Edited: Discord Link here https://discord.gg/vvxbDPyM If anyone wants to join so we can at least have our rally point for now. Hi everyone! I'm not quitting on you. I'm happy to keep the domain tweak3d.net active and a basic web hosting account that allows us to keep this community together. But about 10 years ago I closed off new user accounts because 99.9% of them were spam. 99.9% of new threads from any new users was spam. The whole user database was corrupted to the point where almost every account is spam other than the original people from 1999-2010 or so. Finally I stopped allowing people to register and post from new accounts which also stopped the growth of new users (which was almost 0 anyway). I really don't have time or the skills to maintain and upgrade forum software, keep on top of security issues, and deal with new users. All of this also presents privacy risks for everyone (as their username, email, passwords, and anything they've posted or sent from this forum could potentially be leaked/shared online). So my question for you loyal users is do we need this old school type of forum for such a small group? Or are there alternatives that we can try instead? I need to figure out what to do next and I'm thinking the future for this community may be something like Discord, Slack, or Reddit. I would like to get some of your thoughts on what to do next. Have you used these services and have a preference? I was thinking we could make a Discord server, assign some moderators, and copy some of our favorite stuff over / separate channels and project groups etc. But I don't really know how to do all that or who's interested in helping. And what all should we try to archive from this old forum and how? I really don't want this site to be hacked again/deleted, and I also really don't want to risk anyone's security at this point. Personally I've had numerous data leaks, identitity theft and so-on which creates incredible stress and liability for people involved. Alternatively I could make the whole forum private - since everyone that's posted in the last few years is an old registered user. I could update the software "one last time" (I say that but it might be a few more in the future) at the cost of a few hundred bucks and a weekend or two playing with it. I'd be willing to do that of course. However, if there are security patches and exploits in the future we may still need to go to another cloud based / remote forum or chat software instead of a Bulletin board system. Even these big ones like XF and Vbulletin really aren't what they used to be, and even a private forum can be hacked the same as a public one. I would be a lot more inclined to go this route if someone can volunteer to help me keep up with the security patches or spam issues if we did ever keep it open again.
It's a catch-22. I'd like something more modern, but there is an archive here of old posts that are nice to revive sometimes. Is there a way to secure the entire forum that isn't totally labor intensive? I'd volunteer to be a mod but it would be light work, I'm looking at a new job and grad school. You should have replied to my FB message a few years back. I was hammered and offered to pay for the software upgrade.
Keep the forum if you can. Like Hans there is a ton of things here I enjoy revisiting. I can do light mod work as well. I have some extra expenses since my Mother passed in Jan, but I can help with a few dollars if you need it for the upgrade.
There needs to be a repository for Teh Timeline of History plus the lovely artwork donated by the lovely Giggidy. Oh, and Fiddy's travelogues, if those are still around. I can probably help, too. Unfortunately there are maybe only a half-dozen of us left. Discord may not be a bad idea.
wild to think we've made it this far.. question is.. who actually participates here regularly anymore.. i think some of us just pop in once a month or two? theres quite the history of us talking pretty stupid and silly here lol, not sure if that could cost us good boy points aka social credit score points in the future when the ai overlords take over the internet (if they havent already) another thing.. maybe in the future there will be young adults that are kids right now that will want to build an og windows 95 computer with a 3dfx card, so sources like tweak3d and remnants of old guides could be beneficial to them? What im saying is, i'm not sure how much value there is here besides us 'elders' just popping in to update and check on each other. This place for most of us was like a "diary" of sorts, which could be either valuable or embarrassing for our kids (for those tweakers with kids now) to read once we've passed on gone.. its a peek into our younger lives and immature funnies our kids may never know about.. Whiskas passing had me thinking about that and im sure others too..
What database does the back-end (lolz) of T3D use? Just wondering if we could back it up, restore it somewhere else, then ETL the shit into whatever more modern platform we'd end up on. My thoughts... since this place has shrunk as the years have passed, a Discord server would be the easiest and cheapest way to move us. If it were more active, moving to a Discord server wouldn't cut it. But the people that do check in now could easily go back and forth and the dynamic might change a little, in a good way. It's quiet enough now that we can back and forth about bullshit, politics, current events, what happened at work that day, whatever. Reddit would work too, but I'm just worried about it because, well, it's Reddit. Enough said. Slack doesn't feel like it's for us. If we all worked tech jobs, it would work. But since the crowd is varied here, having people have to download it, sign, and then open it just for the sole purpose of checking in with us probably will throw a few people off of the ship, so to speak. But yeah Dan, this place is a technical disaster in 2024. No SSL cert, doesn't really work on mobile, JavaScript up the ass. I don't say that in a bad way; it's a lot of work and money to maintain something like this, especially if you want it to be secure and functional. Thank you for keeping it up this long, we all appreciate it. With all of that said, I'm willing to take on a project if a full scale migration is in the cards or even possible. It would be on my own timeframe though, just because work and life stuff. I'd suggest something like AWS, but if we can't go serverless, EC2 charges wouldn't be worth it really. Might be cheaper just to host it on a small Linux server behind a firewall. Anyways, just rambling now. I've said my piece.
Edited: Discord Link here https://discord.gg/vvxbDPyM If anyone wants to join so we can at least have our rally point for now. Hi guys. I LOVE YOU Ugh sorry been very busy with work and house repairs. It's funny when I got into this stuff I was at the cutting edge and now ummm 25 years(!) later I bet 90% of you know more about web shit than I do =) Here are some replies. @hans5849: Is there a way to secure the entire forum that isn't totally labor intensive? I'd volunteer to be a mod but it would be light work, I'm looking at a new job and grad school. I think updating to the latest XF software would be about $300 and take a few hours. I could do it, that buys us a year or so of security. Then maybe $150/year to stay up and another 1 hour per year in updating etc. Mod here should be almost 0 work since there are so few posts and we closed off registration and sure any of you could be mods at this point if you're interested @Scrubbin_Bubbles Keep the forum if you can. Like Hans there is a ton of things here I enjoy revisiting. I can do light mod work as well. I have some extra expenses since my Mother passed in Jan, but I can help with a few dollars if you need it for the upgrade. Really sorry to read about your mom. I know we haven't chatted for a while and hope you're doing well. I think keeping the forum up is OK but I do worry if all these old posts from decades ago are some kind of security or privacy risk for everyone. Maybe turning off access for people NOT logged in would be sufficient, but either way we should update it. @JZL Definitely would be worst case scenario to somehow lose all those good posts & pictures And yes a Discord would be awesome if someone can set one up (I have no idea never messed with it except a while back during that wow Classic relaunch), so we have a "Rally point" to find eachother in case of a loss of this forum or eachother's contact info. Would someone be willing to set up a Discord? I'll join it too. @Torx I like the idea of people coming for old articles and fixing Windows 95 but that stuff is probably better archived and covered elsewhere now anyway right? Like Youtube and such. I hear what you mean about diary, embarrassing, or even just stuff from our past. Like it was a social club that either evolved or we out-grew those old aspects of, so we can still be friends and in contact with eachother but maybe don't need 1000s of our thoughts archived and searchable? @fornik8her / @Commissar Smersh / @mattdev Good to see you guys! Need to catch up IMs or something since we don't use AIM anymore and used to chat a lot. I'll hit you guys up @nidex This one is PHP-MySQL based, XenForo software. Basically when Vbulletin got "weird" (I think it was version 4.0?) and forked off from the old style Anandtech / HardOCP forums - we did upgrade to it, and everyone hated it. So I found XenForo which was made by Kier Darby the guy who made Vbulletin, from scratch. It's similar to the old VB. but the things are mostly that it's WAY out of date, hence the lack of security/certificates and all that TO be honest, I have WAY too much stuff to fix on Sharkwerks.com, our own services, emails, Quickbooks and things, and that's not even my official job. The idea of doing Tweak3D still and fixing domain security things and secure certificates, it's just nauseating for me now. Not to mention my wife is a scientist who works like 70 hours a week and needs my help constantly just to make it through the day, and I'm 100% responsible for keeping the house and cars working and so-on. I just can't do this old stuff anymore to any level of modern security and features. I think Discord would be best. We can archive this stuff somehow (maybe make a private-accessible version that can be searched/read but without new posts/logins and security issues), but being able to chat with eachother and even have sub-topics maybe it would even become MORE active just for us? And I think you're right, as someone who's used Reddit since the beginning, not really my thing for Tweak3D. And I have never used Slack And we can send an email to *EVERY TWEAK3D USER OF ALL TIME* telling them how to join? And then we can carefully archive and close this old forum software?
