(RFD) Amiga.org's future

[the_leander]

Hi Wayne, sorry in a way to see the old girl go, however, if you're on the lookout for possible candidates for a new cms (I remember your comments to me about what a pig xoops was to work with), have you considered e107?

I've used it on a couple of sites and found it to be very robust and easy to use.

[the_leander]

whoosh777 wrote:


this is probably an ignorant suggestion,

but if the problem is the dependency on PHP 4,

couldnt you just change the host? :-D

The problem is that support for PHP 4 is ending, meaning any security issues that crop up from this point foward will not be addressed by the maintainers as they have in the past.

Do you remember what happened to this place when it was running on PHP nuke prior to the great shutdown? Do you?

whoosh777 wrote:
the version of Xoops may be legacy but the usage is
STILL ahead of what PC users :madashell: use

Care to supply a citation for that?

whoosh777 wrote:
its not what you have, but what you do with what you
have that matters. PCs today are more powerful than
my uni mainframe, but the performance is worse than
the Amiga 500. eg XP can only have at most 26 partitions
as they label these A, B, C, ... Z AND you can only
have a maximum of 4 bootable partitions per drive, as even
2009 mobos dont support booting from logical partitions.

if you go beyond 26 partitions on Windows eg insert
an extra flash drive then it cannot be used until
you relabel from another labelled partition.


But the earliest Amiga HD's had an UNLIMITED number of
partitions and an UNLIMITED number of boot partitions.

All very interesting and utterly pointless in this discussion. And quite frankly, I'll take 3 or 4 partitions on a one Terabyte drive over 50 on a 4Gb drive or whatever the limitation is now.

None of this changes the fact that the site must move on. :roll:

whoosh777 wrote:
On the Amiga you can do accent symbols eg é

as alt-f e  but try googling for how you do that with
XP, its very complicated

é is Alt-Gr E. (right hand alt key.) Very complicated indeed!

whoosh777 wrote:
Alternatively if you set up your own server you
could install the necessary legacy dependencies,

but I know nothing about rolling your own server!

It's a ball ache, it's expensive, but most of all, it doesn't solve the fundamental issue that the site would as time went on become more and more vulnerable to hacking and or other mischief.

Also, and let's be clear here. Wayne has run this site for the better part of a decade now, he could have pulled the plug long ago and there were times in this little soap operas history where he could have done so justifiably. But he didn't. He catered to a tiny, fractious and in some cases downright nasty community far beyond what most people would have done, he held the line whilst most others dropped by the wayside.

Technology moves on. So suck it up.

[the_leander]

adz wrote:

the_leander wrote:

Also, and let's be clear here. Wayne has run this site for the better part of a decade now, he could have pulled the plug long ago and there were times in this little soap operas history where he could have done so justifiably. But he didn't. He catered to a tiny, fractious and in some cases downright nasty community far beyond what most people would have done, he held the line whilst most others dropped by the wayside.

Technology moves on. So suck it up.

As always, well said! :mickeymouse:

TY :-D

You know I've been thinking that when I go on a rant like that I need a image saying something like "The Leander's seal of finality" or something  :lol:

[the_leander]

whoosh777 wrote:

I dont remember as I wasnt there!

maybe you are inventing the event!

The great reboot was the moment that Amiga.org went from PHPNuke to Xoops. It was done after multiple hack attacks, indeed, it was thanks to those hacks that I first learned of Goatse!

whoosh777 wrote:
Your argument then is not about compatibility but
about security?

It is both, one cannot maintain backwards compatability indefinately. At some point you have to move with the times.

whoosh777 wrote:
the only alternative options to what has been said
then are eg to port Firefox to 68k-AmigaOS

Or, you know, use a computer that's standards compliant online and keep the Amiga for things it was actually good at.

or I dont know if CSS can be done via an IBrowse plugin
which would then need to be coded or ported.

whoosh777 wrote:
yes:

typical x86 forum thread:

http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=10108

which has more impressive graphics?

this thread or that thread,
and you can select out any other thread from
that forum

Good lord. That is the sum total of your argument?

I won't even dignify that.

whoosh777 wrote:
I think Amiga users often are fighting an imaginary
enemy, they imagine that Windows users are
in some sort of computer paradise.

in fact they are in a computer hell!

And they imagine that Microsoft are out to
get all competitor systems,

whoosh777 wrote:


AHA, FALSE ARGUMENT,

because you can have an unlimited number of boot partitions
with a Terabyte on AmigaOS.

And yours is any less false? Seriously, if the sum total of your basis for keeping this site in some form of backwater is "unlimited boot partitions" then I'm sorry but you fail.

NOPE, disinformation,

I tried just now on XP with Firefox, Internet Explorer AND Qedit,

and in all 3 cases Alt-Gr E causes the Edit menu to open,
doesnt cause any char to appear!

Tried on Vista, Xandros, Elive and Zeta 1.2. (with the default en-uk keymap out of win2k pro) ALL OF THEM produce é.

Come back when you get a clue, or an unstuffed computer.

whoosh777 wrote:


well as you know all the answers maybe you should
run the site!

No interest. As I stated, most people would have walked away from this sometimes psychotic little userbase for the crap that has been thrown his way.

whoosh777 wrote:
You say its expensive but I bet you dont know!

Oooh, you want to play do you?

Ok... Run your own server. Initial outlay for a decent server... Lets say a nice little 2 way x86 system, and to save costs a linux distro. You're still looking at around £1000 including spares, ups etc.

Then the line... Even for 2Mbit SDSL you're looking at £100 a month (Eclipse business broadband) and I seriously doubt that would be even close to the needs of this site during peek hours.

Oh and of course, this assumes you live in an area where you could get a decent line in.

If you go with your own server plugged into a datacentre you are then stuck where you are now - at the mercy of the inevitable march of the upgrades.

whoosh777 wrote:
you could only know for sure if you have set up your
own server, please tell what the URL is for your
own server!

Wrong. I could only know if I actually researched it myself. I don't have to BUY it to know the costs involved!

whoosh777 wrote:
BTW using Windows FUD wont work on me as I have
3 PCs all with XP, one I built myself,

and I have installed 32 and 64 bit Linuxes,
Fedora Core and Ubuntu, and built a brand new
tower system with XP SP3 a few weeks ago for
some relatives.

I used to build PCs for a living, most recently I helped setup a winXP system with SP3 for Gadgetmaster by way of a thankyou for a nice meal, but building them on my own I was still installing XP mostly (a few win2k boxen as well). My knowledge includes Windows (1.0 - Vista), Solaris (on sparc), linux (32 and 64bit) Freebsd, openbsd, netbsd, BeOS, Zeta.

And by knowledge, I mean at least 2 years day to day usage of all of those OS's in either a desktop or server environment (with the exception of Vista, which I've had access to only for the last 12 months).

Currently I run Xandros, Elive, Zeta and Vista.

whoosh777 wrote:
thus if you make any assertions I will test them out
directly, your tricks may work on others

I tend to take the view that people generally judge others on the basis of how they themselves behave.

[the_leander]

buzz wrote:
Drupal would do the job as would some other CMS/portal systems. I would move with the times and go for modern standards compliant xhtml/css.

I'm not sure you "need" to pay for a forum. There are plenty of decent enough free ones. However if you prefer then it is your choice.

I would think the easiest option would be to move to a newer xoops though surely ?

I think (and Wayne, feel free to correct me on this) that xoops in terms of maintainance and configuration is, at least as Wayne has described it to me, to be a royal pain to operate. It was on that basis that I avoided it when I began my (abortive) work on DTN. I went with e107 instead and found it to be an impressive performer that was very easy to work with, the built in forum was especially good. I looked at Drupal and others but tbh I didn't much like them for various reasons.

[the_leander]

buzz wrote:

(drupal is in a completely different league - don't go from initial visual "appearance").

At the time I needed something that offered a decent forum base with the minimum amount of setup time. Drupal might have offered something more, but the amount of work I would have had to put in to get there was far more then I was willing or able to spend.

I remember one of Waynes key critisms was that configuration was, rather then a single file, a huge collection of files dotted randomly about the place, making building a custom site a swine.

[the_leander]

whoosh777 wrote:
@leander:

you should follow the thread and to keep on topic

You took some days to reply which suggests you went
to research the questions AFTER my post!

Orrr, it could be that I only visit the site once every few days... Some people, like myself have a life outside of the internet. You should try it some time.

whoosh777 wrote:
its all very well if there are newer versions
of everything, but if the end result is less
effective SO WHAT if the underlying software is
out of date?

For some things it doesn't matter, for other things, such as running a website, it does. I for one, do not wish to see this site hacked in the way its PHPNuke predecessor was.

whoosh777 wrote:

this is off topic, but it is you who are
INCOMPATIBLE using a UK keyboard.

THE STANDARD is the US keyboard,

Citation please.

whoosh777 wrote:
 and unfortunately for you
what I said is TRUE for THE STANDARD, THE US KEYBOARD.

I'm sorry, but UK English is the standard I use. ALT-GR E produces é. And until you can prove that the US keyboard is "The standard" as opposed to an ISO, for instance. Then the point stands. Can't help it if America bludgeoned the English language am afraid.

whoosh777 wrote:
You dont seriously expect the 5.4 billion people who
dont live in the UK to use a UK keyboard???

Strawman.

whoosh777 wrote:
from someone arguing about compatibility I find that
astonishing!

LULWUT?

This thread was about moving off of Xoops due to compatability issues with php5, not some retarded point about international keymaps!

whoosh777 wrote:

you took a really long time to reply,

been desperately researching the question? :lol:

Hardly. I don't visit the site daily. The information was pooled together about 18 months ago when I looked into options when I first came up with the idea for a website. Things changed dramatically in the mean time. I have a life away from the internet.

You aren't nearly important enough to spend days and days looking into solutions that have no impact on me one way or another. Now if Wayne said "Hook me up with a great idea" I would do my best to honour the request.

whoosh777 wrote:
all that proves is there are expensive ways to do it,
and it appears you live in the UK otherwise why use
a uk-keyboard? but Wayne probably
is in the US where it is likely to be a lot cheaper,
eg all the cheap hosting tends to be in the US.

Appears, probably... That's you all over, isn't it chum?

whoosh777 wrote:
you see if you found a cheap way to do it you wouldnt
tell us as you are a no-can-do person!

There are cheeper options, but none of them offer anything over what Wayne has now for hosting. You suggested running it as a standalone from home. I pointed out the costs involved in that for a site this popular. This isn't some little text only pet project.

As it stands this site is close to being orphaned, your suggestions to mitigate this were and are bunk. Its underlying framework replaced with something incompatible with the currently used XOOPS and Wayne's suggestion of vBulitin is quite a nifty solution for transfering, that also has the option of being very easy to then transfer over to a different more powerful CMS in the future.

whoosh777 wrote:


not necessarily, as your research may be deficient!

these things are COMPLETELY different for each country,
I doubt you have researched the entire planet,

Don't be absurd. I don't live in each country on the entire planet. My research into possible options was based on a project I undertook for myself. I used that experience as the basis for my rebuttal. You in turn have used ad hominim attacks and strawman arguments from the moment I pointed out some faults in your plans whilst completely ignoring the points made to your original suggestions.

SDSL whilst cheeper in the US, is still a damn sight more expensive then what is offered by Wayne's current setup and introduces a great many extra issues into the bargain.

whoosh777 wrote:
also this is the internet and you can say anything at all!
:-D

I can. I don't have to though. Also, Ad hom.

whoosh777 wrote:
you could have googled for "installed a lot of PCs"
and just cut and paste what someone else said!

Then that shouldn't be too difficult to prove, should it?

Oh, and another Adhominim.  

whoosh777 wrote:
the main rule I follow is NEVER believe a naysayer!

and you, my friend are a naysayer

Adhominim.

whoosh777 wrote:
as far as compatibility goes I would say the only
systems that count are XP, Vista and Ubuntu

Elive is debian based, in fact it's litterally just debian using the E17 desktop. In terms of compatability, it's closer to the original debian sources then Ubuntu is. Xandros is manky. Zeta (using the win2k pro keymap file, litterally copied out of the win2k install media) is perfectly valid as a comparason in this instance, unless you consider win2k, which many many businesses still use to be invalid, of course...

the_leander wrote:

whoosh777 wrote:
thus if you make any assertions I will test them out
directly, your tricks may work on others

I tend to take the view that people generally judge others on the basis of how they themselves behave. :lol:

no idea what that is supposed to mean.

That much has been obvious from the beginning.

[the_leander]

buzz wrote:
There is an "advanced forum" module also that has a more familiar feature set out of the box (it uses the core forum and other contrib modules).

This is relevant to my interests.

Would you be able to point me to a site using the advanced forum to check out?

[the_leander]

whoosh777 wrote:
Lots of justifying of his attitude complete without actually addressing the point being made

Having run a number of small and medium websites, even operating my own mp3 streaming server (with http front end) for 7 years, I am well aware of "what a server does".

Perhaps instead of implying people are lying to you when your ideas are shown up as sub optimal, you should look into why. Afterall, verifying one way or the other would take scant moments in this digital age. Stop trying to get others to do your work for you.

TL;DR

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Facepalm

Because expressing how dumb that was in words just doesn't work

[the_leander]

buzz wrote:
@someone else about advanced forums:

there is a demo http://socnet.shellmultimedia.com/forum
but im sure it coul dbe made prettier. but I guess it gives an idea of some of the functionality. Cheers

That was me, cheers!

I guess I'll have to re-evaluate Drupal.