Forum is unusable

Silver.T4R

Silver.T4R

New member
Yes I know this is the wrong section. But no posts in the site maintenance section get any attention. I've been on here since 2016 and there's a wealth of information on here, frankly all the FB pages which are far more usable then this site is reference this site for any tech info / FAQ's because of how valuable it is. I don't often post, as this site is hardly usable but throughout this last week I can hardly even access it anymore. 7/10 times I get a 404 error or it says that the server failed to respond.

I am posting this in this section in hopes that someone in here has been around long enough and knows who moderates / runs this site so that they can be contacted. With all due respect to the owners / mods too, if you genuinely don't care about this site can you please pass on your responsibilities to user who are active and care about keeping the site functional? This is primarily directed to whoever runs this site as mods seem to do a good job at removing spammers, but the software for years now has been a nightmare to post with and it now appears that this site is about to die as it's hardly even accessible.

It seems to me that with how many ads, sponsorships ect there are and with us users being responsible for this sites ad revenue and sponsor revenue that we have should have some say in keeping the sire going. Or be able to pass on the baton to those who at least care about it.

I know there are other forums but non have the treasure trove of info this site has it sure would be a shame to lose it.

If anyone knows who to contact it or has some meaningful info to provide to the discussion it would be much appreciated.

Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk
 
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If a system upgrade is needed to speed it up, maybe the owner could post a donation page? I have appreciated the resources here and I’m sure others have too, so maybe we help out…..
 
Wanted to ad to mods / owner (not sure how this site is ran...) this post is by no means meant to be inflammatory. I get that life happens and interests change. It just seems like the owner / whoever is responsible for keeping things afloat should pass on the baton if they are no longer capable of doing so. I also would be happy to donate if need be to keep things running / make the software usable again. I've been reading other discussions and it seems as though the owner can no longer be reached which is unfortunate. I truly mean for this to be a constructice discussion in hopes of improving things and not out of starting drama ect.

Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk
 
I have experienced latency and occasional DNS issues. I suspect the site software is probably a few (to be very generous) updates behind, but if you run a adblocker it is still pretty darn functional (but slow by current standards). I run uBlock origin on FF and the site works fine. I will turn it off from time to time or use a burner browser and click on a bunch of ads to support the site. I don't know if doing that is as helpful as it is to a YouTuber, but it can't hurt.

Edit - Actually the site IS a bit behind the times and they have recently made some hosting changes from Amazon/Apache to Cloudflare. I don't really know much about this stuff and I am probably just annoying the Owner/Moderator. It's all easy to find info.

Content Management System

vBulletin 3.8.11 (6.x is current)
65% of sites use a newer version

Server-side Programming Language

PHP 7.1.28 (8.3x is current)
81% of sites use a newer version
 
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I’ve noticed it too. It seem to have a better response today at least.

Plus one of the posts (seat bolt?) sat at the top for two days before I seen a new post.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I cant remember this website being update in all the time I've been here. The site is working better than yesterday (yesterday being 1 day after outage). So that's good. I get it, servers like this are expensive.

Long term though, if this forum is to survive, it needs to improve so new 6th gen owners will choose it as their forum. A large reason I'm a member is there were already thousands of threads on 3rd gens, but that isn't the case with newer gen 4runners. So why would a 6th gen owner choose this site with its disgusting ads and archaic UI over another? They wont.

And if other forums have stronger communities for newer 4runners, this forum will be dependent on a steadily decreasing number of 3rd gen owners to survive.

I also wish that during the site maintenance they had an error page explaining it was undergoing maintenance. I didn't even know this forum had a twitter until someone told be elsewhere, so I didn't see the post.
 
I have noticed it too. Been having really poor performance loading this site (or it's just unreachable some days). Real shame I quite like this site. Good community.
If it is a hardware thing I think a good chunk of us would be happy to pitch in (I know I would). There's a huge wealth of knowledge on this forum would hate to see it go.
Could use a few improvements for use (like being able to upload images on desktop.)
 
Endlessblockades said:
Can you expand on that comment? Images can be uploaded from a desktop browser fairly easily if that's what you mean.
Click to expand...
I think he means upload images directly onto the forum. Whenever I post a photo on this forum I first have to upload it to an image host website like Imgur, then copy the image URL and paste it into the photo adder.

Some forums let you drag and drop the photos easy, no image host website. I'm bet the reason that isn't done here is it would cost a lot more to save photos too.
 
Pyral said:
I think he means upload images directly onto the forum. Whenever I post a photo on this forum I first have to upload it to an image host website like Imgur, then copy the image URL and paste it into the photo adder.

Some forums let you drag and drop the photos easy, no image host website. I'm bet the reason that isn't done here is it would cost a lot more to save photos too.
Click to expand...

I have no problems uploading photos from my computer.
 
1. In order to see this thread, I waited about 20 seconds between clicking on the title and being delivered to the thread. 20 seconds is about 18 seconds too long.
2. To all those who can't learn how to post images directly to the forum: Please learn how...if I can do it... you can do it. All of your externally hosted images will be lost to the forum users when the image hosting service folds(inevitable)or you end your use of it (also inevitable.) PLEASE post directly to the forum so the images stay.
 
I did notice the forum was offline for a while it seems. I suspect changes occurred during that time as its responding again. Before that time for a week or so it was running kinda backwards. I even took a photo to remember the event.
f8a10dbcdf4b7926e7257a7ef68c5025.jpg
 
You can add images directly to the forum by using the attachment option in the toolbar. Most people will understandably try to use the insert image option, which only allows you to link offsite images.
 
As others mentioned you can upload directly from a desktop using the paper clip. I sometimes need to resize photos because the native photo size of current mobile devices can be too much for the forum to handle. I just resize everything to no bigger than 1400 pixels in any dimension. Uploading local photos will benefit future info seekers and not cause the Photo No Longer Available issue when a hosting service goes out of business or user moves on or whatever. This site is loading fine for me today. Def use an adblocker of your choce.
 

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Correct. But the fact the site is working fine today means nothing, and the photos will vanish anyway when this forum suddenly dies. It will work fine one minute or one hour, then it will be back to taking 1 to 2 minutes to load or not loading at all. There are threads on this problem going back for years. There are major red flags that this forum is becoming unusable and possibly unsafe.

A box of donuts to anyone who can find and link us to an active, responsive moderator or administrator. For all we know the site has been taken over by hackers who are just collecting ad money and email addresses.
 
Endlessblockades said:
As others mentioned you can upload directly from a desktop using the paper clip. I sometimes need to resize photos because the native photo size of current mobile devices can be too much for the forum to handle. I just resize everything to no bigger than 1400 pixels in any dimension. Uploading local photos will benefit future info seekers and not cause the Photo No Longer Available issue when a hosting service goes out of business or user moves on or whatever. This site is loading fine for me today. Def use an adblocker of your choce.
Click to expand...

I had no idea about that awesome!
I was always told to use taptatalk or an external source so its great to know you can!


I can't post :/
Error: Call to a member function shareads() on null in ..../includes/functions.php(5736) : eval()'d code on line 18
This is just one of the errors I keep getting.
 
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Previologist said:
Correct. But the fact the site is working fine today means nothing, and the photos will vanish anyway when this forum suddenly dies. It will work fine one minute or one hour, then it will be back to taking 1 to 2 minutes to load or not loading at all. There are threads on this problem going back for years. There are major red flags that this forum is becoming unusable and possibly unsafe.

A box of donuts to anyone who can find and link us to an active, responsive moderator or administrator. For all we know the site has been taken over by hackers who are just collecting ad money and email addresses.
Click to expand...

Somebody is active on a daily basis, I know this because I "report" all oblivious Spam posts to be checked out on a regular basis and that post/s are usually gone along with the poster that day or next day without fail.

That being said I assume that is being done by a Moderator who very likely has no control on how the forum runs and can't do anything about without Administrator "Permissions", usually all they can do is remove bad content/members, give rowdy members a timeout, etc.
 
I belong to a forum for every vehicle I own. This is by far the slowest I have ever been a member and it has steadily been worse over time. Something is up and it's not good as the archives have a lot of valuable info. It will be a real shame to lose it.
 
This is one a small amount of forums I frequent. Good people here and I enjoy the posts. Hopefully they fix the issues. For now, I right click on a thread I want to read so it opens a new tab. I do this for all the ones I want to read so end up with a few tabs open. I then go between them as they eventually load. Annoying yes but not as annoying as watching one tab. At least it's much better today.

BTW, I've never had a problem posting pics directly to the site.
 
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