Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

A forum for discussing topics relating to MacGregor Powersailor Sailboats
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NiceAft
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Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by NiceAft »

I was told to try again, so here’s hoping this desperate attempt for rescue will get a positive response. Despite attempt's to alert us to the urgency of action, nothing has changed.

Heath has produced an amazing accomplishment by creating a site that even he did not imagine would create a world wide tribe of MacGregor enthusiast, but that is the past. He seems to have acknowledged his time demands have not allowed him to pay the attention to this site in the previous manner. He deserves accolades for what he has done. Now, we are facing all of this coming to an end. Either by sudden death, or trickling membership, with no means of replacements. With the extent of the varied expertise in our community, is there no one with a viable solution? There was a brief surge of interest, but that has ceased.

Someone among us must have the capabilities to continue this site, or know someone who can. There are plenty of moderators who can continue what they are doing, but what is needed is a new attention to the site. The next time this site goes dark, it might be for good. That is a loss we will all lament.

I am sorry to say that I don't have any answer either, but I am only one; we are a vast tribe.

Ray
Last edited by NiceAft on Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:11 am, edited 2 times in total.
bwygirl
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widows Son?

Post by bwygirl »

We reached out to Heath but did not get a response. We at Blue Water Yachts are interested in continuing the site. It is a valuable asset to the MacGregor community and we would hate to see it go completely. If someone could call us and talk about the next step and what is involved in maintaining a site like this, I would really appreciate it.
Cheryl, Blue Water Yachts
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Bobglas
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widows Son?

Post by Bobglas »

Please Please Please don't let it die! This site gets me through the winters especially! :| :macm:
Alexis
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by Alexis »

Hi,

IT professional here ! I may be able to help but I would like to ask a few questions about the way it is owned, organized, hosted, maintained... before going any further.

I can be contacted at alexis (dot) g (dot) robert (at) gmail (dot) com
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Herschel
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by Herschel »

Alexis wrote:Hi,

IT professional here ! I may be able to help but I would like to ask a few questions about the way it is owned, organized, hosted, maintained... before going any further.

I can be contacted at alexis (dot) g (dot) robert (at) gmail (dot) com
I wish you well. I hope you can get the info you need. As our boats (and many of us) age, we will be in greater need of a forum for maintenance and related issues. I have a 60 year old O'Day Sprite, for example, and I am out there seemingly all alone when it comes to keeping this little gem sea worthy and performing. What little info is out there on O'Days is spread very thin due to their age and the large number of models under that brand, but limited online discussion is, also, a real handicap. I would hate to see our MacGregors fall into that situation.
Alexis
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by Alexis »

Herschel wrote:I would hate to see our MacGregors fall into that situation.
I can't agree more! I feel very grateful for this forum to exist. It really helps in maintaining and sailing better these rather unusual boats.
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kmclemore
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by kmclemore »

Well, I can’t announce any commitments for anyone at this point, but I will say that as a result of the conversations and emails I’ve been working on today, the future of this forum may now have the potential to be much brighter. Much work still has yet to be done, but stay tuned... and keep the faith.

Thanks, Ray, for stirring the pot.
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kurz
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by kurz »

GREAT! THANKS
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Russ
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by Russ »

Great to hear Kevin.

I offered my IT help and even the option to buy the domain and site. We must move it forward and there are plenty of us willing to help.

--Russ
DaveC426913
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by DaveC426913 »

Also let us know if there's anything the rest of us can do to help. Money? Time?
warfin
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by warfin »

Perhaps we could rely on that bright morning star?
Drifter
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by Drifter »

Just to throw in my own 2 cents... The site is running on phpBB, a free, open-source forum script. It's not especially demanding to run and any decent shared hosting account can run the script itself with ease.

The bigger issue is the volume of content, which could push both the storage and processing power beyond the limits of budget hosting?

I don't have many sites now but have in the past, and still use Siteground hosting, which allows me to run multiple websites as subdomains of my main site.

Super basic costs:
Domain name renewal - about $15 per year
Reasonable shared hosting say $250 per year
phpBB script and updates are free

In all my years of running various sites I've never needed dedicated hosting (renting my own server); shared hosting has been fine and much cheaper.

The big potential issue is transferring the database/content and settings to a new install on a different hosting company, which is plenty possible but needs cooperation from the current owner, and the same with transferring ownership and control of the domain name.

It's the kind of thing that is a tricky and awkward headache for a novice, with a lot of to-and-thro with Customer Support. On the face of it, it's simple, in reality it could take a couple of late nights and some excessive coffee consumption. It's best to do things long before the current hosting/domain run out.

Simply transferring ownership and maintaining the same hosting company and the same domain company would be vastly easier, and as everything seems to be working OK I see no reason to change, presuming they're not stupidly expensive or anything?

Basically what I'm saying is hosting such a site is not too difficult, more awkward is moving an existing site to a new host, but that may not be necessary anyway.

I'm sure we're all willing to chip in a little bit each year, heck I have done, though that raises a 2nd step of complexity; taking payments and keeping payment records.

Bottom line, I'm sure we can figure something out :)
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kmclemore
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by kmclemore »

Drifter wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:29 am Just to throw in my own 2 cents...
....

Bottom line, I'm sure we can figure something out :)
Actually, you're responding to a post that's now over 3 years old. We have indeed rescued the forum - and Russ was the one who did it (much kudos to him!).

So... thanks, and we're doing great now! The forum is secure for many years to come, and, indeed, it's also much improved over what it was.

Cheers,
Kevin McLemore
Site Admin & Moderator (for almost 20 years now!)
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Russ
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by Russ »

Thanks Drifter.

All good points.

When ownership of the site changed, it got moved to a new server. It was running on a very very expensive dedicated server. Waaaaaaay too much for the traffic it gets. We are now on a shared server with unlimited storage and bandwidth on one of the SSD premium VPS servers. Just not a dedicated server which is perfect for the traffic it gets. However, we do get a LOT of traffic. Mostly lurkers apparently.

It's on the same hosting company now as previous (inmotion). They offered to help move it. However, their tech folks couldn't move all the databases for some reason. I didn't really buy their excuse but whatever. I didn't expect them to anyway.
Moving the site required a bit more work. It also required sorting out years of customization that just got clunky. And it required updating PHPBB to the latest build. It also has several extensions that add functionality and spam protections.

The main database is over 1 Gigabyte!! Which becomes a problem with importing using mySQL manager. It times out with such large files. I had to find an import script that could handle gigantic files and parse them into chunks. Then undoing some custom forum themes so the new PHPBB build wouldn't break.
The indexes seem to be holding integrity well and the search is snappy. So maybe 1GB database isn't that big for PHPBB.

*Sigh*

Lastly...the Mods and Classified sections were not working when I got it. Previously these were tied to the forum user database. Lots of custom php code and 3rd party addons that didn't make sense to try and revive. They were seriously broken. There was some value linking to the user table, but not worth trying to fix the whole mess.
So, I found some open source PHP scripts that would provide the same functionality. Then imported/converted the mods database into them. Whew! Getting the mods back online was a biggie. There is so much valuable data there. And photos! Lots of conversions.

Lastly, I installed a simple classified script and made it free to post ads. Previously ads were for pay and problematic. The macgregor site offers totally free $ classified ads and asks if they bring fruit to the seller, that they consider making a donation. So far, no donations, but hopefully someday. :) We have unlimited storage so it's not adding cost.

We have the absolute BEST moderators for this site bar none. We all belong to other sites that do poorly at moderating. Spammers are a constant problem as are some members who push outside of the bounds of the rules. Without these great moderators, this site could easily get polluted with bad. They also email/call me right away when things break. For example, the other day the SSL certificate went stale or something causing alarming browser warnings. Kevin pinged me and we got it fixed straight away. Last month, the mods section was getting dozens of spam registrations per minute. Keven rang me up and I was able to stop it in minutes. How great to have admins on the ball.

Drifter, you seem to be knowledgeable on this stuff. Perhaps we could tap your expertise in the future for this site. Since you aren't out sailing :) PM if you have any interest or skills you are willing to lend.
--Russ
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LordElsinore
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Re: Is There No Hope For The Widow’s Son?

Post by LordElsinore »

Just wanted to mention that I'm available to help as well and would love to be involved. I led engineering at a major internet hosting company for 15+ years of my career, super comfortable with domains, site migrations, DNS, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc. These days I build/run the private and public cloud infrastructure for a major online retailer.

I'd hate to see this site go away. Would be happy to help!

Mike
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