Xm Forum Access Problems, Help required please!!!

The images etc won't cause anymore DB bloat than text would, as they're not hosted on this site, and are pulled in remotely from Photobucket etc, by the client's browser, it places no extra load on the Club-XM server.

That said, while this site has experienced a very welcome burst of activity these past few years, it is small fry compared to some forums I've run in the past, with some of them having maybe 10-20,000 posts a month. So in comparison, yes we have been busy, but its not even pushing a fraction of what the software and database should be capable of.

Ciarán

Where would you start copying files from!?

The very nature of the wealth of information and hard won experience is so vast yet this
is the reason for the forum's true value/benefit to newcomers and regular contributors!?
I realise the hints and fixes section is a starting point but IIRC xmexclusive and PeterN
have around 6k posts between them...

I wouldn't count the 2k of my ramblings as only about 5% is probably any use to anyone!

Andrew

TBH its messy to do unless you have the co-operation of the current webmaster.

If you did it without, the biggest hurdle would be the loss of the user accounts, everyone would have to re-register. There are ways of downloading the publicly accessibly forum posts and their content into offline storage using some 3rd party utilities, however this wouldn't be in any format thats easily exportable to a new forum database.

Ciarán

So if the forum is actually not even stretching the software and being in danger of asking
a silly question, without getting all deep and techy, what's actually wrong here at the moment
and could it be improved or does this require the involvement of ChrisL? Is it the physical
hardware with a flaky database?

Andrew

Basically, the database query which retrieves the information for the forum list / summary, e.g name, number of posts, last poster etc, is failing for some reason.

This may be due to a corrupt table, a column which has lost its index or other property, any number of reasons. The fact the rest of it is working and the main body of posts accessible, means it can't be too serious. However, its still something which requires direct access to the server to fix.

/EDIT: Upon reading the the SQL output, it would appear the table ibf_forums had lost its 'ID' column, which results in the join failing as it tries to link in with lbf_moderators and retrieve the moderator's name for each individual forum.

Ciarán

This post has been edited by Ciaran on March 29, 2009 11:55 pm

Well given the length of time the site has been down now, I think this raises serious concerns about long term arrangements. I know that Noz has been told the site is down, but not having access to the server I believe he will be unable to do anything about it.

After this I do believe that Chris needs to reconsider whether he is able to continue hosting the site. It may well be he is unaware it is down, or uncontactable, but maybe we need to seriously look at alternate arrangements being put in place, be that other individuals being given Chris' contact details, or if possible, they (and / or Noz) being given access to the server, so that support could be provided if this happens again.

If that can't be enacted, I believe we should look at moving the site to alternate hosting / setting up a new site.

Anyone concur?

Ciarán

Hi all,
I've been looking at the feasability of having our own website too and have an expert ready to set up a page for me for free, but we would need a server and address of our own.
Chris is involved with about 15 sites hosted by him through xeon-publishing, his servers looks like they are based in California, he also owns Club-xm.uk and his site uses Invision Power Source for it's content, all of which would cost quite a bit of cash! We could do ours through Website Palace and use vBulletin for the content, vBulletin have lots of templates similar to Invision, and it is free to download.
A server is just a good PC but best with a Raid array system and lots of power and once setup it should work away on it's own with a little expert maintenance of coarse. The hosting of these cost up around £85.00 P/Mth but can host 15 sites.
My friend would host it for a little while if required, this would be in Denmark. She says a webpage would cost about £25.00 and I think thats an annual charge, I have seen some in my PC mags for as little as £4.00 but don't know how big we would need it to be. and by the way, I have my doubts about Chris Little giving us any content!
I would hope that Noz will have a lot of the old content backed up but maybe each of us could go in and print all our posts out ready for compiling into a new server, although that would be hard graft!
Regards.
Bob Halliday.

As much as it pains me, the only CURRENT option that I can see is this or FCF.

Unless I'm (happily) proved wrong, this does look like the way things are going to remain
now on www.club-xm.com so unless someone contacts Chris (I thought the surname was
Light?) via the pm in this site we have very few alternatives.

We can either live with this half baked dead on it's feet forum* or go elsewhere whether
that's on the FrenchCarForum where at least funding is assured and all up front with Jim
being very proacxtive and positive for the long term future of the forum,

or

a new mk2 version is set up though the costs will be high as the current existing club-xm
contributors are a bit thin on the ground here at the moment and clearly word on FCF
hasn't brought many back so uptake and awareness of a new site would be minimal/slow.

It's all a sad mess knowing how strong/busy and loved/respected the forum has been lately.

Andrew

*in it's current limited incarnation!!

This post has been edited by Andmcit on April 07, 2009 08:08 am

While it is still possible to send a message to another member, I can't see any way that they would be able to receive it, I think the message part of the forum is down at the moment, I certainly can't get into my messages.

As I don't know the first thing about web hosting I can't offer any suggestions as to what to do next, but I do think we should be considering our options..........

Hi Bob,

I actually have a server based over in the UK which is sitting doing nothing, that could take a site and forum like this with no bother. The issue is, and you've hit the nail on the head, the content.

Say Chris doesn't reappear in the short to medium term, we would be faced with the decision of whether to start completely afresh with a completely empty new site, or hold on in the hope that we may be able to export some of the content from this site.

I'd be quite happy to setup a new site and forum, but I wouldn't do it without the support of users here, as its not going to do anything to improve the situation, and would just cause a split in an already dwindled userbase if Chris did return.

Hopefully he will be back imminiently and correct the database problem, making all of this a non-issue, but in the meantime, how long do we wait around before making a decison?

Has anyone else any opinions on this?

Ciarán

Hi Again,
You are wrong in thinking it's going to cost the earth!!! Most of the stuff is free. The main cost is a Domain name. about £25 for a couple of years. A webpage to host the content, PC Space to use as a server and someone to put all the free software together. I wish Noz could let us know what he knew about it all but I know he is pretty busy just now. the biggest problem is all the lost data and getting all the members together again.
I have plenty of space on my PC, well 250Gb Sata HDD free for now, I've not done a Webpage for about 20 years but my Danish friend taught it in a Swedish University for ages and teachs privately now, and is offering to put it together for me free. The only problem I see is the membership data, We can only see the user names! No phone, email or PM available to us.
The registrant is:-
C A Light
Xeon-Publishing
70 sedlescome Road South
St Leonards on sea
East Sussex TN38 0TJ
Tel 01424718200

I actually have a domain name that might work....

Club-XM.co.uk anyone?

And yes, cost isn't really an issue, I've hosted many sites and the only ones that end up causing an issue are those with massive amounts of traffic, something which this site doesn't suffer from thankfully.


Ciarán

Hi Ciaran.
The best man to talk to about all this has to be Noz! He had some administration rights with the site and I believe he may have some backed up data.
Personally I think the site has been removed because it is being torn down bit by bit, at first I could read all the posts but now I can't even see my own old posts, none of mine were a lot of good anyway, but some posts were better than any service repair manual I've ever seen.
If you could setup and run a forum with Norrie's blessing I would be quite glad to contribute to the yearly costs, as I think most of the members would too, but please try and talk with Noz first.
Regards.
Bob. bobhalliday@live.co.uk

Hi Bob,

As far as I was aware, Norrie had access to the forum administration only, and not the backend server. I may be wrong, but I would suspect that if he had had the appropriate access, this mess would have been sorted out weeks ago.

Must drop him a wee line and see.

Do you happen to know his email address? I have an old Freeserve one for him but not sure if its still current.

Cheers

Ciarán

It would be a real shame to lose this forum, i have not the first idea of websites or hating and such like, so i cant comment. However would it not be possible for a more active member of the forum to have control over it.

We did have a thread recently about forum costs, i think most people said they would be happy to contribute if it meant keeping this site running.

The FCF is a great forum, however it is not very Xm orientated. Its more of a Xantia and C5 forum than anything else. Xm threads are quite slow.

I have always thought the FCF could be made better, the Active section is a good idea, but we should have a Xm, Xantia, C5 etc etc sections. I know there is another citroen forum with a section for each model. However that forum is very slow with few regular topics.

Maybe if this forum should disappear we could request a Xm Area over there, and direct clib-xm members to that. That way we can keep our Xm chat (which does get off topic most of the time - one great thing about this forum!) separate from the 'Citroen' area.