I'll try to keep it brief but I've figured I should say something about this.
The old forum was pretty dead. But it is a nice archive to have and seeing it down for good was not an option.
The original bit-blot.com forum finally went down sometime around June 2021 after ongoing issues since about 2 years prior. The old web host didn't send emails out, so people couldn't register new accounts and ended up asking for help in our IRC and Discord channels.
Reaching out to Derek didn't help.
In the meantime I've managed to obtain a complete forum database dump but kept mostly quiet about it. I had updated and converted the database to work with SMF 2.0 and had put up a working secret backup forum just in case.
Eventually the bit-blot.com web host must have pulled the plug on the old PHP version the forum was running on and everything stopped working. What you are now seeing is the backup, reactivated and made public.
What I have:
- All accounts made until the backup (Q3 2019).
- All posts (there were only a handful made after Alec's death, those were not in the backup but
archive.org has them.)
- User/Post/... IDs are all the same. So your old bookmarks will work if you change the URL from bit-blot.com to aquaria.wzff.de.
What i don't have:
- Forum attachments. Those were lost in the move.
- The old forum
theme, of which there is no update for SMF 2.x. If anyone has a suggestion for a better default theme, please tell.
- The old (and since long unused) blog, but again,
archive.org has that, too.
To clarify:
We (I wasn't the only one) tried to reach out multiple times to Derek trying to get this sorted out and offered help to get the forum back up, but to no avail. Sometimes taking matters into your own hands is the only thing that gets the job done.
I'm not even sure this kind of forum takeover is legal or okay but I regret nothing. Yes, i have a bunch of user data and emails and stuff and this might be seen as a data breach but I don't care. No harm done. I hate spams as much as the next guy.
I've actually tightened security a little so that account emails don't leak out and are taken up by spams but i guess it's beyond too late for that anyways.
Oh and the forum has proper SSL encryption now. Yay.
I have no hopes of reviving this forum but anyone is welcome to use it.
It's 2021 and small forums are dying or gone. I remember the days around 2003-2010 where forums were BIG.
But then eventually centralization started to happen and everyone but a few holdouts moved to facebook and such.
(For extra context and a write-up,
see here.)
That's it for now; if anyone has questions, ask. Or drop by
[irc.esper.net, #bitblot] or
Discord if you're into that -- they are both linked and messages will make it across.
TL;DR I'm sorry but you're welcome.
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