We're back!

Thanks to whoever sorted it out to get the forum back online.

sullivj wrote:Thanks to whoever sorted it out to get the forum back online.

yes indeed!

Dan

It must have been an outage at the host, not done anything my side!

It was a 503 error as far as I could find out which means that either the host server was overloaded or under maintainance or something, but still alive enough to be able to send the 503 error.

There is a lot of DDOS attacks happening on DNS servers at the moment, it's mainly in the USA but it's also affecting europe too. 

Basically if you don't understand computers think of it at a stream with water (data) , the water level is normal but then a DDOS floods the steam making it burst its banks. you can no longer tell what was there as the steam is hidden underneath all the extra water (data). so you can't tell what's supposed to be there and what isn't. They've done this to a DNS server, this server turns cb500club.net into an IP address and this is the service that has been attacked. 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/21/dns_devastation_as_dyn_dies_under_denialofservice_attack/

could be advisable to note the address behind the domain 
http://cb500.   highbb.   com/

(remove the spaces, everytime i try and post it changes)

also not knowing how long it would last created a FaceBook group CB500Club.net (link - i hope!) to try and gather members for a central information place so if you want access to that just join it - believe it's pretty open in that anyone who has joined can authorise someone else.

Dan

jerryfudd wrote:could be advisable to note the address behind the domain 
http://cb500.   highbb.   com/

(remove the spaces, everytime i try and post it changes)

also not knowing how long it would last created a FaceBook group CB500Club.net (link - i hope!) to try and gather members for a central information place so if you want access to that just join it - believe it's pretty open in that anyone who has joined can authorise someone else.

Dan

i like FB groups, but they can/have been known to ruin normal web based forums. there are a couple of other forums im on and they refuse to go the FB route for that very reason.

I would second what Tricky was saying: I was about make some kind of 'playing with fire' comment ;)

I'd suggest that we really don't make a facebook group unless we really have to...

In his defence, JerryFudd (Dan) created the FB page last night, just as a way to contact members to let them know what was going on with the forum.

In no way was it intended to be a replacement for our excellent forum.

Before, there have been instances when the forum goes down, and users just get presented with a blank screen. If that happens again, they could look to the FB page for an update.

sullivj wrote:In his defence, JerryFudd (Dan) created the FB page last night, just as a way to contact members to let them know what was going on with the forum.

In no way was it intended to be a replacement for our excellent forum.

Before, there have been instances when the forum goes down, and users just get presented with a blank screen. If that happens again, they could look to the FB page for an update.

I gathered that! I wasn't having a go, but what Tricky was saying is certainly true (I have also seen forum destruction by a facebook group).

If this website (http://www.cb500club.net/) stops working then one or other admin will send an 'announcement' email, assuming the 'outage' is for a suitably long period of time.

I have seen that happen too, and I don think FB is a good place to hold historical knowledge such as this.

Do you have everyone's email address then ET?  When I was corresponding with Dan last night, he didn't, and he's one of the Admin crew.

sullivj wrote:I have seen that happen too, and I don think FB is a good place to hold historical knowledge such as this.

Do you have everyone's email address then ET?  When I was corresponding with Dan last night, he didn't, and he's one of the Admin crew.

Yes, if the admin wanted to they/we could extract all the email addresses, but this would be a difficult way to do things!

More realistically we would use the 'newsletter/announcement' function from the forum administration page, which is a function that sends a message to every members subscribed email address, so, if the forum goes down for any serious length of time (like more than a day) it is worth checking your email, just in case we've send you a message explaining what is broken/what to do about it.

if i can just give an example of exactly what im on about. over the last three/four years or so, the cb500's have taken off in a big way, on FB there is a main TSGB group and a dedicated 500 one (amongst others groups) all created over this period of time, now look at the traffic decline on the cb500racing forum. the last post was a couple of months ago, its deader than a dead thing thats very dead, i know for a fact that if it werent for FB, that forum would be buzzing as there are really only two (enlglish speaking/uk based) cb500 forums, this one (road bias), and that one (race bias).

Tricky. wrote:if i can just give an example of exactly what im on about. over the last three/four years or so, the cb500's have taken off in a big way, on FB there is a main TSGB group and a dedicated 500 one (amongst others groups) all created over this period of time, now look at the traffic decline on the cb500racing forum. the last post was a couple of months ago, its deader than a dead thing thats very dead, i know for a fact that if it werent for FB, that forum would be buzzing as there are really only two (enlglish speaking/uk based) cb500 forums, this one (road bias), and that one (race bias).

I doubt you'd get Josh's great sales pitches and vastly instructional videos on a forum somehow  

With the way this forum is from when I first joined this has become a lot more active. 
I think a facebook group should just be there for when the site goes down such as notifications as to what's happening, and any posts that are posted should be on admin approval so it can be strictly kept as updates for the site and not as an alternative platform. I think this would be best as a mass email with website updates wouldn't be best recieved especially sending it to all 2313 users.

Jameshambleton wrote:
I think this would be best as a mass email with website updates wouldn't be best recieved especially sending it to all 2313 users.

The 'email everyone' option is not something we use on a regular basis, in fact, as I recall, we've only *ever* used it when the site has gone down and we need to communicate with people by an alternative medium, given that as part of the sign-up process everyone has to provide an email address it makes sense to use it when we need to.

I am aware that not everyone checks their email; some people will have not updated their address; it will go into some people's spam folder etc etc however, even if only a small proportion of people actually receive and read the mail it is better than not having sent it.

I am certainly not against having a facebook group to cover this specific eventuality (which, as you say, can be setup to not be postable by everyone), however, this also relies on people taking notice of what happens on their facebook, which, of course, not everyone does (just like email!).

Anyway, as of now, at least everything is working :)

wow, i'd missed allot...... i recieved one 'topic reply notification' and thought i'll catch up with that later lol

I think there are pro's and con's to both mediums. the forum is great for historical data and the FB thing is great for capturing people's immediate attention and contributing. id only say don't try a mix of both which is what we tried in the past.

but as sullivj pointed out (many thanks on that btw) i only did the FB group it as a stop gap as the last outage that stuck in my mind lasted for days and i didn't get any mail and activity on the forum was limited to those who knew the non-domain website address. which knowing sullivj personally i was able to text him for but this time neither of us could remember.

also i thought you could only receive newsletters/notifications from admins if you had ticked the box which was the issue last time there was a call for it?

as ET says we are back now which is the main thing.

for all the to and fro probably should just lock this off and move on lol

jerryfudd wrote:
also i thought you could only receive newsletters/notifications from admins if you had ticked the box which was the issue last time there was a call for it?l

Yes, everyone should go to Profile -> Preferences and tick the 'Allow Newsletters' option if it isn't ticked already. As I said, this function is only used in case of dire emergency, so we won't be clogging your inbox with spam :)

jerryfudd wrote:

for all the to and fro probably should just lock this off and move on lol

Amen to that!

ok, we as forum members know what the score is then regarding the/this fb group, but what will happen to the forum as more people join the fb group and not bother with this forum? its already happening with negative consequences on a forum i 'was' on, im using the fb group more now than their forum, sorry but guilty to this trend, dont want this forum to go the same route.

Tricky,

Everything on that FB page, points people towards this forum.  Even the title of it, is 'CB500 club.net'.

As Dan explained, it was set up, just as a way to give information to anyone trying to find out why the forum had gone down.

It has no other purpose, other than to notify people when this great forum is out of action.  There are no other topics on the page. Have you checked it out? If not, take a look and I'm sure your mind will be put at rest.

With the main forum down, the FB page pointed me to this 'cb500.forumotion.com' address.  

Well done Jerryfudd - you've proved it works as an alternative contact method.

Is someone trying to renew the main domain, as there will be people trying to access it, who like me, have probably not received an explanation email...

hopefully in the mean time some others will see the page and be back on board with the alternative address while the domain issue is looked into.

Dan

Hi everyone
I have tried to contact the site owner spitonyourgrave22 who has control of the domain, via email, PM, you name it. He does not seem to want to respond or even acknowledge my messages.
I have been sending him reminders that the domain is due to expire, for the last month, he would have received the same from Godaddy.
Great job on the FB page Jerryfudd, I will attempt further contact with "Spit". Hopefully nothing has happened to the guy.

Thanks Teamster. I remember he's been hard to contact in the past.

Hopefully it won't be the case, but if we can't get hold of him, what are our options? Can we buy the domain ourselves? I'd be happy to chip in if that's possible.

sullivj wrote:Thanks Teamster. I remember he's been hard to contact in the past.

Hopefully it won't be the case, but if we can't get hold of him, what are our options? Can we buy the domain ourselves? I'd be happy to chip in if that's possible.

The domain renewal should only be about £10 so I'll happily cover that. What is doing my head in is the lack of communication, it is rude.
Let's see how this pans out, the same happened last year and "Spit" suddenly reappeared and renewed it.