78 replies to this topic

[KurtVerbose]

 

I'm having to use the Tapatalk to access this site as the website/server has been infected and has a redirect on it.

Anyway, I've been in touch with a chap called Bibs who, from what I understand, is the main person behind theLotusforums.Com. From what I understand he hosts the site and has made an incredibly generous offer to host our site free of charge, as it's a Lotus-based site.

Furthermore, he has also offered to help to port the existing content to an alternative platform software. He suggests using the same platform as theLotusforums.Com, which is called 'Invision'. (For those that are interested, you can get a feel for the software by taking a look at the Lotus forums website)

The only fly in the ointment is the annual cost of the software, which as far as I can tell is around $1100 per year. Obviously, there would need to be sufficient interest in the members subscribing to cover this cost. Also, I don't really understand how this might work in practice but, once again, Bibs could almost certainly help with this.

So the question is, how many members are there on here that would be likely to subscribe.

Regarding the existing site here and it's 'ownership' and accessibility for porting, if the current owner won't make it available for porting, that's just not fair or right. Also, since the site is clearly riddled with infected links, the security certificate is invalid, and it's not been maintained for a long time, I'd suggest the best course of action for those members who use it is to dump their current subscription and pay it to a new portal. Obviously the biggest downside is that the existing data is going to be lost, but what's it's value if it's inaccessible anyway?

Comments please?

Sent from my phone

Can the data be scraped?

 

 

Or can we get a copy of the back up file? (Makes sinister laugh)

[martinf]

The Lotus Forums Admin has asked me if anyone has contact info for the person that owns the Vx220 site. Maybe Ivor has?

Sent from my phone

[Ivor]

The Lotus Forums Admin has asked me if anyone has contact info for the person that owns the Vx220 site. Maybe Ivor has?

Sent from my phone

I can get it, lee is the man to get it tho, I'll only be asking him, cocopops on here

[Ivor]

I'll have a discussion at the VX national end of may about this, see if we can get traction

[C8RKH]

I'm on LotusForums as a paid subscriber (£30 a year from memory) and they do have a "free" option too. Quite a few people from here on TLF.

 

Bibs is a great guy and has been involved in TLF/Lotus Esprit World for over 30 years and his site is rock solid, with regular software upgrades, etc...

 

Would be a great option if we could, failing that, TLF also has a VX220 section which can be found here   https://forums.thelo...e-116/#comments

 

It's not well used, but if people wanted to and joined, we could build it out.

 

 

[martinf]

I hadn't realised that there was a section for the Vx220 on thelotusforums already.

Maybe that's an answer, in part. It would be even better if we could port the old data into this.

I think the answer to this would be to try to get a discussion going with the current 'owner' of the VX site.

Sent from my phone

[oblomov]

Can the data be scraped?

 

In theory yes - but would be very labour intensive/time consuming.

[martinf]

Sadly I'm unable to make any progress with helping to resolve the problems with this forum/website.

I can't get any contact info for the person responsible for the site which might lead to a solution.

Sent from my phone

[Ivor]

[quote name="martinf" post="1998350" timestamp="1745391480"]

Sadly I'm unable to make any progress with helping to resolve the problems with this forum/website.

I can't get any contact info for the person responsible for the site which might lead to a solution.

Sent from my phone[/quote
Me neither, I'll raise it at the National to see what could be done to get the owner to release the site

[C8RKH]

Looks like the domain registration expires October this year, if I read the report correctly.

[martinf]

Thanks Ivor,
That would be very helpful. See what other people's views are.

Sent from my phone

[martinf]

Hi guys,
Was there any discussion about the website at the National?

Sent from my phone

[hairy]

On the 31st

[Ivor]

Hi guys,
Was there any discussion about the website at the National?

Sent from my phone

End of may

[hairy]

Any outcome Ivor?

[lhopley1800]

I managed to download an offline copy of this website just after it went down last year (it was then recovered to a snapshot taken in 2020 i think)

You obviously cant log in nor comment - but its great to keep as an information piece to reference issues and find fixes.

[Ivor]

Any outcome Ivor?

Nope, basically the owner wants £10k supposedly, which no one will pay, not sure how he gets at that valuation, yes there's money in ads but only if there's traffic
Was thinking the only way forward is to start a new forum afresh and try to upload the historical content
Minimal fee to keep bots and spam posters out
Apparently there was a breakaway forum after a group fallout a number of years ago , pre Facebook, but it withered away
Thoughts

[lhopley1800]

i guess a big problem with this and most forums are the broken image links too....
if we went into a new forum (which I'd happily contribute a subscription fee towards) then we would need to migrate the data over and try to replace images or find the original ones and re-link/embed, even if we could get to a point where most guides have been copied over with fresh images it would be awesome.... then focus on migrating peoples specific build guides etc....

The lotus forum would be a great place for this, better than a 1 man band trying to host it, at least it has plenty of backers and people who could take over should the current owner want to take a step down.

[KurtVerbose]

I like the Lotus forum idea.