Website: Preparations for the long haul

[doublespaces]

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry I've been mostly away for the last couple of years, I've been working for a startup in the computer vision AI field and .... well... They have REALLY needed my help, I'll just leave it at that...

Anyway I've not been able to participate as much as I used to and as the audience and board continue to age, I want to make sure the forum, it's content, and it's core features remain in tact for the long haul. I still take a daily backup of the database and store it in a separate physical server than the one which serves this board so the comments and posts being made are still being archived.

One of the changes I wanted to explain is that I intend to scale back some of the customizations to the site, such as the 'front page' which I've neglected severely as well as some of the theming on the forum. The reasoning for this is because the base software (XenForo) continues to receive updates but these sorts of modifications require continued customization, tweaking, and development to maintain. The 'front page' is actually a customization of a commercial addon by another company. So it's basically a hack so it works the way I wanted it to, and therefore it has two dependencies and trying to do the product management for this and a variety of the other addons this site uses (Over 30 are currently installed) is not something I feel that I can continue to maintain. I want the site to run the latest software and in order to do that, I need to simplify the site a bit.

So going forward, if you see some changes, it's probably just me trying to make the site more light weight, and also probably shedding some of the non core content (N54/N55 have been the heart of this forum from day 1) and bringing that content to the surface. We still run the site from a huge dedicated server in a datacenter in Tempe Arizona, and I will likely announce a change in that area in the coming future as well since that is entirely overkill.

Anyway, I still see some names on here that have been here since the beginning (as in the very first week the site was online) and I appreciate everyone's participation in what I dedicated years trying to develop with all of you, as a passion project first and foremost. I still have my car, I keep swearing to people I will finish tinkering on it so expect me to be back at some point.

Please feel free to message me if you have any feedback about the site, by way of suggestions, critique etc.

 

[wheela]

Just wanted to say thank you, I greatly appreciate everything you do to keep this great place running

 

[Lurcher]

Went though this same thing over at bimmerboards.com (E38 focused from the beginning) - do what you have to do. Forums are tough work - and thanks!

 

[doublespaces]

Just wanted to say thank you, I greatly appreciate everything you do to keep this great place running

Lately, it hasn't been much, but some of these things needed done from a security and disaster recovery stand point.

Went though this same thing over at bimmerboards.com (E38 focused from the beginning) - do what you have to do. Forums are tough work - and thanks!

Yes, particularly these days. I hit a magic combination of momentum with the Facebook groups and reputation from other forums which helped inject some viewership that made growing a web forum possible. Even today, I wouldn't recommend anyone try to start one, it's just way too difficult to get the heart beat going.

I still operate a lot of Facebook groups, not very well admittedly, but I still have a large presence there something like a hundred groups or so? But in terms of my personal interaction, it will still primarily be on web forums like this where more technical conversations can occur and are also seen as contributions as the posts appear in search results instead of disappearing into the social media abyss, only to be asked again a few days later.