Please Read - an update.....
01-09-2003, 06:48 PM
#1
Banned
Thread Starter
Please Read - an update.....
First - I want to apologize for the unplanned outage last Sunday evening and through Monday morning, but as you can tell – I just re-programmed the “ADMIN” sticky, and IT WORKS..!!!! So – please take a minute to review this post, as it will explain what happened, some new features – and why this new format is “different”….. BUT FIRST – I want to thank all the Moderators, who were trying to help all of you – but had little to no info from me, as I was too busy trying to get the site going…. And then – I want to thank all of YOU for you patience and support. As many of you know – our “Technical” staff is “me”, the the entire Rennlist Support Staff is Jen and me…
First, late this past weekend, I noticed that the previous site had become very slow to respond. In short, I tried to band-aid a fix – but that only lasted a few hours. I was having to shutdown/restart the old system several times every few hours. In fact, it was a hardware error.
Monday AM – I got sick of it, and by 8:00 AM, purchased a new server/hardware (there are now 14 servers it takes to run Rennlist – this one being one of the more important
). I built out the new system, installed the new OS/disks, Memory, NICS, etc. – and we were back a few hours later.. Well, almost. The code from the previous drives did not work on the new system.. Hmmmmm…..
Anyway – I robbed some of the code from my development workstation (along with those HDDs, memory, etc… ), and began hacking until the wee hours of the AM (again)… The forums were on-line/off-line throughout Monday afternoon and through the nite. For that – you will probably have noticed some new features – a few of which I’ll mention now….
- Quick Reply, Spell Check, the ability to upload your own Avatars, choose your own password on Registration, link to the latest post you haven’t read in a thread, etc…. All-in-all, there are about 30+ new things. I’ll try to add some “Help” files on these features in the near future (especially how to add your Avatars!)… In the meantime, though…..
- The “Rennlist Member” designations are being added back, but it is a manual process, as the old code and new Forum code is incompatible – so Jen and I are trying to add these without interrupting the Rennlist Services.
- The SEARCH archives are back, but I do realize there are some small problems that still exist in a few Forums. I’ll tackle those in the near future;
- Avatars…. If I uploaded a “custom avatar” for you previously – it is still available to you! Go to “my profile”, View/Update Profile, and add this as the URL for your new Avatar: <a href="http://forums.rennlist.com/forums/member/{youruser#}.jpg" target="_blank">http://forums.rennlist.com/forums/member/{youruser#}.jpg</a> like Admin one is:
<a href="http://forums.rennlist.com/forums/member/1.jpg" target="_blank">http://forums.rennlist.com/forums/member/1.jpg</a>
- The "Public Photo Upload" site is off-line for a bit (the photo's can still be accessed - but the "upload" function is off). I wasn't going to post this publicly, but I will now. It appears that there are some porno sites who have been taking advantage of that Rennlist "feature". So - I'm going through 1.5 GB of photos trying to clean out that directory. Now - I'm no prude, but some of the content is a little, ummmm - over the edge. I'm not sure what I'm going to provide in the future for this function, so please be patient. I can only imagine how many **** sites have broken links to their pages just now...
However......
And, if you are a Rennlist Member - you actually have access to a free website to upload your photo's, avatars, etc. The content is reviewed on a regular basis - but you have 200MB of free space for your website. There are several hundred Rennlist Members who have their sites here <a href="http://members.rennlist.com" target="_blank">http://members.rennlist.com</a> - and it costs nothing if you are a Member, it's a Rennlist service...
Well – that’s about it for now – but again, my thanks to all of you, who have made Rennlist what it has become to so many. And a special “Thanks” again to all the Forum moderators…… I’m sure that the past few days have been as “exciting” for them as it has been for me …….
John D.
First, late this past weekend, I noticed that the previous site had become very slow to respond. In short, I tried to band-aid a fix – but that only lasted a few hours. I was having to shutdown/restart the old system several times every few hours. In fact, it was a hardware error.
Monday AM – I got sick of it, and by 8:00 AM, purchased a new server/hardware (there are now 14 servers it takes to run Rennlist – this one being one of the more important
). I built out the new system, installed the new OS/disks, Memory, NICS, etc. – and we were back a few hours later.. Well, almost. The code from the previous drives did not work on the new system.. Hmmmmm…..Anyway – I robbed some of the code from my development workstation (along with those HDDs, memory, etc…
), and began hacking until the wee hours of the AM (again)… The forums were on-line/off-line throughout Monday afternoon and through the nite. For that – you will probably have noticed some new features – a few of which I’ll mention now….- Quick Reply, Spell Check, the ability to upload your own Avatars, choose your own password on Registration, link to the latest post you haven’t read in a thread, etc…. All-in-all, there are about 30+ new things. I’ll try to add some “Help” files on these features in the near future (especially how to add your Avatars!)… In the meantime, though…..
- The “Rennlist Member” designations are being added back, but it is a manual process, as the old code and new Forum code is incompatible – so Jen and I are trying to add these without interrupting the Rennlist Services.
- The SEARCH archives are back, but I do realize there are some small problems that still exist in a few Forums. I’ll tackle those in the near future;
- Avatars…. If I uploaded a “custom avatar” for you previously – it is still available to you! Go to “my profile”, View/Update Profile, and add this as the URL for your new Avatar: <a href="http://forums.rennlist.com/forums/member/{youruser#}.jpg" target="_blank">http://forums.rennlist.com/forums/member/{youruser#}.jpg</a> like Admin one is:
<a href="http://forums.rennlist.com/forums/member/1.jpg" target="_blank">http://forums.rennlist.com/forums/member/1.jpg</a>
- The "Public Photo Upload" site is off-line for a bit (the photo's can still be accessed - but the "upload" function is off). I wasn't going to post this publicly, but I will now. It appears that there are some porno sites who have been taking advantage of that Rennlist "feature". So - I'm going through 1.5 GB of photos trying to clean out that directory. Now - I'm no prude, but some of the content is a little, ummmm - over the edge. I'm not sure what I'm going to provide in the future for this function, so please be patient. I can only imagine how many **** sites have broken links to their pages just now...
However......And, if you are a Rennlist Member - you actually have access to a free website to upload your photo's, avatars, etc. The content is reviewed on a regular basis - but you have 200MB of free space for your website. There are several hundred Rennlist Members who have their sites here <a href="http://members.rennlist.com" target="_blank">http://members.rennlist.com</a> - and it costs nothing if you are a Member, it's a Rennlist service...
Well – that’s about it for now – but again, my thanks to all of you, who have made Rennlist what it has become to so many. And a special “Thanks” again to all the Forum moderators…… I’m sure that the past few days have been as “exciting” for them as it has been for me
…….John D.
01-09-2003, 08:57 PM
#2
Super Guru
Rennlist Member
Rennlist Member
John,
Rennlist remains one of the best $18 I've ever spent and I look forward to many years of Porsche ownership and Rennlist membership. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR EFFORTS
Ruairidh
Rennlist remains one of the best $18 I've ever spent and I look forward to many years of Porsche ownership and Rennlist membership. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR EFFORTS
Ruairidh
01-09-2003, 11:01 PM
#3
John-
No need to apologize for the downtime. You're doing an *awesome* job. It's also great how you turned lemons into lemonade by using the downtime as an opportunity to add new features.
Keep up the good work, we all really appreciate it.
No need to apologize for the downtime. You're doing an *awesome* job. It's also great how you turned lemons into lemonade by using the downtime as an opportunity to add new features.
Keep up the good work, we all really appreciate it.
01-10-2003, 03:13 AM
#4
Addict
Rennlist
Lifetime Member
Rennlist
Lifetime Member
John,
for and Jen you to be running Rennlist as you do, for putting in such a huge amount of work and taking such pains to make it the best (which it is) - thank you.
for and Jen you to be running Rennlist as you do, for putting in such a huge amount of work and taking such pains to make it the best (which it is) - thank you.
01-10-2003, 05:28 AM
#5
Drifting
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Leeds, where I have run into this many lamp
Posts: 2,689
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JOhn
re the upload page, maybe if you set it up so that it requires the use of password & membership number it will deter non-rennlist post of the erotic variety ( what about if the women are draped over a 964??!!)
Clearly, these people who steal your bandwidth are probably cleverish in the hacking department, but an extra level of security may just deter them.
BTW, don't aopologise for the outage - you do an extremely good job.
Thanks.
re the upload page, maybe if you set it up so that it requires the use of password & membership number it will deter non-rennlist post of the erotic variety ( what about if the women are draped over a 964??!!)
Clearly, these people who steal your bandwidth are probably cleverish in the hacking department, but an extra level of security may just deter them.
BTW, don't aopologise for the outage - you do an extremely good job.
Thanks.
01-10-2003, 05:57 AM
#6
Drifting
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Leeds, where I have run into this many lamp
Posts: 2,689
Likes: 0
Received 4 Likes
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4 Posts
John
just another thought - the 'post your own avatar' will start to annoy if people inssit on using HUGE pictures - maybe a note for everyone to resize to, say, 100 x 80 (pixels)?
just another thought - the 'post your own avatar' will start to annoy if people inssit on using HUGE pictures - maybe a note for everyone to resize to, say, 100 x 80 (pixels)?
