GPL

[MonteCristo]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Well, I'll hand it to them - it *looks* nice.

[PTRACER]

Pictures underneath. I mean, you could still make a second account on a different e-mail address, if you have one. Or is it like a IP block (in which case, VPN maybe)?

I thought about it, but I can see there is a member in the validation queue who says he has created 8 accounts and he keeps getting deleted. It looks like they are really clamping down on who they give memberships to at SRMZ, so I'll pass on the idea for now.

Anyway, thanks for the screenshots. The cars do look pretty nice, but I can see a lot is unfinished, particularly on the Ferrari which is running below the ground and doesn't have any working needles in the cockpit. I would guess that a release is far away and mods like Tasman and SC1971 would be ahead in the queue.

[PTRACER]

Looks like SRMZ has been down for several days...

[GrandPrixYannick]

It's pretty concerning. Nobody really knows so far what the issue may be. Normally, Bo Bruce would have been the line to Bill Cooper to report on the situation, but since its tragic passing last year, we have now lost that line. This could take a while.

[PTRACER]

It's pretty concerning. Nobody really knows so far what the issue may be. Normally, Bo Bruce would have been the line to Bill Cooper to report on the situation, but since its tragic passing last year, we have now lost that line. This could take a while.

I did some sleuthing and think I have found Bill's number. Will share it on the GPL Alt forum and see if someone doesn't mind calling it.

I really think we need a second archive of all this content, if SRMZ goes, so do all the tracks, patches, updates etc.

[GrandPrixYannick]

This 100%.
I think a lot of the admins SRMZ and Speedgeezers have gone under the radar (or died even) and that is pretty concerning for the preservance of the community. Back-up needs to be talked about.

[PTRACER]

This 100%.
I think a lot of the admins SRMZ and Speedgeezers have gone under the radar (or died even) and that is pretty concerning for the preservance of the community. Back-up needs to be talked about.

For sure. Bill seems to be fairly inactive in the GPL community and he doesn't realise when all of his sites have gone down, which is probably the biggest worry.

From what I have found, it looks like he asks someone else to handle the IT side for him (maybe he pays him for the services). The Invision Powerboard software also costs a huge amount of money, $49 a month for a basic license, $300 a month if you want them to host your site, plus the initial cost of the software. I heard from Bruce that Bill pays $325 a month at the moment, which is a huge amount for a site of that size.

We have anywhere from 40 to 250 posts a day on The Fastlane depending on whether there is any racing on (higher than SRMZ), but the whole thing costs $12 a month. He really needs to move everything to a cheaper platform. And yeah I would be happy to help Bill despite me not being a member there anymore.

[PTRACER]

A working group has been set up by Stefan to try to recover SRMZ. I am part of it...for now. Will keep you updated if anything happens.

[Manfred Cubenoggin]

Thanks for your efforts, PT. Been starved without the SRMZ.

[Michkov]

A working group has been set up by Stefan to try to recover SRMZ. I am part of it...for now. Will keep you updated if anything happens.

Besides the obvious waybackmachine, there is also the Google search engine cache, via which SRMZ is still accessible. Not sure how long the cache is still working since it's for performance, not backup. But as of today, I at least could access certain posts one can find by searching Google. I imagine the other search engines will have a similar cache system in place. I have no idea how to access those though, but may be worth a look.

[PTRACER]

A working group has been set up by Stefan to try to recover SRMZ. I am part of it...for now. Will keep you updated if anything happens.

Besides the obvious waybackmachine, there is also the Google search engine cache, via which SRMZ is still accessible. Not sure how long the cache is still working since it's for performance, not backup. But as of today, I at least could access certain posts one can find by searching Google. I imagine the other search engines will have a similar cache system in place. I have no idea how to access those though, but may be worth a look.

Google cache purges after a while, but luckily Archive.org doesn't.

I think the main thing is getting the add-ons + GPLTD back. I remember when the RSC database was lost, it had a huge impact on the online simracing community and a lot of content was lost. rFactorcentral breaking has caused rF1 to essentially die. SRMZ going down permanently would be a similar loss for GPL.

[Michkov]

It appears that wayback machine doesn't have the threads, just the main forum and subform sites backed up.

As far as files go, I got a bunch of them lying around on the HD, but I need to go searching for specific ones.

[mcmirande]

Maybe we could start uploading tracks to some cloud, to eventually have them there as backups...

Maybe just doing several google email accounts, using the free clouds of each of them and putting links to them in a free webhosting page. It IS some work but it's permanent and free...

Marcos

[PTRACER]

I have about 10GB free space on The Fastlane server. It would only take a few hours to create a site like The Crash Photos Database, but for GPL add-ons. People could upload what they have to it - tracks, graphics, patches etc

What do you guys think?

[mcmirande]

That would be great!

Thanks! Marcos

[sebbbl]

That would be great!!!