going to kill off a lot of the site anyway, for lack of time.
So, if there's anything we want to archive from the main site ( i.e. Not the forums), we should also save that info as well.
For the time being, I can host the site from my house, til my ISP has a small avian creature, that is. After that, I may need a new ISP and a co-lo ( A place, sort of like military school, where I can send the server, that has better internet speeds.) ;) This will keep the costs down for the interim while we're setting up the new home of the Alley.
We talked about it, and Pete figured it might be faster and easier to register a new domain name, and put a link to it on the main Bandit Alley site, and take down that forum, he figured, and I agree, that the important part was that we saved the messages.
Now,.. I know that there are people who don't want to change the name, because this one has a history, and people know it, so I'm going to put this to a vote.
Change it or don't?
The banditalley domain expires in 4 months, so we may be able to reclaim it. One drawback of reclaiming it, though, is that the spammers know where to find us.
Of benefit, of course, is that everyone else also knows where to find us.
If we do wait, what should we do in the meantime? Leave it at the current address, or,... ??
If we do decide to go with a new domain name, we could use either a variation of the name in the new domain name,.. i.e. banditalleyBBS.com, or bandit-alley.com, or some such. I like the name, so I wouldn't be looking to change it site-wide, just the domain name. (I'm throwing the names out there, but I haven't checked into availability at this point. Once we have 2 -3 names that we've agreed on, I'll check their availability.)
Once we've got everything changed over, whether through a new domain name, or through the existing one, we should also decide whether we want to go back to banner ads (i.e the amazon, googleleads, and commission junction ( BikeBandit) banners), if we want to go with any voluntary membership stuff, or some combination of both. I only bring the voluntary membership stuff up, because several people have mentioned that route to me now, and if we were to, I'd want to make sure that people were recognised for their contributions ( unless they chose not to be, of course.)
When the domain thing is sorted, Pete will put a link on his site, directing people to the new one.
He's got an open invitation to come and post and participate whenever he's around, and knows that we want him around. :)
For the most part, I'd like the board to stay pretty much as it is, I hope that all of the mods and admins will remain at their posts, they've been doing a great job!
Down the road, I'd love to change this board over to something easier to admin and mod, and more secure, but I think that's going to be a fall/winter thing now,.. I really can't see spending a lot of extra time working on the site, if I can be on a bike instead.
I will try to make sure it's up all the time though, unless it's being moved to somewhere else, or scheduled maintenance.
Except long weekends,.. if it's a long weekend, and I've gone to the mountains, I'll apologise right here, in advance. That's a Murphy's law thing, and it will likely fall down. I'll bring it back up when I get home.
Comments? Concerns? Questions?
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Oh,.. and for even more about the changes,... see also:
http://forums.banditalley.net/viewtopic.php?p=64852
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:clap: Stormi,thanks for all the effort. As far as the site name change,simple is good. bandit alley.com, what ever small change it takes to make it easier.
I see on the SV site they have a site store with hats,shits,mugs and such and the $ goes to help maintain the site. But then that creates another job. Someone has to make up the inventory and I don't know how sucsessfull the sales are. I went to buy a T-shirt, then you have to register in something else as a seller, what your going to sell ,how much, I was running late for work and said the hell with it and didn't get anything. Maybe just a simple donation would be easier. I would be happy to send a donation. ( just send money to me,Al Frankin @) that just popped into my head.lol
HAIL STORMI Dan
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I think its a good idea to make a small change to the site name. That will help stop the auto spam problem (I would think) with the original name. As for it starting anew, some sites have a visual registration code which appears to stop automated spamming programs. I have no idea how difficult it would be to add that feature since programming isnt in my job description. :-)
For the workload this is going to be for you, it may be good to slim down the site a bit for easier maintenance.
I belong to another site that did have ads and sponsors and a few years ago, it went to voluntary contributions without any ads, etc. Site support has not been a problem and there has always been enough surplus $ to run the site for a year + if no contributions were made in that time. I dont know what the active member base size and costs are here, so that may/may not be optional.
Blue
and BTW thanks Stormi for all the effort. You're a peach........ I dont care what they say about you. LOL
Comments? Concerns? Questions?
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Hey Stormi...you have my admiration for taking over the workload...thanks.
So, since youv'e got the ball, you get to run with it. My vote says if youv'e got some ideas to make the site easier to maintain, do it. The rest of us will catch up. Keep the name similar, but I don't think a small change will have a negative impact. We all found the old board, people will find the new one, especially if Pete keeps the link active for a while.
I'm good with either banner ads or donations. Ads likely are a little more work, but possibly more consistant. If you need some donations, let us know what you need, I'm in.
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From your first comments in response to complaints you seemed willing and able to take over and take on this sites problems. So its no surprise it is working now. Thank you so much for rescuing it and salvaging such a special and uncommon place to talk about the Bandit line as well as other related topics. You go girl! :bandit:
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Hi Stormi
I dont get to come on here as often as used to but my hat comes of to you.
You've done an exellent job and all the best in taking over.
Robbie
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Hi Everyone!
Sorry about the downtime yesterday. The next one will hopefully be planned a little better.
For non-geeks: Two of the intermediate servers - i.e. between the one in the basement, and you guys on the internet got -turned off- yesterday, thanks to some idiot that didn't know that March had 31 days in it. That meant that the server was still working,.. and waiting to send out information to people, but no computers on the net knew how to find it to ask for information.
For the geeks amongst us, here's what happened:
The guy who hosts my dns files had his business' servers at the co-lo, but told the co-lo, that he was going to be removing the servers by month's end. So,.. early yesterday morning,... they downed his servers, and put them on a cart to await his arrival... uhm,... WTF? :rant2:
So,.. I found out yesterday, not long after he did, and figured that I'd move my server to his place to host from there,... better speed, static IP and not on a residential plan should be a good thing, right? Well,.. except when his ISP (who's also mine) gives him a static IP that already belongs to someone else!! :annoy: Proof that in this economy, even mushrooms can get jobs.
So,.. we've reverted back to the "old" server, that's in my basement, until he can get that sorted out, then we'll do the switch over once the ISP gets their heads out of their rear-ends. (This is one definite benefit of using a VMWare server image. You can have copies of the server all over the planet, and not have to be limited to less servers, because of a lack of hardware. )
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I see on the SV site they have a site store with hats,shits,mugs and such and the $ goes to help maintain the site.
Now,.. would that have to be shipped as dangerous goods? :lol:
The thing about selling merchandise too is that unless someone wants to donate the materials, it's money out of pocket first. Good when the site is storing money up, not so good when starting up. But it's definitely something we can keep in mind for down the road!
Keep up the great suggestions everyone!
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I think its a good idea to make a small change to the site name. That will help stop the auto spam problem (I would think) with the original name. As for it starting anew, some sites have a visual registration code which appears to stop automated spamming programs. I have no idea how difficult it would be to add that feature since programming isnt in my job description. :-)
Technically, it's not my job description anymore either. :lol: We already have a visual registration, if I recall, but there are more sophisticated ones than the ones built into this board, that are available as plugins. I can add those in about 20 mins. For the registrations though, we've certainly slowed them down by having admin approval.
For the workload this is going to be for you, it may be good to slim down the site a bit for easier maintenance.
Any forums in particular that anyone would remove?
I belong to another site that did have ads and sponsors and a few years ago, it went to voluntary contributions without any ads, etc. Site support has not been a problem and there has always been enough surplus $ to run the site for a year + if no contributions were made in that time. I dont know what the active member base size and costs are here, so that may/may not be optional.
WHAT? You're cheating on us?? :lol: I've seen a couple of people say they'd be fine with voluntary contribs, so I will put it to votes and see what we get. Poll coming up some time today.
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edit: What was I thinking? This was an opportunity to use some of the new emoticons,...
The guy who hosts my dns files had his business' servers at the co-lo, but told the co-lo, that he was going to be removing the servers by month's end. So,.. early yesterday morning,... the :asshat: co-lo downed his servers, and put them on a cart to await his arrival... uhm,... WTF? :rant2:
So then the :poopfan: But what it really comes down to is: :iddi: but it made :storm: a very unhappy girl, but I guess now I'm really just :deadhorse:
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As promised, I have put the polls in the Members only section, so that we can determine once and for all what we should do to get this site moving in a forward direction. :)
Poll 1: (website Address)
http://forums.banditalley.net/viewtopic.php?p=65029#65029
Poll 2: (Operating capital)
http://forums.banditalley.net/viewtopic.php?p=65030#65030