Thanks for getting the forum back up and running

[rollmeupabe]

Chuck, sorry to see the great things about the internet age bring along some baggage like hackers. This site is fantastic and one of the features that elevates it from good to fantastic is the forum. I have learned more here than I ever would have by trying to read books. And the availability of the information here does a lot to keep me interested in the hobby. Is there anything we can do as users to help out?

[Mike]

I'll second that rollmeupabe.
If you need help Chuck Email me. If you need to raise $ for site improvements let me know. I'd be happy to help. How about a fund raiser we could donate some dup's and auction them off? I sure would hate to loss the forum.

Mike

[coppercoins]

The biggest problem isn't actually money - it's the vulnerability of security. Nothing brings on the hackers like popularity and interactivity...any time you have the chance to change the data on a site, you are interacting with it. If you can change the data by posting a message, there has to be a level of authorization you have with the native data stored on the server. With that being the case, some idiots (actually very intelligent idiots, if there can be such a thing) have found ways to take advantage of the authorization to scope out what they can destroy just for fun. It happens every day to other sites that take in vast amounts of money and do business online.

Fortunately this site hasn't been the victim of daily hacks...but even a monthly surprise attack can catch me off guard and cause hours, or even days of frustration. The biggest reason we were down so many days is because this outage occurred the morning I was to leave for Kansas City to catch my flight to Orlando. I simply didn't have the time to fix it before I left, so it had to wait until I came home.

The fix wasn't all that difficult and only took a couple of hours...but that was a couple of hours I cannot afford to lose monthly. I understand its importance and see and appreciate all of the participation. If it hadn't been for that much, I wouldn't even have tried to bring it back up and keep it running. It's only because I know it is an important part of the site that I spent the time to get it back up.

I'm not sure what to do for the future of the forum. Change products, change servers, or leave it like it is and deal with it...any way you look at it we will be attacked again, it's only a matter of when and how often. Not something any of us look foreward to.

Enjoy and don't worry about it. In the end I hope to be able to make all the right decisions and do what's right for the people who make this site what it is...you.

[pennyhound]

Very glad to see it back online ... means alot to us all.

Cheers Chuck