# DIY Electric Car Community Crisis - Discuss Our Future Options, Your Opinion Matters



## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

I've posted this in the Conversion forum for best visibility.

Skip the summary if it's too long for you, but use this thread to discuss the future of these forums. Even if you're frustrated, please check back here to see and/or contribute to the community's future once in a while.

(Note, I have no authority, I'm just doing what I can to handle some administrative coordination by getting us all on the same page).

*Crisis Summary:*

1 - 3 years ago, the founder of this forum sold/gave/transferred ownership to a company called "Vertical Scope" out of Toronto. This was because he didn't have time or skill to keep it running as best he could. Vertical Scope is a brand that hosts (has bought up) dozens of mostly car-related forums. Vertical Scope committed to making daily visits, "keeping the lights on" and using their claimed technical expertise for everything to run smoothly. In exchange, they would be monetizing the forums with ads and data tracking its users.

Here is a link to the thread if you want to read more: https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98898

2 - I think most people have noticed that, basically no improvements were ever done, things continued running as was, but, nothing ever got added.

3 - A little over 3 weeks ago, Vertical Scope attempted to transfer all of their forums from self-hosted to some Google hosted platform which they say was to make security and hosting easier for them. They also turned it to HTTPS instead of HTTP (the extra "S" being "Secure", or encrypted). They did this without letting anyone in our community know.

4 - Among other minor technical glitches, immediately, the last year of the database (from about July 1 2017 to July 1 2018) vanished. All threads and all content is gone.

5 - The "Garage" section here, where people document and list their builds, also vanished.

6 - Any pictures hosted from an unsecure URL (most of them) have since been blocked, historic posts too.

7 - Despite numerous attempts to contact them, no one from Vertical Scope even gave us a courtesy post/announcement to acknowledge the massive errors. No apology, no explanation, nothing, until I basically called them out and shamed them into doing so 10 days after the event. You can read the shaming thread here: https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=197943

8 - For those unaware, this is not how you migrate a database in the industry. This is not normal. You normally, first, inform your customers that there is a change planned and what expected outages might be, you let them know to keep an eye on issues, and you build the new site and test it *before* switching over and launching it. You ensure you have the resources on hand to deal with inevitable technical hiccups. And you certainly don't avoid talking to your customers for weeks and pretend like it's not happening. You don't bring literally very service you have offline, and just hope nothing happens. 
_This is kind of like being a landlord with 50 properties at the top of a hill, loading everything every one of your tenants owns into carts without asking, then pointing them at new homes at the bottom of the hill shoving them all down the hill at the same time and then saying "We couldn't have anticipated this! Please be patient, we only have 3 people to pick all this stuff up! Sorry, there's also a river down there, some of it might be gone. Oh, and your new homes are still under construction."_

9 - Vertical Scope has finally acknowledged there is a problem. Their explanation is that they made this change for all their forums at the same time and don't have the technical capacity to fix anything in a timely manner, because the did it to dozens of forums at the same time, not just ours. Their solution is "please be patient we're sorry."

10 - Repeated attempts to find the answer to the question of whether they even bothered to make regular (or even just 1) backup prior to migration, have gone unanswered or been talked around. Simple yes or no answers about whether it exists have been avoided.

11 - As of the time of first posting, it's been nearly 3 weeks with zero issues fixed.

12 - Vertical Scope has taken the time to add new advertising structure to the (broken) forums.

...

*Where do we go from here?:*

- Who knows what technical issues are ahead, what content was lost, if it will ever come back. Regardless, can we trust Vertical Scope to continue managing this community?

- Some users are abandoning the forums temporarily.

- Some users are abandoning the forums somewhat permanently.

- Some users are calling for a migration of users to another suitable forum and abandoning this one.

- Some users are calling for a creation of a new forum to replace this one.

- Some users are calling for Vertical Scope to turn the community back over to itself to host/manage because of their not only colossal mistake, but their extraordinarily unprofessional conduct around (not) fixing it. The ownership isn't specifically clear.

...

*Please Share Your Thoughts*

My personal preference is to keep the momentum these forums have built over the last 10 years and to ask or shame Vertical Scope into handing it back over to run it ourselves. Several community members have volunteered to handle the technical side, and the paltry hosting expense every year could be handled by an annual hat-passing donation drive (it's only dozens or low-hundred dollars a year).

(I might edit this post in the future to clear up any misconceptions).


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## ptandjb (Sep 26, 2017)

I am coming back in after several months absence, noted my previous posts about my uncle's EV project appear as the titles, but content has disappeared, will completely report updated information shortly.


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## SWF (Nov 23, 2007)

I am not a prolific poster but I've been a member since 2007 and I have found the information on the forum very helpful.  It would be a shame to lose it.

I have been posting occasional updates on my latest conversion project, but now I am in the wait and see stage since half the posts are missing. If the site host is not able to fully restore all the missing content for everyone, then I may consider adding detailed updates about my project to my blog page and then cross-post here.

If members are able to take over hosting, I would be perfectly happy to contribute to purchase and annual costs.


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## Meni Menindorf (Mar 17, 2018)

Thank you for taking the lead on this Matt! 



I'm just noticing your post now, because I became extremely disgruntled/disappointed/lost when most of my Winnebago conversion thread disappeared. 



Is there a place where the good people who were lending their time and expertise to discuss projects and help us newbs are going to regather???


Is it time to move to a new url? 



Do we have any legal recourse to recover the data within this forum from Vertical Scope and move elsewhere?


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

> I'm just noticing your post now, because I became extremely disgruntled/disappointed/lost when most of my Winnebago conversion thread disappeared.


My entire build thread also disappeared, as did, well, everything between July 03 2017 and July 03 2018.



> Is there a place where the good people who were lending their time and expertise to discuss projects and help us newbs are going to regather???


That's why I created this thread. So we can do it here.



> Is it time to move to a new url?


In my opinion, no. It's a time to be patient, but firm, with restoring this community and then probably insisting that it be handed back to the community it failed.

How do you feel about it?



> Do we have any legal recourse to recover the data within this forum from Vertical Scope and move elsewhere?


Short answer I don't know, I don't know the original agreement, I don't know the jurisdiction, and a lawyer would be the best person to ask on those matters.

"Legal" means lawyers. Soon as a lawyer is hired, everyone loses.

In my opinion, marketing is more powerful than a courtroom in many cases. It is a simple matter for a few dedicated people here to affect the changes we want here on an advertiser-driven business model. It is far cheaper for someone to act with integrity than for them to demonstrate their maliciousness by being stubborn and petty. Advertisers will not want to cooperate with people that are petty, malicious and incompetent. There's a happy way out of the situation for Vertical Scope with minimal additional damage or humiliation.


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## Meni Menindorf (Mar 17, 2018)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> My entire build thread also disappeared, as did, well, everything between July 03 2017 and July 03 2018.


 


MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> How do you feel about it?


Thank you for asking. I honestly feel new enough around here that I'm not sure I get much of a say . . . however, when engaging with an online forum to create something that would hopefully be helpful to other people in the future (aka, my build-post) I felt like I didn't need to ask the question "would this be archived and last forever?" I just a assumed that this would be an obvious and included part of pretty much any online forum. 



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> In my opinion, marketing is more powerful than a courtroom in many cases. It is a simple matter for a few dedicated people here to affect the changes we want here on an advertiser-driven business model. It is far cheaper for someone to act with integrity than for them to demonstrate their maliciousness by being stubborn and petty. Advertisers will not want to cooperate with people that are petty, malicious and incompetent. There's a happy way out of the situation for Vertical Scope with minimal additional damage or humiliation.


I'm interested to hear more about your opinion and ideas here. I do not know enough about Vertical Scope to have any sense of how capable their organization is to keep this forum alive under their care. Seems like they have demonstrated negligence. On a pretty gross level. I don't know if they have deep enough pockets to be scared by a lawyer, or a small class-action law-suit. . . . I'm not terribly familiar with working with lawyers, but I believe there are honest and helpful ones out there. I am open to helping to organize people who have been hurt by the loss of their archival information on this forum. 

I would like to know more about your ideas about how we can help to motivate Vertical Scope to right their behavior in a less aggressive way~


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## goingbush (Jun 20, 2017)

This is Baaad , I haven't visited for a few weeks.

Yep my build thread has vanished too. Not good, this is / was the best DIY EV resource on the internet. Much like AULRO is to the LandRover community.


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## DrJeff (Apr 24, 2015)

This type of problem occurred to the DMCTalk.org forum a number of years ago (probably 10). The prior site was lost and everyone migrated to the new (current) site hosted by an owner (bought a similar name and pays the hosting fees - there are no ads on the site). Thankfully many of the long term DeLorean owners had their own archives of files and many of the site's resources were restored over time. I joined the site in 2012 and they were still talking about the incident that had occurred years prior.

I think there's really 3 parts to a forum...
1. Resources (how to's, specs, reference docs, etc.)
2. Project threads
3. General activity (for sale, questions, chit chat).

Assuming the site doesn't come back, #3 will come back naturally and that is probably what drives most interest in the site. #1 might be recoverable with some concerted effort if we encourage everyone to post some reference content AND there's a forum structure to organize it. #2 is probably the toughest to recover (DIYelectriccar... was just one of the repositories where I posted my project information) as many people post on their project as they go along, there really isn't a strong incentive to try and re-history a project.

I believe the site - even with the lost year event - will likely recover (possibly explaining the lack of interest from the site providers). It may actually be on a more reliable supported platform, so moving to something custom or on a different platform may not be an improvement. I believe the key to recovery is getting as much useful and interesting content back on the site.

Jeff


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## CuTeBoi (Jun 1, 2018)

That explains why I can't find any of my content from the 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee...


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

After the amateurish handling of these site issues I would be in favour of tech qualified members establishing a new forum and I would be willing to contribute at lease $20 us p/a (pensioner) to retain the garage and to avoid the frustration that we all have experienced for what I thought was more than three years. I can remember that a contributor rubbished me because two or more years ago I was concerned about an inaccurate post count. A stitch in time would have saved more than nine:


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## frodus (Apr 12, 2008)

Even my thread for my Kart from a few weeks ago is gone. Threads are missing from all sorts of time ranges.


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## Moltenmetal (Mar 20, 2014)

What concerns me most is that the new site owner is basically doing nothing to try to keep senior and active site members informed about what is going on. It's clear that they bought this to generate traffic in return for zero work on their part. I'd have been OK with that if they'd have left well enough alone, but it appears that they've destroyed a good portion of the site (the entire Garage for instance) and have not communicated their plan to fix it.

I"m open to a modest price for a paid site that we content generators actually control, but I like the model used by the Triumph Experience as an example: free membership with available supporting membership for a fee.


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## frodus (Apr 12, 2008)

What is the website owner admin email? we can start blasting them.


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## Tomdb (Jan 28, 2013)

This forum was a goldmine, luckily most my findings have been downloaded and shared on my github. 

https://github.com/tomdebree


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## oudevolvo (Mar 10, 2015)

Thanks for the summary and starting this topic.
I agree, I would be great if we could become self supportive again and hope (but perhaps that is naive) with a backup as a starting point.
For me this is very valuable, could not do my conversion without the support and knowledge I'm finding here. So I'd be happy to contribute where possible. Financially or in IT (I'm not a programmer, but often make functional specifications, bridge between end users and programmers and do user acceptance testing). 

I realised how much I take for granted that what I find and read on the web stays there. I just keep track of links in my own notebook, but do not store the concent offline in PDF's. Perhaps I should start doing that.....


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## boekel (Nov 10, 2010)

I know of some big forums suffering a backup-failure rebuilding there contents with user-cache data.. ( gathering.tweakers.net )

another option is Google cache...

like this thread:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...a-motor-192602.html+&cd=1&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=nl


I'm in no way an IT guy, but I'm quite sure more capable people could scrape together the intire forum, just in case the owner of the forum doesn't get it back together...


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## goingbush (Jun 20, 2017)

the garage is not in google cache.

nor is my build thread

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...ndrover-lightweight-ev-conversion-189274.html


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## Dale Mahalko (Apr 29, 2012)

I tried posting this in the Help Desk but apparently a moderater didn't like it so it was not approved. I did not save the message, so let's try this again.

This website's content has not been completely lost, due to a huge non-profit external organization that seeks to document the history of the Internet as websites come and go. They are called Archive.org, and they occasionally send out "web crawling robots" to well-known websites to click on every link and then record the results.

Their recorded webcrawls are accessible through a search system they call *The Wayback Machine*, which was the name of Mr. Peabody's time machine in the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.

A search history of Wayback Machine web crawls of....

... this forum:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.diyelectriccar.com/forums

... the Garage:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.diyelectriccar.com/garage/

... the Wiki:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.diyelectriccar.com/wiki/

,

I randomly clicked on things and I can access the first and last pages in the Garage, so probably all of it is still there.

Archive.org intends to never delete these archives. However as a non-profit, access times to these archives can at times be slow as they are using lowest-cost solutions for long-term storage.

Also, please consider donating to Archive.org to help fund their continued work to preserve the old web.


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## Dale Mahalko (Apr 29, 2012)

It takes about six months for web crawls to become searchable on Archive.org.

Dec 9, 2017 (most recent available web crawl) of Garage:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171209020218/www.diyelectriccar.com/garage/


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## tom3141 (Jul 2, 2016)

This is crazy! I go away on holiday and when I return the content from my whole build thread is gone . Even worse, some of the long sticky threads now have a year's worth of comments missing.

To me the first priority is whether the data from the last year is retrievable. It's the knowledge that is shared and can be searched for that is the most valuable thing about this forum. It will be a huge shame if the past years data has been lost forever. How the forum operates from now on is a secondary issue.


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## jackbauer (Jan 12, 2008)

I won't be posting on here unless and until this forum is owned and controlled by the community in an open and transparent manner. I'm available and willing to help in that matter. Like others I have lost a lot of information and it's obvious no backups were ever made.


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## jetdexter (May 30, 2018)

I am a very new member here, but I had been taking in information and resources for years while planning my eventual project. 

I finally sign up and introduce myself only to have this all happen a week later. I just bought my car for the project and would be diving deeper into this site than ever along with my build thread. I certainly can’t do that here at this point. I will do a build thread on my own website so that I am in control of the data. 

I am all for paying a monthly subscription for an add-free and dependable site. I run a B2B subscription software company and believe in the power of “getting what you pay for”. We all have nothing to complain about when a free website fails us. We can only complain when we pay for a service.

I would also happily pitch in to help with any startup costs for whoever steps up to build it. Sadly I can’t volunteer as it took all I had in the marriage bank for my wife to give me a green light for this EV project. Setting up another software service isn’t in the cards. But happy to help get it going any way I can.

I do agree that walking away from the wealth of information here by starting over is a shame. Then again, the technology has developed so much in the last 5 years alone that many of the articles I have enjoyed are drastically out of date. Maybe there is less to fear in that regard than we think.

Those are my thoughts for what they are worth. I will keep up with this thread to see what happens and where I can give some cash for a new site.

Thanks all!

Paul


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## Coulomb (Apr 22, 2009)

I managed to recover a lost post! It was a lot of work, and you may not be so lucky. It seems that Google doesn't overwrite its cache of a page if the spider comes across a page with an error (and there are plenty of those at present). I had to think up some unique keywords to find my post; in my case they were "unican elcon". See the attached for the first hit (finding suitable keywords is where you might run out of luck). Notice the small green down-arrow at the right hand end of the URL / breadcrumb line. Drop it down to reveal (again, if you're lucky) to reveal an option "Cached". Click on it, and Google drags out the last non-error copy of that page.

Of course, you get no formatting codes, and probably no attached images or other files. But you can see where formatting (such as Courier font, underlining, etc) are needed. So you can edit the copy and pasted text until it looks right (or even just good enough). Even with the lost attachments, you have a list with the names of the files in the correct order. I assume that most of us keep our images that we attach to posts. So with a lot of work, I recovered this (to a totally different forum, of course):

http://forums.aeva.asn.au/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5618&p=68541#p68567

My other missing posts are on the same page, so I'll be recovering those next. Thank you, Mr Google!


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## tom3141 (Jul 2, 2016)

It appears that the lost posts have been recovered. The threads that I checked seem to be back to normal. 



Tom


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

tom3141 said:


> It appears that the lost posts have been recovered. The threads that I checked seem to be back to normal.


Still missing a years worth of posts in my main project thread;

https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1016333


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## Coulomb (Apr 22, 2009)

Kevin Sharpe said:


> Still missing a years worth of posts in my main project thread


Yeah. All they've done is re-index so that the contents page no longer says there are say 25 pages, when only 23 exist. Now the content page says 23, but those last two pages are still missing! [ Edit: Actually, that's only true of one of my threads. The others are fully recovered. By apologies for being so negative. Perhaps it is understandable after 4 weeks? ]

When I click on a page that used to bring up an error message, it brings up the last page of messages instead of the error message now. But the content it was supposed to find is not there!

Here is my example: 

Cleaned-up *control board* (daughter board) image (large)

When I click on this, I should get a post with a large attachment of the control board. Instead, it goes to the top of page 23. I believe that this post, when it existed, was on about page 25.

So all they've done is suppress the error message. Perhaps they believe that they have achieved "mission accomplished"?  [ Edit: this was before I realised that actually some posts _have_ been restored. ]

I've given up with this forum. I've recovered my most important posts and put them on another EV forum. [ Edit: But maybe only a fraction of missing posts remain missing now. Maybe there is hope now? ]


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## goingbush (Jun 20, 2017)

Kevin Sharpe said:


> Still missing a years worth of posts in my main project thread;
> 
> https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1016333


Your thread seem to be back up Kevin.

as is mine 

http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/landrover-lightweight-ev-conversion-189274.html.

The Garage is still missing .

Im all for a donation/ subscription scheme if it helps keep the forum alive / stable.


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## goingbush (Jun 20, 2017)

Coulomb said:


> <snip>
> 
> I've given up with this forum. I've recovered my most important posts and put them on another EV forum.


i'm homeless , where to go ?


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## Coulomb (Apr 22, 2009)

goingbush said:


> Your thread seem to be back up Kevin.


No. Kevin's link is to a post with number 1016333. All posts from about a million and over seem to still be missing.



> as is mine
> 
> https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/landrover-lightweight-ev-conversion-189274.html.


Are you sure you didn't make any posts after March/30 2018? If so, you're one of the lucky ones.



> The Garage is still missing .


True, but they've admitted that it's still to be fixed. So there is some progress, including the admins admitting that the garage exists!


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Just to keep this thread on track... this thread isn't really to talk about the technical issues.

https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1016829 <-- That's a better thread to do that. (Also, it appears much of the lost content has been restored, in a weird way, except for photos which will never again work from an unsecured site unless a fix is installed, if such one exists).

This thread is more about, what would you like the future direction of the community to be?

As the dust starts to settle here after nearly a month on the shelf, what should we do?


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## goingbush (Jun 20, 2017)

Coulomb said:


> <snip>
> 
> Are you sure you didn't make any posts after March/30 2018? If so, you're one of the lucky ones.


Actually , all MY photos are gone, every single one , They ARE all hosted on my own server so why would the links to my photos be removed . I don't understand. There are still photos there that other people have posted .


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## boekel (Nov 10, 2010)

goingbush said:


> Actually , all MY photos are gone, every single one , They ARE all hosted on my own server so why would the links to my photos be removed . I don't understand. There are still photos there that other people have posted .


I'm in the same boat, somehow the forum blocks pictures that are not hosted on a webserver with https enabled...
I have no idea how to do this...and why this is necessary it f*cks up a -lot- of old threads


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## ptandjb (Sep 26, 2017)

ptandjb said:


> I am coming back in after several months absence, noted my previous posts about my uncle's EV project appear as the titles, but content has disappeared, will completely report updated information shortly.



My old post from 9-27-2017 has reappeared, but the embedded links to pictures posted in my own domain are gone, only the original post text has reappeared.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

goingbush said:


> Actually , all MY photos are gone, every single one , They ARE all hosted on my own server so why would the links to my photos be removed . I don't understand. There are still photos there that other people have posted .


The links aren't deleted. If you go to one of those old posts and click "edit" or want to see the code, you'll see there are still (img) tags around the image URLs.

The problem is that your browser isn't loading or showing those photos.

The reason it's not showing them is because this website is now https instead of http, it's secure, so it doesn't allow any content to be displayed from an unsecured location. So if your server is http, not https, like almost all of the photos ever linked in the last 10 years here, your browser will, in the interests of security, not load that unsecure content.

To fix this you would have to do 2 things:

1 - Switch your server to use HTTPS, AND,
2 - Manually update all of the links to your old photos to show their new locations (https://).

One or the other won't work, it has to be both or you'll still have dead links.

If you used a common image hosting website instead of your own personal server, Step 1 isn't even an option for you, so those photos are just dead to this forum forever.

Naturally this is a bunch of bullshit that shouldn't have happened. Especially without a conversation about it.


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## frodus (Apr 12, 2008)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Naturally this is a bunch of BS that shouldn't have happened. Especially without a conversation about it.


Agreed. absolute bullshit that this happened without any conversation/warning/etc. Plus, they didn't even revert when the issues popped up like they should have. ALWAYS test on another server before launching the changes.

site admin 101.


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## goingbush (Jun 20, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> <snip>
> 
> To fix this you would have to do 2 things:
> 
> ...


Well that SUCKS big time . Frankly I don't think this forum will recover its usefulness unless VS fix the issue and allow unsecure images , 

For me to move my images to a secure server and edit each post is not insurmountable but it a hell of a lot of work , Unless everybody does it to all their posts its a never going to be a complete forum.

and VS can fix this because im on another VBulliten forum, if I post an image from my unsecure server the Forum magically converts the image to a secure image on their own server in the background.

IE https://www.aulro.com/afvb/alternate-energies/252534-goingbushs-electric-vehicle-project-2.html


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## Emyr (Oct 27, 2016)

Another forum I'm on went HTTPS-only 2 years ago. I think it's the second biggest cycling forum on the internet. No ads.

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/282911/
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/288092/


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## jackbauer (Jan 12, 2008)

If anyone wants to do something serious about this then let's put our heads together. I'm prepared to put time and money into making this forum work on a propper platform with propper admin. Anyone thinking along the same lines?


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

jackbauer said:


> Anyone thinking along the same lines?


I don't have much in the way of relevant technical skills but will happily help fund a community effort and will recreate my threads on a new forum as required.

For me it's critical that we never face these issues again... I think we need community ownership/control and a viable financing model (maybe we could offer advert free access for a small monthly financial contribution?).


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## ancapn8 (Jul 18, 2018)

Kevin Sharpe said:


> I don't have much in the way of relevant technical skills but will happily help fund a community effort and will recreate my threads on a new forum as required.
> 
> For me it's critical that we never face these issues again... I think we need community ownership/control and a viable financing model (maybe we could offer advert free access for a small monthly financial contribution?).


Another forum I frequent (ck5.com, a forum for classic chevy trucks) has a model where all the pictures in posts are low-res until you subscribe to a premium membership ($25/yr). There's a wealth of information there, so the $25/yr is well worth it to me, lol.


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## Hirngespinste (Jul 26, 2018)

Hi!

I recently got super obsessed with the idea of an EV conversion...
After I registered in a few dead forums I found the DIY Electric Car Community and first checked the "New Posts" section, really happy to see some active threads. I also found this one...

Being a frontend developer and an open source enthusiast I would like to make a few suggestions:

Since a lot of the previous posts stated that they would prefer to fund an independent platform instead of a company owned forum I would suggest to register a team on Librapay. A team allows members of a project to receive money and share it, without having to set up a legal entity.

Using the open source discussion platform Discourse and hosting it on DigitalOcean would be cost-efficient and also increase the user experience (compared to vBulletin).

"Discourse is, and will always be, 100% free and open source software. You can install it yourself on your own server, or for a flat one-time fee of $99, the community can install Discourse in the cloud for you. Please note that a $5/month hosting fee is still payable to the cloud provider (Digital Ocean), and that this option is completely self-support after the initial install."


Also regarding to the HTTPS issues some users mentioned:

HTTPS is important to protect the site and its users from attacks. Mixed content (eg. your "HTTP hosted images") degrade the security and user experience of a HTTPS site.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

jackbauer said:


> Anyone thinking along the same lines?


I don't have anything technical to offer but, yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

I am not worried at all about money. It's on the scale of dozens of dollars a year right? Under $200?

I'll kick in a few bucks and I'm sure a hundred others will too once a year. We've done it on other forums and it works well.


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## Hirngespinste (Jul 26, 2018)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I am not worried at all about money. It's on the scale of dozens of dollars a year right? Under $200?


The solution I suggested starts at around 70$/Year (server and domain)... scales with memory, disk and transfer size. Everything else would be free of cost!

I also would like to offer technical help...


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## jetdexter (May 30, 2018)

I agree with this type of concept. I have 2 new thoughts:

1- Someone needs to own the thing. Perhaps a decent number of senior members can join forces, protecting this against any one hot-shot helping get it all set up (and I am not referring to anyone on this thread of course) who winds up in control of things like URL, Security Cert, Codebase, logins etc. Somehow a board should be in control of all this to secure all of us.

2- Photos should absolutely be hosted on the server. I always thought it was the lamest thing that you have to store, and point to images on half of these forums. It is 1995 tech when storage actually cost something. I know that many of the forum platforms allow modern image dragging tools where it is more convenient, but also reliable that that image won't disappear a couple of years later when that guy lost interest and shut down his website or photo hosting site.


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## coleasterling (Feb 29, 2012)

Let's say I wanted to sponsor and personally host this site. Can anyone give hard numbers for the entire project? Initial setup and month-to-month. 

Maybe just hosting something similar, since we can't know what this domain would cost, or if they would even sell it. I might be willing to do this. I'd need some help getting it set up. Looks like several people would be willing to do so.


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## Hirngespinste (Jul 26, 2018)

I totally agree with you, jetdexter!

I hope I'm not coming across as rude or anything with all my ideas and suggestions, while being completely new to this board.



coleasterling said:


> Let's say I wanted to sponsor and personally host this site. Can anyone give hard numbers for the entire project? Initial setup and month-to-month.
> 
> Maybe just hosting something similar, since we can't know what this domain would cost, or if they would even sell it. I might be willing to do this. I'd need some help getting it set up. Looks like several people would be willing to do so.


If everyone could decide on a new domain, it would cost 10$/year for a domain and starting at 60$/year for a server (using the technologies I mentioned).


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Hirngespinste said:


> If everyone could decide on a new domain


I like the one we already have.

I'd like to see us in charge of it.

First things first, let's find out what remains of the pieces and how well it can be put back together. When we handed things over to them, we gave them functional forums, it'd be nice if things were in similar state when they were returned.

If there's pushback against that, I can think of several low-effort campaigns to convince them it's in their best interest.


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## Coulomb (Apr 22, 2009)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I like the one we already have.
> 
> I'd like to see us in charge of it.


Ok, but if we can't have that, how about diyelectriccar.org? It seems to be available. The .com can be the commercial one, and the .org can be the more organised, user focused one.

I agree it's not ideal, as many web links will lead back to the .com website for years to come, but at least familiar.

I suspect if they won't sell us the original web domain for reasonable money, they won't allow us to copy our own content to the new domain. They'd claim that they paid for the right to "own" this.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Rule #1 of domain squatting. Don't list domains until you've already squatted them.

It's a good alternative I suppose.

And like I said... there are some low-effort campaigns I can think of where it would be in their best interest to say "Hey, sorry it didn't work out, sure you can have control back." Cross that bridge when we come to it though.


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## Hirngespinste (Jul 26, 2018)

Good Morning .



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I like the one we already have.
> 
> I'd like to see us in charge of it.


I understand that you want to preserve this forum as it is, but...



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> First things first, let's find out what remains of the pieces and how well it can be put back together. When we handed things over to them, we gave them functional forums, it'd be nice if things were in similar state when they were returned.


Just considering the software this forum uses, you probably won't be able to put it all back together. In case you are, things will break again in no time (vBulletin 4 is dead since 2013 - vBulletin 5 is worse - THIS FORUM runs on version 3.8.8.).
If you would compare community platforms to cars, vBulletin is a horse-driven carriage.

Keeping the domain is probably the smallest issue.

That being said, I'm just going to use what is available on this forum right now. Maybe everyone should at least safe the data thats important to them. Let me know if someone is interested in building something according to requirements of time. I would love to help!


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## jetdexter (May 30, 2018)

I agree that the URL isn't important at all. I certainly didn't find it because of the name- A thread popped up in a google search and I assume that's how everyone finds it. The .ORG sounds perfect since we are hoping to take the commercial aspect out of it anyway

I also agree that any efforts should be done to migrate whatever can be moved, but clearly the DB likely won't be just handed over with a smile, nor would it be worth the effort to parse it all out and try to bring it in. 

I would assume that the enthusiasm from it being a new forum would spark folks posting as much of the old info, and recreate their build threads the best they can. I would think that a wealth of info, and plenty of community would populate in a matter of months. 

I just sure hope that y'all pick a modern and convenient platform. it is such a great opportunity to start fresh with an intuitive interface that was build in this century.


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## Hirngespinste (Jul 26, 2018)

jetdexter said:


> I would assume that the enthusiasm from it being a new forum would spark folks posting as much of the old info, and recreate their build threads the best they can. I would think that a wealth of info, and plenty of community would populate in a matter of months.
> 
> I just sure hope that y'all pick a modern and convenient platform. it is such a great opportunity to start fresh with an intuitive interface that was build in this century.


Maybe that's a junior member thing... I completely agree with you but I feel like most of the senior members would prefer to keep everything as it is (which I can understand). Same domain, same database and vBulletin working like it did 10 years ago. But nobody seems to realise that most of the described problems result from being an ancient platform, not from the company who owns it.

The enthusiasm of a new platform could also ensure that all the outdated content gets updated (talking wiki for example).


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## jetdexter (May 30, 2018)

Yes. I don't want to hijack this thread, but that is a point I made in the beginning. This forum is old enough that there is a goldmine of outdated and bad information if the reader doesn't realize how old it is. 

I am a junior member here, but 51 years old and have been a part of a lot of these communities as I have done a lot of ICE restorations on cars. I respect those that have been around here for a long time (which is why I am not lobbying for me to jump in and save the day here). I want those guys to be in control of the new site if there is to be one. 

I just think that the old site is a doomed proposition. I certainly won't be putting my build thread here, and I am seeing that echo'd by a lot here. I can't even find the articles that I had bookmarked and such. I am having to look elsewhere or message people just to get the info that I am needing.


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## coleasterling (Feb 29, 2012)

Hirngespinste said:


> Good Morning .
> Just considering the software this forum uses, you probably won't be able to put it all back together. In case you are, things will break again in no time (vBulletin 4 is dead since 2013 - vBulletin 5 is worse - THIS FORUM runs on version 3.8.8.).
> If you would compare community platforms to cars, vBulletin is a horse-driven carriage.
> 
> Let me know if someone is interested in building something according to requirements of time. I would love to help!


I'm not just some internet dinosaur, but I vastly prefer the traditional forum format for finding and maintaining information. I don't really care what software is running on the back end as long as I can easily edit, see, and find whatever information I'm looking for. 

I'm not sure how they compare to Discorse, but while I like the ease of interaction in Facebook and Reddit, neither is close to as good as our traditional formats for finding or maintaining information. If Discourse is anything like those two, I'm out. Horrible for searching. 


I love the idea of giving back to the forum through supplying hosting as long as I can reasonably afford to do so. I can't contribute much technically, so this makes sense for me. Like all of you, I don't want to see the knowledge on this forum go to waste. 

How about this...Are we talking in the hundreds or small or large thousands range for running a site like this per year? No ads.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

coleasterling said:


> How about this...Are we talking in the hundreds or small or large thousands range for running a site like this per year? No ads.


Hirngespinste claims $60/year. Maybe he's wrong and it's 3x that. Still low hundreds.



> neither is close to as good as our traditional formats for finding or maintaining information


I've always felt that forums are, well, "discussion" forums. They're a great place to discuss content, but they're an awful way to archive content. FAQs, wikis, and articles are good ways to archive and condense content.

I vastly prefer forums to Facebook and chatrooms like Discourse though. I think the signal:noise ratio is bad enough for forums, it approaches zero on other platforms.

Just my two cents.


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## coleasterling (Feb 29, 2012)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I've always felt that forums are, well, "discussion" forums. They're a great place to discuss content, but they're an awful way to archive content. FAQs, wikis, and articles are good ways to archive and condense content.


I think the difference is that in a traditional forum, the discussion IS the content. You can go to a FAQ or wiki to find facts, but you can't interact through them. I want to ask questions or seek further understanding through discussion. It helps achieve context that is otherwise missing. There are also far more people who want to have technical discussion, but have no interest in maintaining or editing a wiki. 




MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I vastly prefer forums to Facebook and chatrooms like Discourse though. I think the signal:noise ratio is bad enough for forums, it approaches zero on other platforms.
> 
> Just my two cents.


Agreed!


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## Hirngespinste (Jul 26, 2018)

coleasterling said:


> I'm not just some internet dinosaur, ...


I didn't mean it like that. I was referring to the forum status and you guys certainly put in a lot of work, while "us" didn't.



coleasterling said:


> I vastly prefer the traditional forum format for finding and maintaining information.. .I'm not sure how they compare to Discorse, but while I like the ease of interaction in Facebook and Reddit, neither is close to as good as our traditional formats for finding or maintaining information.


First of all I am not on facebook, I hate facebook! I suggested Discourse, because I come from a programming background and nearly every "software project" I can think of uses Discourse as a forum. Nothing is more important to developers then finding the right information...

Just google "Discourse vs vBulletin" for endless threads about communities moving their forum from vBulletin to Discourse.



coleasterling said:


> I love the idea of giving back to the forum through supplying hosting as long as I can reasonably afford to do so. I can't contribute much technically, so this makes sense for me. Like all of you, I don't want to see the knowledge on this forum go to waste.
> 
> How about this...Are we talking in the hundreds or small or large thousands range for running a site like this per year? No ads.


I have answered this a couple of times now and also linked everything so this one is for future reference.


***

*
DOMAIN: ≈ $10/YEAR

"Discourse is, and will always be, 100% free and open source software. You can install it yourself on your own server, or for a flat one-time fee of $99, the community can install Discourse in the cloud for you. Please note that a $5/month hosting fee is still payable to the cloud provider (Digital Ocean), and that this option is completely self-support after the initial install."

CLOUD PROVIDER: from $60/YEAR *

Best Web Forum Software Packages Comparison - Slant 
*
* depends on SSD DISK SIZE, MONTHLY TRANSFER & STORAGE.

Discourse Pricing
Discourse Features
DigitalOcean Pricing

***

There are other alternatives like NodeBB, which I have never used so I can't recommend any. Maybe other people have experiences or suggestions about that. I also want to clarify that I'm grateful for this source of information/forum even if it stays just like it is right now. I just feel thats one of the topics I'm currently able to contribute to.


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## coleasterling (Feb 29, 2012)

Whoa, take a step back there. I wasn't meaning to talk down to you in the least. Sorry for it appearing that way. I should have been more explicit in what I was asking for. 

I just meant by internet dinosaur, that I'm fairly young and in tune with general trends, yet still prefer traditional forum formats. 

I'll check out Discourse vs. vBulletin. 

I'm interested in pricing for running a traditional forum like vBulletin or phpbb, not Discourse. Thank you for the information on Discourse.


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## Hirngespinste (Jul 26, 2018)

I wasn't offended or anything and didn't mean it in a rude way. And I would consider Discourse, phpBB, nodeBB all as "traditional" forums! But I only have experiences with Discourse. I don't know any vBulletin or phpBB forums that are still active. Every single one I registered in the last couple of days for example was completely dead.

*phpBB:
phpBB • Suggested Hosting Providers

HOSTING: from $5.95/MONTH
LICENSE: $75
*


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## Malevolence (Jun 5, 2013)

Regarding ownership and financing, what about getting the Electric Auto Association to be the owner of the forum? They're already set up as a non-profit in the US (I know we have a lot of international contributes here, but that's a non-issue in my opinion). They have a chapter structure where each local chapter is pretty autonomous, which would match well to what's being proposed here. This assumes that the EAA would be OK with the idea that you don't have the be an EAA member to be on the forum - that would be a deal killer in my opinion. I know here in Denver, a lot of local chapter members aren't technically EAA members, so I don't think that's a hard sell. 

The forum could have a link to join the EAA, and likewise when you are a EAA member, you can contribute part of your annual dues (I think it's like $5 or $10/yr out of the $35 for the EAA membership) to the chapter of your choice. My thought would be to get the EAA to add a virtual "Online" chapter then the accounting etc. would be easy - it would be just like adding another city/state which they do fairly regularly, except all the money goes specifically to forum upkeep. I bet you would be able to get enough EAA members to check the "Online" chapter box when paying dues to cover a lot of the upkeep costs. A donate button would hopefully cover the rest for those who just want to contribute to the forum but not join the EAA. Seems like a win-win - they'll get a few forum people to sign up to be part of the greater EAA that wouldn't have otherwise, and the forum gets a place to be hosted with a lot of the "back office" things already sorted out. They may even be able to get one or two non-annoying sponsors to put a banner on the forum to help fund any costs based on existing relationships with EVSE manufacturers, etc. I'm guessing the forum would get way more traffic than the website does today. 

The EAA already has a domain (electricauto org) and back end web hosting for the club, so it would be a matter of adding to the existing website infrastructure. I guess you could either add a /DIYForum or something like that, or just have a completely different domain name served by the same host - I don't think it would really matter - just what makes more sense from a technical standpoint. Of course keeping this domain would be even better to minimize disruption to the community. I would strongly suggest the forum have its own webmaster, as the website is staffed by volunteers, so better to control our own fate in that case. I say own - I know I don't post much - but I am a professional lurker! Then again, there might even be interest from the EAA to have their own section of the forum available to members not interested in conversions to gossip about Elon and CARB, or whatever it is that they like talking about! 

Full disclosure, I'm the "Conversions Committee" chair for the DEVC (Denver Electric Vehicle Council) chapter of EAA. DEVC still collects it's own dues, so anything from EAA members checking the "Denver" box is gravy; so I personally wouldn't be opposed to switching my chapter affiliation to Online since I already pay separate dues to the DEVC ($20/yr). To me, this is exactly the kind of thing the EAA should be spending a little more time, money and effort on. I feel like the club has kind of been abandoning the DIY side of things and morphed into a cheer-leading squad for the OEMs. That's fine, except that if our local chapter is any indication, there is still plenty of people interested in building, converting and hot-rodding EVs - not just buying them from OEMs and working on charging infrastructure. 

If you want me to run this up the chain I can. I'd personally be willing to chip in another $50 or $100 for seed money to get whatever software, etc. to modernize this forum or it's spiritual replacement. The nice thing is if it's through the EAA, this all becomes tax deductible!  I've been around since the bad old days of the newsgroups and mailing list, and this forum was a major improvement, but it's time for another leap in technology and it looks like we have to put our fate in our own hands to do that. 

One last thought, if the EAA isn't interested, I know the DEVC will be, which is also registered as a non-profit here in Colorado (just got that designation very recently) with it's own website (DEVC info), so same difference, just less chance of getting some funding from the national club that way. The EAA just "feels" like the right place since it's national in scope (actually, international, since there are also a couple of chapters in Canada and one each in Mexico and Taiwan), but I know I'll have no trouble getting the DEVC to be a neutral host if needed, even though the chapter's mission is technically more local to the State of Colorado. 

Either way, if there are members of this forum willing to step up on the webmaster side (and it sounds like there are), I'm happy to try to help with making the right connections and/or helping with the financial side. 

Thanks!


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Malevolence said:


> Regarding ownership and financing, what about getting the Electric Auto Association to be the owner of the forum? They're already set up as a non-profit in the US


Seems decent. Normally small stuff like this is just one person who owns. The more people you add, the more bullshit and politics come into play. But, this seems like a tidy solution. Pre-existing administrative structure.

I'm game for that.


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## goingbush (Jun 20, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> The links aren't deleted. If you go to one of those old posts and click "edit" or want to see the code, you'll see there are still (img) tags around the image URLs.
> 
> The problem is that your browser isn't loading or showing those photos.
> 
> ...



So I've just visited my web hosting service and basically to convert my own goingbush.com hosted images to HTTPS I have to purchase an SSL certificate , which is AU$199 A YEAR , that is not going to happen. I'd rather pay a subscription or a donation to fix this Diyelectriccar.com (and no ads) even if it means uploading my photos a facebook album to get them on a secure server and then link back to here.


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## Hirngespinste (Jul 26, 2018)

goingbush said:


> So I've just visited my web hosting service and basically to convert my own goingbush.com hosted images to HTTPS I have to purchase an SSL certificate , which is AU$199 A YEAR , that is not going to happen. I'd rather pay a subscription or a donation to fix this Diyelectriccar.com (and no ads) even if it means uploading my photos a facebook album to get them on a secure server and then link back to here.


Then I would terminate your contract.

The domain information I wrote previously wasn't correct and therefore removed, but there are data storage solutions with https available even for free.
And there are possibilities to add a free SSL certificate to most of the domain providers I worked with (regarding your website).


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## Functional Artist (Aug 8, 2016)

IMO
Corporate is NOT gonna relinquish control if
...there is still "value" or it's "generating an income"

So, what's the future of the forum?

I would like to know:

1.) What's with the first/cover page & why is it full of antique outdated info, without any corrections or recent updates?

When I first joined, I remember reading where someone recommended using a "standard" Ford car solenoid to be used on a high voltage system 
...with out any follow up, corrections or more recent info (I think it was in a "sticky" NOT just a random "old" post)

2.) Why isn't the second page the "main" page?
…when folks click on DIYelectriccars they should go straight to the "Choose your forum" page

3.) Why weren't pictures easier to post (previously) & now impossible?
...pictures "say a 1.000 words"

Most other forums I have been on "freely" allow pictures & their always visible
…& some practically insist on them (how can we help if we can't see what were talking about?)

4.) Why is/was the "Garage Section" a separate section?

5.) Why didn't/doesn't everyone just start & (if they want) maintain or update a standard "build thread" in whichever (current) appropriate forum heading?


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## goingbush (Jun 20, 2017)

agree with all that.

It seems VSAdmin are not interested in fixing the forum . 

What is their interest ,..... advertising revenue . 

People are saying they are going to other forums , Good idea if no one is left here VS wont be earning much revenue . 

Unless HTTP images are restored or referanced & Converted to HTTPS by VSAdmin this place is useless.


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## Functional Artist (Aug 8, 2016)

Report: 
They seem to be "Makin' progress"


I can "now" post pictures
…& I/everyone can see them


Thank you, FA


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## boekel (Nov 10, 2010)

Functional Artist said:


> Report:
> They seem to be "Makin' progress"
> 
> 
> I can "now" post pictures


'posting' images (attaching them) never was the problem, other than that it is -very- annoying to watch those images one by one instead of inline with the text...

it's all the old posts with non-https images / links.


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## Coulomb (Apr 22, 2009)

boekel said:


> ... it is -very- annoying to watch those images one by one instead of inline with the text...


I "in-line" about half of my images. First I upload them, get the URL for them from the attachment list, and inline them with [ img ] ... [ /img ] tags, using the image icon (yellow mountains and sun icon).

Example here.

Edit: it's not ideal, in that it takes a little longer, and you still see the thumbnails at the end of the post. In effect, every in-lined image appears twice. But it's workable.


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## Functional Artist (Aug 8, 2016)

Coulomb said:


> I "in-line" about half of my images. First I upload them, get the URL for them from the attachment list, and inline them with [ img ] ... [ /img ] tags, using the image icon (yellow mountains and sun icon).
> 
> Example here.
> 
> Edit: it's not ideal, in that it takes a little longer, and you still see the thumbnails at the end of the post. In effect, every in-lined image appears twice. But it's workable.


I used to get a "file to large" message
…& even if I cropped/adjusted it to "fit" (what a PITA)
...I/everyone had to "click" on the/each pic to "actually" see it (it even kept a count of views?)

For the last week of so, I have been posting pics easily in the El Moto (electric motorcycle) thread

https://www.diyelectriccar.com/foru...ade-lithium-198097.html?p=1017411#post1017411

…& I can see them

Can you guys see them?


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

I don,t know what i,m looking at, but yes three small pics are there without further clicking


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## bawfuls (Jan 8, 2018)

Going forward, people should just host images on Imgur, which is free and uses https (as all modern websites ought to)



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> 8 - For those unaware, this is not how you migrate a database in the industry. This is not normal. *You normally, first, inform your customers* that there is a change planned and what expected outages might be, you let them know to keep an eye on issues, and you build the new site and test it *before* switching over and launching it. You ensure you have the resources on hand to deal with inevitable technical hiccups. And you certainly don't avoid talking to your customers for weeks and pretend like it's not happening. You don't bring literally very service you have offline, and just hope nothing happens.
> _This is kind of like being a landlord with 50 properties at the top of a hill, loading everything every one of your tenants owns into carts without asking, then pointing them at new homes at the bottom of the hill shoving them all down the hill at the same time and then saying "We couldn't have anticipated this! Please be patient, we only have 3 people to pick all this stuff up! Sorry, there's also a river down there, some of it might be gone. Oh, and your new homes are still under construction."_


So here's the thing. Users of this forum are not Vertical Scope customers. You are in fact their product. Their customers are advertisers. You should not expect anything approaching satisfactory customer service from VS for the people on this forum.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

bawfuls said:


> Going forward, people should just host images on Imgur, which is free and uses https (as all modern websites ought to)


Lots of free services have hosted images; not all of them continue to operate. A safer choice is to store your images wherever you want, but when you want to share them in this forum, upload them to the forum rather than linking them. Then when your favourite service goes away (or just stops working for this purpose), you have whatever you chose for backup and this forum still works without interruption and without you needing to do anything about it.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

Functional Artist said:


> For the last week of so, I have been posting pics easily in the El Moto (electric motorcycle) thread
> 
> https://www.diyelectriccar.com/foru...ade-lithium-198097.html?p=1017411#post1017411
> 
> ...


Yes, we can see them because you uploaded them to this forum (which is the most effective way to share your images). The problems are not with uploaded images - the problem is with linked images, specifically ones for which the link starts with "HTTP:" and not "HTTPS:".


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## Sterling2015 (Jun 24, 2015)

jetdexter said:


> ..........I am all for paying a monthly subscription for an add-free and dependable site. I run a B2B subscription software company and believe in the power of “getting what you pay for”. We all have nothing to complain about when a free website fails us. We can only complain when we pay for a service......
> Paul


I subscribe to "thesamba" dot com where I upload all my car photos, no nonsense and I can post photo links to other forums and emails .


EDIT: thesamba photo links are http so they got scrubbed, but if I use IE 11 and click Show all content in the security notice, then all the http linked photos show up.


Remember the photobucket fiasco? Free isn't free.

Please consider a subscription option

DIYelectricCar is a valuable resource, thank you !


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## oudevolvo (Mar 10, 2015)

@VSAdmin: Why is mixed content a problem?
Yes, I understand full https would be better and ideal. 
However, given the nature of this platform, wouldn’t it be sufficient (for now) to only route the logging in via https?
Or even run the site with mixed content?


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

oudevolvo said:


> However, given the nature of this platform, wouldn’t it be sufficient (for now) to only route the logging in via https?


Some other vBulletin-based forums (run by Social Knowledge) took this approach. It is awkward and strange, and seemed ridiculous to members of those forums with enough knowledge to understand that this is an unusual approach. It does secure passwords, and provides little other useful security. Perhaps more importantly, it might not be compatible with the cloud service now being used by this forum's operator.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Vertical Scope has, I think, finally asked for help from someone in the community to fix the garage. I said I'd send out some PMs to people who seemed interested in helping.

So I've done that to a handful of people.

I'm just a messenger, but, perhaps we could get things back on track. At least have access to the data again, whatever we'd like to do with said data once it's accessible again.

Here's the post asking for help:

https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1031433&postcount=211


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## D a n n y^ (Aug 4, 2015)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Vertical Scope has, I think, finally asked for help from someone in the community to fix the garage. I said I'd send out some PMs to people who seemed interested in helping.
> 
> So I've done that to a handful of people.
> 
> ...


Sounds like a good start. Let me know if the plan comes down to raising money. 



jackbauer said:


> If anyone wants to do something serious about this then let's put our heads together. I'm prepared to put time and money into making this forum work on a propper platform with propper admin. Anyone thinking along the same lines?



Same here go-fund me or membership fee? I'm in.


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

As I stated in my 7/20/2018 thread post, yes but I assume you are talking about no involvement from VS ?


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## Anaerin (Feb 4, 2009)

Okay, I've worked in web development for quite a while, so I can tell you we have a number of options.


Shared Hosting
Containerized Hosting
Virtual Machine Hosting
Dedicated Hosting
CoLocation

*Shared hosting*
The cheapest option. You get some space on a server and the host takes care of keeping the server up and running. However, the server may be hosting hundreds (or in some cases thousands) of other sites, and so may not be as responsive. Often transfer is advertised as "Unlimited", though there may be an asterisk on that. You are also limited to the software and resources the host includes (PHP/MySQL typically), so hosting more "exotic" setups (node/Ruby on Rails/ASP.net etc.) may not be available. You also can't take advantage of free Let's Encrypt SSL certificates, as the hosting provider has to implement them.
Pricing: $120/year (In this case, including Domain and "Wildcard" (shared) SSL certificate)
Pricing source: ionos.ca "Pro" hosting

*Containerized Hosting*
Next up, you get a "Container" (A Docker image, for instance) that runs on a shared server. The container is somewhat similar to a Virtual Machine, but more stripped down to the bare essentials. You have guaranteed CPU resources and memory, and there are a whole host of base containers for you to choose to build your server off of. The host will keep the servers up to date with fixes, but you have to keep your own container up-to-date.
Pricing: $120/year + $60/year for additional storage + $20/year for domain.
Pricing source: DigitalOcean 2GB Droplet + Spaces + Google Domains
Transfer: 2TB/mo included, overages are $0.01/GB

*Virtual Machine Hosting*
You get a complete virtual computer, with guaranteed CPU, memory and storage, to do with whatever you like. This is one of the most powerful options, but also one of the most hands-on, as you will need to administer everything from the OS up. It's also quite expensive, as everything has to be bought as you need it, and billing is per-second.
Pricing: $227.40/year + $180.36/year for additional storage + $20/year for domain
Pricing source: MS Azure hosting (1 F2s v2 (2 vCPU(s), 4 GB RAM) x 730 Hours; Linux – Ubuntu; Pay as you go; 1 managed OS disks – S4, 10,000 transaction units) + (File Storage, General Purpose V2, LRS Redundancy, 250 GB) + Google Domains
Transfer: 5GB/mo included, 5GB-10TB/mo $0.087/GB

*Dedicated Hosting*
None of this "Virtual" nonsense, you get a physical server located in someone's rack. Storage is baked in, and you're guaranteed uptime and availability.
Pricing: $1693.08/year + $20/year for domain
Pricing source: a2hosting.ca "Sprint" package + Google Domains

*CoLocation*
They provide the physical rack space, power and bandwidth, you provide the server(s).
Pricing: $Arm + $Leg + $20/year for domain

For Containerized hosting up, SSL is effectively free thanks to Let's Encrypt which gives free SSL certificates to anyone.

I have attempted to get these prices for similar basic starting points. At least 2CPUs (where possible), 2GB of RAM (where possible) and 250GB storage. 

In my opinion, we don't need Dedicated hosting, we don't have the volume of traffic that would make it worthwhile. We could get away with shared hosting, provided the host we chose has the features we want, but it's taking a gamble. These are also not hard-and-fast numbers, just averages. I've presumed we'll need to host the site and it's database (hence a minimum of 2 CPUs) and will need a reasonable amount of RAM for caching and the like (a minimum of 2GB RAM). Beyond that, this is all negotiable. And while I can't see us needing less, we may need more. It's difficult to work out our requirements without viewer counts, site size and transfer logs, but I think this is a good starting point.

And at the real ghetto end, if necessary, we could host this on a spare machine in someone's basement, if they have a halfway decent connection. 

Just some thoughts, and numbers, to chew on.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

> yes but I assume you are talking about no involvement from VS ?


Well...

I mean, data is data.

I was thinking, let's first get our data back by restoring the Garage section.

If that content makes it's way to another website later, at least we have it available to backup, archive, etc. In its current state, it's been gone for 7 months and, presuming VS isn't interesting in hiring anyone who knows Ruby, likely to stay that way forever unless we help.

Also whoever helps will, presumably, get access to the community's database.


I mean, you don't go to war with the army you want, you go to war with the army you've got. What we've got is an opportunity to restore the archive of the Garage section. Baby steps.


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## Anaerin (Feb 4, 2009)

I mean, it shouldn't be that difficult to write a scraper for the archive.org copy to reconstruct the garage's database in whatever format we want/need.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

Anaerin said:


> I mean, it shouldn't be that difficult to write a scraper for the archive.org copy to reconstruct the garage's database in whatever format we want/need.


I agree. If someone wants to go to all the trouble of building a new Garage and hosting it, extracting the data seems like a small part of the effort.

More importantly, if the intent is to use the data from the existing Garage independently of this forum, I doubt that there is any chance that Vertical Scope will put even one minute of effort into providing that data to someone else.

I think it's important to distinguish between two very different projects:

work with Vertical Scope to revive the Garage in some form
take the Garage data and run something independent of Vertical Scope


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

brian_ said:


> I think it's important to distinguish between two very different projects:
> 
> work with Vertical Scope to revive the Garage in some form


I don't think anyone *wants* to work with Vertical Scope. I think it's literally unanimous that the community things they betrayed their commitment, bungled an update that wasn't necessary, and has treated us like garbage ever since. 

But, they're the ones with the keys to our content.



> 2 - take the Garage data and run something independent of Vertical Scope


In the last 7 months, I haven't heard of anyone making efforts or getting this off the ground. So, seems like a dead approach. At least, it's a leaderless one.



> if the intent is to use the data from the existing Garage independently of this forum, I doubt that there is any chance that Vertical Scope will put even one minute of effort into providing that data to someone else.


Right now, it's not an option.

Once we have the data back here... at least then it's not lost and gone.



> If someone wants to go to all the trouble of building a new Garage and hosting it, extracting the data seems like a small part of the effort.


I suspect you overstate the completeness and ease of accessing the Garage in its entirety on Archive.org. 

...

I dunno. I'm still using these forums. Everyone reading this is still using these forums. Yet this forum has been missing a critical piece of it's infrastructure for 7 months and no one seems to have done anything else about it.

Vertical Scope made a call for someone in the community to help put the Garage back together, which indicates to me that they have no intention of ever hiring anyone with the skills needed to do it otherwise.

So, seems like we can help them, or never have it back again.

I lack the programming skills, so, doing what I can my efforts lie in exposing the problem, holding Vertical Scope's feet to the fire, drawing attention to the issue, and coordinating any communication or efforts on our part. Just, stepping up where I'm able.

Otherwise, I'm just the messenger. Doing what I can.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I suspect you overstate the completeness and ease of accessing the Garage in its entirety on Archive.org.


Ease? It's more than a trivial piece of work, but it certainly isn't bad compared to setting up a new service.

As for completeness... it wouldn't be perfect (at the very least, it would miss anything entered after the most recent archive), but a nearly-complete dataset would far better than endlessly waiting.

I'm not saying that going without Vertical Scope is the only choice, or even worth doing... just that if taking that approach, it doesn't make sense to try to get the data from Vertical Scope.


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## Emyr (Oct 27, 2016)

Under the T&Cs of the site, do we have an ownership problem that would make taking the content from archive.org legally risky?


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

> Under the T&Cs of the site, do we have an ownership problem that would make taking the content from archive.org legally risky?


Copyright law is civil, so, the only people to act on this would be the copyright holders. There's no copyright police running around inspecting content.

Being a civil matter, it can come down to who has the most money to argue it in court, regardless of who's right or wrong.

That said, there are 4 mitigating factors for copyright law that can allow its copying to constitute Fair Use.

- the purpose and character of your use
- the nature of the copyrighted work
- the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
- the effect of the use upon the potential market.

In our case, though we will be using a substantial amount (the entire picture of each picture), the other factors are in our favor. The Nature (factual and published, vs. fictional and not-yet-published), the purpose (educational/archival/historical record, consolidating many items of content, though not transformative), and most importantly the effect of the market (the content has nearly zero market and was posted for free originally) all side with us.

Courts have been very favorable towards archival purposes for content that would otherwise be lost, especially when not being used for commercial purposes. That's how Archive.org is able to do what they do.

Oddly enough, if the Garage section stays down, we have a slightly stronger case for Fair Use, like an out-of-print and not-being-reprinted book would have. If the copyright holder is not attempting to make money on it there's very little strength for copy protection (the purpose of copyright protections is to encourage the creation of new content by providing a limited amount of time for its creator to make profit on it [not sure how much new content is created by a creator up to 75 years after his death as the 'limited' amount of time has now been stretched to, but...]). If an owner wants to speak up about this, they can just ask for their content to be removed, or file a formal DMCA complaint in the US, which protects hosting websites from damages if they respond and take action in an appropriate amount of time.

Functionally, if Archive.org doesn't have an ownership problem, then we, acting to keep the historical record of DIY EV efforts intact and accessible, should not. As in "If we spent enough money we would probably win in court" if it came to that, which to a group of volunteers is the same thing as a loss. But DMCA should protect us from it going that far if any one of the hundreds of copyright holders wanted us to remove their content, you just cherrypick that content and let it go.

Been an administrator on several forums over the last few decades, somewhat well-versed Fair-Use but obviously not a lawyer.


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## Emyr (Oct 27, 2016)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> if any one of the hundreds of copyright holders wanted us to remove their content, you just cherrypick that content and let it go.


The terms (which I haven't read) may have transferred ownership of the content from the contributor to the site owner, hence VS might claim ownership over all of it.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Emyr said:


> The terms (which I haven't read) may have transferred ownership of the content from the contributor to the site owner, hence VS might claim ownership over all of it.


https://www.verticalscope.com/aboutus/tos.php?site=diyelectriccar.com

Under the "Submissions" section:

"You agree to grant to DIYELECTRICCAR.COM a *non exclusive*, royalty free, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual *license to* reproduce, distribute, transmit, sublicense, create derivative works of, publicly display, *publish* and perform *any materials and other information you submit to any public areas, chat rooms, bulletin boards, newsgroups or forums of DIYELECTRICCAR.COM* or which you provide by email or any other means to DIYELECTRICCAR.COM and in any media now known or hereafter developed."

Bolded words relevant.

When you contribute to the website, VS does not have an exclusive copyright to the content so VS cannot dictate that no one else can use the content. It falls back on the original owner.

Also, maybe relevant:

"You may copy the posted messages for personal use, but redistribution in any way requires the written permission of DIYELECTRICCAR.COM. "

That refers to actual posts, I suppose, which can't be reproduced in bulk, in contradiction of the section above. So, I suppose that would only apply to the DIYEC owned properties (logos, formatting, etc).

That's my take.


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## Anaerin (Feb 4, 2009)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> https://www.verticalscope.com/aboutus/tos.php?site=diyelectriccar.com
> 
> Under the "Submissions" section:
> 
> ...


See, the problem is you can use a snapshot of the Garage from before VS took over the forum/garage, at which point it would not be under the same license/requirements.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Anaerin said:


> See, the problem is you can use a snapshot of the Garage from before VS took over the forum/garage, at which point it would not be under the same license/requirements.


Interesting. That's true.

I don't know what the original license agreement was.


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