Website up time

[Jacko 2158]

Seems to be particularly flaky at the moment? Or is it just me... 

[M3AN 4016]

Not just you.

And there's the misconfiguration of the forum software, raised months ago.

And the lack of proper security certificates, also raised months ago.

Given the amount of free technical support and even cold hard cash that's been offered by members here it's pretty inexcusable really.

[KwS 2429]

I keep getting loads of 503 errors recently. Makes it almost not worth trying to come here.

[KillerX 40]

☝️ .Same here, getting really bad recently. Hackers will take the site over in the near future if this carries on ?

[Driftit 2093]

Feel free to contact Andrew about it.  James Watson is hosting the site at the moment.  But maybe someone more active would like to take over doing so.  I am not sure what their agreement is.

TBH the alternative for me would be to no longer participate in the community if the forum were to stop.  You could not pay me to use Facebook or other social media platforms.  So if you have time and the ability it would be much appreciated.

 

[M3AN 4016]

What we need is for the current administrators (i.e. not the proud folk that have "Admin" roles/status here and seem to do nothing at all helpful) to actually engage with the community to discuss this, it shouldn't be a binary us/them thing, I'm pretty sure with an open dialogue we can get this sorted.

Is it Ollie? James? Both of them? Get them to actually get online to let us know why they're struggling, we can probably help!!!! Feel free to tell them they're being irresponsible by not engaging and letting things go to sh*t.

 

[leichtbau 525]

"What would you say ya do here?"

[Jamez 2147483647]

I need to spend a night finishing off the HA failover setup but I just haven't found the time as of yet. In saying that it is currently hosted in multiple sites so if it goes down you can change your hosts file to 103.19.4.58 (from 101.100.136.17).

I tried enabling HTTPS from within the site a while ago but it breaks pretty much everything, again I need to spend a night going through everything to figure out why it it is broken at each point. I was hoping that I could just tuck it behind a proxy and leave the proxy to sort it out but from memory the issue was around 3rd party elements. The easiest fix is probably just going to be a new site theme (again more time).

I'll see if I can find some time to sort it out this month, but at the same time I am sure if someone wanted to acquire bimmersport and host it themselves then Ollie and Andrew would be more than happy to talk.

[Jamez 2147483647]

26 minutes ago, Jamez said:

I need to spend a night finishing off the HA failover setup but I just haven't found the time as of yet. In saying that it is currently hosted in multiple sites so if it goes down you can change your hosts file to 103.19.4.58 (from 101.100.136.17).

I tried enabling HTTPS from within the site a while ago but it breaks pretty much everything, again I need to spend a night going through everything to figure out why it it is broken at each point. I was hoping that I could just tuck it behind a proxy and leave the proxy to sort it out but from memory the issue was around 3rd party elements. The easiest fix is probably just going to be a new site theme (again more time).

I'll see if I can find some time to sort it out this month, but at the same time I am sure if someone wanted to acquire bimmersport and host it themselves then Ollie and Andrew would be more than happy to talk.

I've since removed the failing node from the cluster and ordered a replacement, this node accounted for nearly all the failures in the last year.

[M3AN 4016]

Thanks for the update @Jamez, it seems like the call to arms wasn't wasted after all Martin. ?

Lot's of people have offered technical assistance in the past James, many of them are still around, you don't need to do it all yourself, let us know what support you want.

We've also asked in the past what the site's non-functional requirements are, repository sizes, traffic, concurrent users, load etc because nowadays it's pretty simple to chuck these things in the cloud to look after themselves. Many people have offered to contribute to hosting fees but without the technical profile it's impossible to establish what those fees might be. If you can help with that info it would also be great. Invision has a cloud offering.

Do "we" renew the Invision on-prem license regularly? If so you're entitled to access their support which might help with some of the functional idiosyncrasies that have broken over the past months (condensed view for example). These should be easy to knock over with support tickets.

[Jamez 2147483647]

This thread hasn't done anything to change any timelines. I had planned to do the node swap last week but put my spare time towards sorting out a 2KCUP event that was organised at late notice.

I only host the site (among others) because it's a chance for me to try things out on something production like, for instance things I might use in a professional role and for this reason I don't charge bimmersport for the hosting.

You can probably now see how the above would work against sharing out the workload and dumping it in a simple cloud instance. The forum is updated but the theme is old, so with each bug fix the theme will become less and less feature rich as they deprecate functions etc etc.

[gjm 3258]

1 hour ago, Jamez said:

This thread hasn't done anything to change any timelines. I had planned to do the node swap last week but put my spare time towards sorting out a 2KCUP event that was organised at late notice.

I only host the site (among others) because it's a chance for me to try things out on something production like, for instance things I might use in a professional role and for this reason I don't charge bimmersport for the hosting.

You can probably now see how the above would work against sharing out the workload and dumping it in a simple cloud instance. The forum is updated but the theme is old, so with each bug fix the theme will become less and less feature rich as they deprecate functions etc etc.

Thanks James. ?

I've sent you a PM.

[M3AN 4016]

1 hour ago, Jamez said:

This thread hasn't done anything to change any timelines. I had planned to do the node swap last week but put my spare time towards sorting out a 2KCUP event that was organised at late notice.

I only host the site (among others) because it's a chance for me to try things out on something production like, for instance things I might use in a professional role and for this reason I don't charge bimmersport for the hosting.

You can probably now see how the above would work against sharing out the workload and dumping it in a simple cloud instance. The forum is updated but the theme is old, so with each bug fix the theme will become less and less feature rich as they deprecate functions etc etc.

It might not have changed the timelines but at least it's given us some engagement and visibility which was sorely lacking. ? Even a regular monthly update would be an improvement.

I'm not sure if you hosting the site for free so you can "try things out on something production like" is good value though, that actually sounds like a disaster waiting to happen! It seems that a consequence of that "free" arrangement is that the site is a slave to your availability and that doesn't appear to be a reliable operating model, regardless of your best intentions.

Your last sentence highlights the benefits of using a hosted solution, we wouldn't be negatively impacted every time things change, and you wouldn't have to keep up with changes which seems difficult because of your other commitments.

I suspect there are enough potential sponsors and donors here to make hosting the site "free" for Ollie anyway, and with the benefit of more effective maintenance and production support. If you share the non-functionals with us we can work out the most cost-effective operating model. I think you need to be open to the possibility of either more technical assistance or a different hosting arrangement because there's clearly a bottleneck that needs addressing with the current model. Hopefully your PM discussion with Graham will surface some of those opportunities.

As I've said to Graham, yourself in the past, and other interested parties, there are many willing and able to help and many with $ to contribute. But nobody will likely invest in the current admin situation, it's broken.

[BreakMyWindow 1878]

1 hour ago, M3AN said:

It might not have changed the timelines but at least it's given us some engagement and visibility which was sorely lacking. ? Even a regular monthly update would be an improvement.

I'm not sure if you hosting the site for free so you can "try things out on something production like" is good value though, that actually sounds like a disaster waiting to happen! It seems that a consequence of that "free" arrangement is that the site is a slave to your availability and that doesn't appear to be a reliable operating model, regardless of your best intentions.

Your last sentence highlights the benefits of using a hosted solution, we wouldn't be negatively impacted every time things change, and you wouldn't have to keep up with changes which seems difficult because of your other commitments.

I suspect there are enough potential sponsors and donors here to make hosting the site "free" for Ollie anyway, and with the benefit of more effective maintenance and production support. If you share the non-functionals with us we can work out the most cost-effective operating model. I think you need to be open to the possibility of either more technical assistance or a different hosting arrangement because there's clearly a bottleneck that needs addressing with the current model. Hopefully your PM discussion with Graham will surface some of those opportunities.

As I've said to Graham, yourself in the past, and other interested parties, there are many willing and able to help and many with $ to contribute. But nobody will likely invest in the current admin situation, it's broken.

Make an offer to buy it, appoint your own admins then everyones happy.

[M3AN 4016]

27 minutes ago, BreakMyWindow said:

Make an offer to buy it, appoint your own admins then everyones happy.

This isn't about ownership, it's about poor administration, Admin. There's a bunch of us that want to make the site administration better, if you're all for that then perhaps live up to your title and contribute something helpful. If, on the other hand, you're satisfied with the status quo then fly that flag but stay out of the discussion, your puerile comments don't help improve the situation, nor do they enhance the conversation (or your reputation for that matter).

Edit: o/t but it's interesting that the emoticon changed in the quote, conflicting unicode?

Edited September 15, 2020 by M3AN

[BreakMyWindow 1878]

30 minutes ago, M3AN said:

This isn't about ownership, it's about poor administration, Admin. There's a bunch of us that want to make the site administration better, if you're all for that then perhaps live up to your title and contribute something helpful. If, on the other hand, you're satisfied with the status quo then fly that flag but stay out of the discussion, your puerile comments don't help improve the situation, nor do they enhance the conversation (or your reputation for that matter).

Edit: o/t but it's interesting that the emoticon changed in the quote, conflicting unicode?

It is actually about ownership and leadership, Karen.

The owners of Bimmersport are looking for someone to take over - That includes administration, hosting etc etc. the whole shebang. It is no skin off of my nose if i’m a good admin or not. This is a free to its members forum forf**k sakes. How about appreciating for a change that a lot of hard work has gone in to keeping this forum running over the years.
 

So If you’re up for that challenge then reach out to the owners. But to me it sounds like you just want to pick and choose where to add “value” Dave which is not the main issue here.

[Blackie 510]

I'm happy to contribute with both time and money. I expressed interest way back when but no one replied to my message. Also, happy to admin as some sound a bit burnt out and need a break.

[BreakMyWindow 1878]

Here’s the link to what the owners are looking for in new ownership and leadership. So if there’s people or a person who thinks they can handle it... Talk to the owners.