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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue
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TOPIC: Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue
#1027988
G_Conway (User)
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 4 Weeks ago  
Bubba, based on that article I would think that is 98% of the problem with trying to move the site. That will require someone with extensive knowledge of the issues, and a lot of time and trial and error.

With Gram wanting a "confirmed group" to take over under controlled conditions (and rightly so IMHO) before releasing the database, that would be a big commitment without any real knowledge of the level of detail that commitment would require.

It also (possibly) explains the lack of response to "extract to DVD" type questions. If the data was easy to extract en-mass, then it would be much easier to port to new software (in a basic form at least.)

I admire your commitment to this (and thank your Boss for me for being willing to make the attempt.)
Im an IT guy by trade, but not a "WEB" person, but I would be willing to commit time and money to the cause, but not really sure what I could provide that would not already be covered by an ISP.

Please let me know if you think there is anything I could provide.
 
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#1027989
RSOkie (User)
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 4 Weeks ago  
Horsehammerr wrote:
MidwestMike wrote:
Yes, I don't think people realize how many options have been looked at already.

It's not a matter of a few bucks, some tech skills, time or space,
but a unique combination of many things.

And the end result would be a site devoted to one model of bike, that is not made any more and does not have any new buyers,
and then competing with Facebook and the Facebook generation of new owners of the used bikes.

(Plus the holes in the site from the people that deleted their photos to teach PhotoBucket a lesson)


It's a changing world, you can tell by looking at the Oldsmobile dealer down the street...


I still think the best exit plan for Gram would be to come up with a DVD archive of the site.
Hit us up $50 for the information and the memories.
DEAL !!!


I would jump on that also
 
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#1027990
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 4 Weeks ago  
Hey Jeff,

At the time that the Road Star Clinic was built, the most popular web based encoding (when they used MySQL as a storage engine) was MySQL's "latin1". MySQL still includes this encoding in its base distributions.

Since then, the world has moved toward UTF8. Without diving into the weeds, the linux utility "iconv" can translate strings of content pretty solidly. I have done a fair number of these conversions. The english alphabet, numbers, and common punctuation symbols are pretty clean. Windows introduced a "curly" version of quotes that will cause problems from time to time. Especially if someone wrote out their text in a Windows based editor, then copied it and pasted it into a post or article.

You can see what character encodings your version of MySQL supports with the query command "SHOW CHARACTER SET;" executed in a MySQL command shell. You will very likely find both latin1 and utf8 are already there. You have to remove them for them not to show up.
 
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#1028015
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 4 Weeks ago  
Gram wrote:
Hey Jeff,

At the time that the Road Star Clinic was built, the most popular web based encoding (when they used MySQL as a storage engine) was MySQL's "latin1". MySQL still includes this encoding in its base distributions.

Since then, the world has moved toward UTF8. Without diving into the weeds, the linux utility "iconv" can translate strings of content pretty solidly. I have done a fair number of these conversions. The english alphabet, numbers, and common punctuation symbols are pretty clean. Windows introduced a "curly" version of quotes that will cause problems from time to time. Especially if someone wrote out their text in a Windows based editor, then copied it and pasted it into a post or article.

You can see what character encodings your version of MySQL supports with the query command "SHOW CHARACTER SET;" executed in a MySQL command shell. You will very likely find both latin1 and utf8 are already there. You have to remove them for them not to show up.


Cool, I'll be talking with our hosting guys Monday about this.
As long as I don't have to translate every field one at a time in the entire DB ...
Thanks!
 
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Last Edit: 2018/01/27 23:48 By BubbaKahuna.
 
This fits in here, right? I mean, I can make this fit in here ... right?

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#1028057
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 3 Weeks, 6 Days ago  
Thank You for your offer and help. I would be willing to help in anyway I can but I am not a Tech Guy. If there’s anything I can do to make this effort survive and excel I’m in. If you feel that funding will be needed then perhaps setting up a go fund me account or similar should be part of the strategy. Please feel free to contact me if there’s anything I can do to help make sure the clinic will survive
 
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#1028073
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 3 Weeks, 5 Days ago  
Tykes_Place wrote:
From what I've read about migrating away from Fireboard the database isn't the only issue. It's the platform. The RSC is currently uses Fireboard which is a forum software for Joomla. I'm not sure what version number of Fireboard, but our Joomla is 1.0.x.

The migration path for updating Fireboard is Kunena. Along the way of updating Fireboard to its incremental versions and then to Kunena, you'd also have to get to the correct versions of Joomla. Eventually getting to the current versions of both. I'm not even sure that you can still get the versions of Fireboard after 1.0.x.
To put this in layman's terms, the RSC is running on Windows 3.1 and it has to be upgraded one step at a time to Windows10

The migration may be possible, but with the amount of customization that Gram has done over the years I'm not sure it could be done without his help, which he doesn't have time for. And if anything had to drop along the way because of customizations that we couldn't unravel or versions that we couldn't deal with, then we might be forced to lose the things that we're trying to maintain in the first place.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm all for the path of least resistance. It's easy to get fired up now that the hammer is coming down. But I think that energy is going to drop off quickly. To survive that drop I think it will take multiple people that can commit the expertise and energy that Gram has provided for so long.

We'd have to deal with the server, its security and updates, Jooma, and Kunena. If anyone has system level expertise for all of that and is willing to volunteer their time for free then I'm on my way to but a lottery ticket.

IMHO it would be easier to get the community to raise funds to pay for a managed platform. Advertising could help. Hell, maybe we could have an commerce store selling branded stuff like shirts, patches, stickers, etc. With the amount of money we raised for the Eagles a couple of years ago we should be able to do something for ourselves.

As I stated in the other thread my choice would be to re-launch the RSC onto a new platform that is hosted and managed. That will cost money, but it will also be very hands off, allowing us to focus on branding, content, and the community. We should be able to move the old RSC to a server and let it rest their for archive purposes only. We should be able to put notifications and such on the archive that encourage people to go to the new and improved RSC.

While we're at the new version why not expand our audience to all Yamaha Cruisers? We're Roadstar focused but I know there's a lot of knowledge around VStars, Liners, Raiders, Royals, and maybe soon the Venture. Can't we all get along?


Darrell makes some very good points here. There is going to be a LOT of time and effort involved in updating the current RSC to a modern forum code. AND there is the possibility that some of the information could be lost forever. We will not have the assistance of Gram in this operation, if this is going to survive and THRIVE it is upon us to own this project and see it through. Jeff is stepping up BIG TIME and a huge thanks needs to go out to him and HIS BOSS for allowing the time on the clock for Jeff to proceed. But he wont be able to do it alone and it is not his responsibility to make the decisions going forward, it is OUR responsibility.

I read this post of Darrell's several days ago and have been pondering over it. I am also for the option of archiving the current RSC with access to all the content through a new RSC forum base. However what got me thinking about this post was the idea of expanding the RSC to all Star models. Imagine having a community forum where paying members can have access to all content, but instead of just having one domain Roadstarclinic.com we could have Royalstarclinic.com, Vstarclinic.com, Roadlinerclinic.com each having an individual identity but all tied to one central forum, a non paying member would only have access to their unique individual forum with heavy advertising. However with paid membership you get all access to all the forums and the central community forum for general information with only something like a banner ad at the bottom of the page.

This is just one idea, That will take effort and resources to implement and it wouldnt need to be all in one step, but as Darrel also mentioned the idea of a "hands off" managed site should really be considered, we ALL want the RSC to continue however very few of us have the technical skills to do the work and maintain it. Again the community can own it but no one would be responsible for the day to day actual maintenance of it as Gram and Doc have done over the years. This to me just makes sense whether we stay just the RSC or expand in the future.

We are a GREAT community here, the RSC motto is "you can do it" WE CAN DO IT people, so you wont see any whiny good bye's from me, I have believed from the first day I read Grams post back in November that this place is not going to die, so jump on board with the idea that this is just "curve ball" that life has thrown at us, but we aint strikin out!!

just my 1/2 pennies worth,
Rod
 
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#1028076
MidwestMike (User)
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 3 Weeks, 5 Days ago  
HotRodStar wrote:


...idea of expanding the RSC to all Star models. Imagine having a community forum where paying members can have access to all content, but instead of just having one domain Roadstarclinic.com we could have Royalstarclinic.com, Vstarclinic.com, Roadlinerclinic.com each having an individual identity but all tied to one central forum,

...with paid membership you get all access to all the forums and the central community forum for general information with only something like a banner ad at the bottom of the page.


Just my thoughts on what I like here, not a shot at any suggestions for the future.

One thing I really liked about this site is it it is just RoadStars.
(And it was so cool to tell people about the big Celina event. 75 of the same bikes. Not 75 touring bikes, 75 HDs, 75 Yamahas, but 75 ROADSTARS! (amazing how different they could all look too...))

Some of my other forums are screwy on how they break stuff out.
I have a Yamaha snowmobile forum that has each model broken up in to a section.
So discussions about common items such as tracks, suspension, electrical gets broken out to individual groups because there are two sizes of motors.
I quit going to the site, it like a bunch of separate forms, with separate people, and minimal overlap.

You should be able to post a track (or oil ) post in the General section, but no one does. They head to the section with their model and that is where they live.

Same thing with a Tahoe forum. They break it out to the years, models, accessory package until you're in a section with 3 other people.
The fun stuff (which tires, which oil ) does not end up in the general discussion because everyone is hitting their subsection.

(Picture this forum with sections for 1600, 1700, Midnights, Silverados, bagged, FI'd, etc. We'd never see each other.)

I'm thinking instead of someone asking about tires for cruiser Yamaha, they would hit the RS or Royal Star section, which is the type of bike they have, instead of putting it in the General.

As for paying to see all, might want to look at other options than to see multiple models in the forum, since most people will have only one model bike.

As for the banner ads, I feel bad that I had an ad-blocker going in the earlier.
It might have helped in the beginning if this was one of those sites that made you turn your ad-blocker off to view the pages.
As we realize now, it would have been a very small price to pay for what we have received.
 
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Last Edit: 2018/01/29 14:19 By MidwestMike.
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#1028078
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 3 Weeks, 5 Days ago  
MidwestMike wrote:


Just my thoughts on what I like here, not a shot at any suggestions for the future.

One thing I really liked about this site is it it is just RoadStars.
(And it was so cool to tell people about the big Celina event. 75 of the same bikes. Not 75 touring bikes, 75 HDs, 75 Yamahas, but 75 ROADSTARS! (amazing how different they could all look too...))

Some of my other forums are screwy on how they break stuff out.
I have a Yamaha snowmobile forum that has each model broken up in to a section.
So discussions about common items such as tracks, suspension, electrical gets broken out to individual groups because there are two sizes of motors.
I quit going to the site, it like a bunch of separate forms, with separate people, and minimal overlap.

You should be able to post a track (or oil ) post in the General section, but no one does. They head to the section with their model and that is where they live.

Same thing with a Tahoe forum. They break it out to the years, models, accessory package until you're in a section with 3 other people.
The fun stuff (which tires, which oil ) does not end up in the general discussion because everyone is hitting their subsection.

(Picture this forum with sections for 1600, 1700, Midnights, Silverados, bagged, FI'd, etc. We'd never see each other.)

I'm thinking instead of someone asking about tires for cruiser Yamaha, they would hit the RS or Royal Star section, which is the type of bike they have, instead of putting it in the General.

As for paying to see all, might want to look at other options than to see multiple models, since most people will have only one.

As for the banner ads, I feel bad that I had an ad-blocker going in the earlier.
It might have helped in the beginning if this was one of those sites that made you turn your ad-blocker off to view the pages.
As we realize now, it would have been a very small price to pay for what we have received.


Yes, yes, yes!
 
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#1028081
BubbaKahuna (User)
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 3 Weeks, 5 Days ago  
There's very little a website manager to do to completely circumvent Ad-Blockers, but you can add a gentle reminder.

Those who are running an ad-blocker might see a message about how blocking content hurts the website & it's availability.

Like this:



Another option could limit a viewer's ability to see content for more than 5 minutes or 5 pages (or any number) ...
Like this:


There are countless options for this.
None will matter if we don't get the site up with a new platform.

To do it right will probably mean taking the existing site down for a period of time, migrating it to another server + time to disable write functions in the existing forum software.
I would imagine that should also mean disabling all messaging functions, as well as purging email records from the old database. They could be exported for use by the new software but they would be a prime target for hackers if left in the original forum's DB. Hackers aren't interested in stealing content from a forum about fixing your bike, but all those emails are worth something to the unscrupulous. The old software is a heavily patched setup & starting fresh (and modern) would definitely be the most secure way to go on.

- Jeff
 
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Last Edit: 2018/01/29 14:32 By BubbaKahuna.
 
This fits in here, right? I mean, I can make this fit in here ... right?

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#1028084
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Re:Follow up: Options for RSC to continue 3 Weeks, 5 Days ago  
BubbaKahuna wrote:


To do it right will probably mean taking the existing site down for a period of time,...


That is something to that really needs to be thought about too. The longer it is down, the more chance of people not coming back.
Not that everyone doesn't want to, but gaps get filled.

We've seen a lot people say this is what they do first thing in the morning with their cup of coffee.
(or the posts we see the evening when we know there is more than coffee involved)

When the site is down they will look for something else during those times, and some might stick with what they find.
 
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