SoakersForum Site - Stay Tuned....

[BNMac]

As of November 2nd, this site will turn 10. It has been fun, but it's time to move on to bigger and better things. Our contribution rate has diminished over the last few years. We are now the skeleton crew keeping the old boat afloat. While the cost is nominal, I've come to the conclusion there is no longer much value to the community at large. It has cost around $9/month for the hosting service.

Eric stated it best: "The original purpose of the site, in my mind, was to update current conditions at hot springs between editions of the books, and to the extent that's happening it's being done on other sites including Facebook and people's blogs, rarely here anymore."

As much as I hate to say it, as of November 2nd, 2017, this site as you know it will disappear.

Some stats over this last calendar year:



I've already disabled new user accounts and will be working on other facets to prepare for mothballing. I've already run full backups, and will do so again before pulling the plug.

Archives can be found on the Library of Congress site's Web Archives, but they do not have this site as their focus is on far more important topics (https://www.loc.gov/webarchiving ) However, there is an archive on the waybackmachine but the last pull is pretty old. (http://archive.org/web/web.php)
One of my tasks will be to ensure this site is captured by archive.org before the site is shuttered.

That all said, be sure you pull the data you'd like to keep over the next 3 weeks. I'll keep the site open for posting by current members but may shut that off in the final days.

--Bruce, Eric, & Paul, your faithful admins.
--Kim, Jeff & Linda, Wayne, your faithful moderators.

(Edit: 31Oct17, 8:55 Pacific - Changed Subject)

[longsoaks]

happy trails to you until we meet again


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgw_yprN_-w

[Eric]

Thanks for all your effort on the site, Bruce, and especially thanks for taking it over when I realized I was underqualified to be a site admin. Between this site and the predecessor Soak.net forum it has been about 15 years in this format but times change. I wasn't really expecting the site to be relevant for much more than 5 years, i.e. 2012; it was still active after that but clearly in 2017 people are sharing information in other ways.

[Kim_S]

It's been a hell of a good ride guys! I also sent a note to you in Administratium. Thanks! Kim

[BNMac]

Yes it has! I'll miss it terribly, and already have mixed emotions.

Folks, for your notes: (Bookmarks, favorites, etc)
You can bookmark the top of the site on the Waybackmachine, but clicking into forums will take you to older crawls.
I have submitted each forum to get it to capture each one.

To get to the latest crawl, use the forum number, for example:

"www.soakersforum.com/3/viewforum.php?f=1"
"www.soakersforum.com/3/viewforum.php?f=2"
"www.soakersforum.com/3/viewforum.php?f=3"
etc


I'll submit each to be crawled again in the next couple of weeks to get the latest, what they have now will cover everything to date.

--Bruce.

[Casa Blanca Hot Spring]

No!

TOO SOON!!!

If SF goes away, where do we go for meaningful information and not immature quarreling?''

INFORMATION, such as is found on SF?

Please let us know specifically. We are 'old' WEB DUMMIES who don't get along with Face Fart.

Thanks,
C&B

[BNMac]

Unfortunately, it's a fact of life. I was just looking over many of the posts in the links section (http://www.soakersforum.com/3/viewforum.php?f=25) where we've discussed this issue at length. We've also chatted about the issue in other sections, tho I won't take the time to find and quote those locations.

One way this site can live on is if someone takes an interest in managing it, which also means paying for it. If there was a way I could maintain this site without the cost or the time and headache of maintaining it, then I would. We've had some site-down urgencies and we've had more than a few spammer/scammer issues to deal with. Unfortunately, I've had to shut the site off for longer periods of times to a large part of the world just to keep the spammers/scammers at bay. Fortunately those parts of the world never had contributors, though we may have lost some readership. In the grand scheme of things, I doubt it was a significant percentage.

We've had a great diversity of contributors and a lot more visitors in years past, but many of those folks have moved on to other channels. It is the nature of people; I've done it many times myself. I've been a significant contributor to other boards & formats/media (yes, even myFazeCrook) but no longer have a presence nor the interest to continue. I've moved on for many of the same reasons our membership & readers have moved on.

I'd continue paying & managing the site if it had the usage, but that's simply no longer the case.

One could say it is because I've not spent the effort to market SoakersForum, nor do other things to maintain a sustaining membership. If a business or a group with the means & desire to add this board as a forum to their site, that would keep it going. It may be a bit different, or a vastly different direction, but that would be their choice. A forum is usually set up as a sub-section to a website as it helps to market their products and/or services which helps their bottom line. SoakersForum has become a rare exception across boards in the wild world of the 'net.

While the site contains a great deal of information & wonderful conversations, there's no value left in keeping it alive (to me) just for the sake of keeping it alive. We've had a great decade, but SoakersForum is very near the end of its arc. Obviously, it has been a very emotional decision for me, but it is a crossroad that I've arrived at and have made the decision to carry it through.

We have about 2 weeks left... you'll have plenty of time to dig around, collect the data you are interested in. You can always contact me afterwards; I'll do what I can to maintain a local copy on my machine. It takes a lot to get it running locally, but it's doable. I'll pull database archives & site archives at the end as I've done nearly every month that I've owned & managed the site.

--Bruce.

[longsoaks]

Even a youtube type format won't work, if we leave out the nudity then the clothes minded win, if we put it in, it is used against us. I am glad I lived and searched the world for hot springs before it was exposed for all on the internet, I had polio in 1950 before the vaccine and the hot springs in Arizona helped me through it.

Any thoughts on gifting this forum to a like-minded commercial soak such as Faywood Hot Springs or Valley View?

Burningman?
Address: 390 Main St, Gerlach, NV 89412
Phone: (775) 557-2200

[Kim_S]

C&B, yes very sad to see the Forum go away! I realize a lot of folks don't like Facebook for a variety of reasons, but it may provide a decent alternative. I've joined this group below (over 1000 members). I don't know how active they are, but I will start monitoring and following this group. Also as you know Soakers Bible, Karin Burroughs site,has also gone away.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/109745602379105/

[Eric]

Any thoughts on gifting this forum to a like-minded commercial soak such as Faywood Hot Springs or Valley View? Burningman?

If the forum were "gifted" it's dubious at best whether it would be worthwhile going forward. Managing a forum like this requires daily commitment on the part of the site administrator and at least one assistant.

My role here for the last several years has been as backup admin and I'm on here every day, whether logging in from home or from some Econo Lodge next to the Interstate in WhoKnowsWhere USA, to make sure spammers haven't grabbed control in the last 24 hours. Bruce is the one who had to be on chat with the hosting company to get the thing back up and running when the software imploded on Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend. Many of us remember the consequences when the owner of the predecessor forum lost interest in actively managing it; it dissipated into an avalanche of spam to the point where it had negative value to the users even though they weren't paying a dime.

I fully support Bruce's decision to pull the plug, I think his comments below C&B's post above are well-articulated, and I would not be interested in serving in any co-admin or moderator role on the site after November 2.

[Greyfalcon]

Sad to see the site go, but totally understandable. While I have more time to maintain the board than Bruce, I don't have the skills. Thanks for a superb 10 years!

And I just had a great soak at Arizona Hot Springs yesterday. Does this mean I don't have to add a final trip report?

[BNMac]

You've got time, Paul! Post away!!

[Greyfalcon]

Here's a blog for soaks in Black Canyon, below the Hoover Dam. Just learned about it from the blogger, John, on Monday, and ended up in a photo that afternoon:
http://damhotsprings.blogspot.com/

[BNMac]

Paul, you sure did! Top photo, and by name to boot.

There was an outage yesterday. I believe it was due to the fact I had removed the robots.txt to enable the crawlers & search engines to access the site. However, someone decided to download the entire site using some tools (HTTrack) that caused us to massively surpass our allotted bandwidth. I've since blocked that downloader IP and set the robots.txt to throttle the crawlers. I wouldn't mind it happening if it didn't knock us off the air. I'll unblock it today to see if the usage jumps way up again.

--Bruce.

[Greyfalcon]

There was an outage yesterday.

I noticed that. I logged on the server as "Admin" for the first time and the indication was that CPU requests had exceeded the limit. The site was to be available at 00:10 today. I figured someone had done some mass backups or downloads. Hope it wasn't nefarious activity.

[BNMac]

Likewise.... even if they were able to access the ACP (AdminControlPanel) and look at various members, they cannot see passwords.
When I need to change a password for someone, I cannot see their existing password, I can only change it.

On website with a login, people should be using a different password for each site, and machine logon. I use a variety of usernames where I can as well.

I've been monitoring the CPU time & account executions today; it has increased a bit from when it was released but not significantly.

On another topic, the two hot springs related facebook pages that I'm a member of is seeing about the same volume as we were... Hot Springs has 1500ish members if I recall (I'm at work, which means NO FB); which this is not prime soaking season, one would think there's be a bit more traffic. But that's only a personal observation.

(Ok, Bruce, get back to work!)

[BNMac]

My apologies for taking the board offline.

We had two events where we were blocked by the hosting company for using too much bandwidth. I think I've sufficiently blocked the culprits at the hosting level with a suggestion from Eric. I'll continue to monitor & play Whack-A-Mole (whack-a-hog?) as needed.

What a way to work on closing up shop.

[Neptun]

I wondered, there are millions of people around the world liking to soak, but this forum has only about 50 readers, not more. Maybe I am the only one from Europe.

I exchanged private information’s with Kim about Europe, especially Italy and South America from time to time. I think we will remain in touch by internet.

A few days before I recognized, the Terme Stabiane at the gulf of Naples has become closed last year.

It is a pity, but times changes and the world changes.

[Bulldozer]

Really sad to see it go, but I understand the issues also... Somewhat.
The old NWHotsprings was a daily grind and if I left for a day or two it would jam up.

[Bulldozer]

Bruce, I posted to a forum I'm on at FB and got this reply ...

""Alex English Are you a member of the website? Find out if it’s for sale, or if they are willing to pass on the registration. I’ll keep it going""

I told him that you would be the person to contact... Interested?