Forum status, Oct 30, 2020

[Agent☣Orange]

Standby

[mx5er]

Stand back and stand by...wait, I have heard this before! If you haven't Florida people, get out and vote!

[mx5er]

Great you are bac! Glad I could help!

[Agent☣Orange]

Okay, things settling down here so let me give a quick update:

As everyone noticed last month, we were offline for a couple of weeks. This was due to some unfair treatment by our web host that has now been resolved. Without too much drama and technical jargon, our software is 15 years old and supporting it is like Microsoft supporting Windows 95 which they don't. Additionally, I've been the financial and technical custodian of this forum a decade and while it is a labor of love, it also costs money.

Like many people during this pandemic year, I have been struggling to keep my head above water. So, with the help of our membership, we're upgrading to new software compliant with the host's latest PHP 8 (their server software which manages ours) and we're back for another ten years. I'll post a separate notice in the forum soon to pass the hat around. I've already paid a year ahead for our forum ($120), MX5er made a great donation on short notice to get us out of trouble ($100) and MinuteMan has committed to purchasing the new software ($250) and we'll set up a donation method for our members to send some money his way to help offset his expense.

We all notice that Facebook has become the de-facto social site but we Gearheads are a tight group and we like this place. Our history is here and we're a bit nostalgic. As I've said, 2020 has been a devastating year, not just for our forum but worldwide. We're committed to sticking around because of all the good memories of drives, tech days, dinners, socializing and supporting each other in our most difficult times. We don't want to be that place you loved going to that is now boarded up and shut down forever due to Covid.

Soon, you're going to see some updates. Behind the scenes, we'll be modernized. We'll still look and function like the forum you're used to but with updated looks, colors and functionality.
We are now secured so if you look up at the address bar on your browser, you'll see the little padlock by our address. *If you've been using the same old bookmark, please delete it and go to https://gearheadsmiataclub.net/vB/forum.php. Some of you might see the forum disappear and reappear. Do not worry because all our data is safe and I'm working on it.

Oh and a cool little surprise... You're already familiar with domains like .edu and .gov but the Internet gods have been busy creating new domains such as .club. And guess what? We already own GearheadsMiata.Club! If you try it out now, it redirects right to us. In the coming months, we're going to phase out GearheadsMiataClub.n et and permanently move our forum to GearheadsMiata.Club. It even sounds better not having to say ".net" anymore. Our clean, new logo will reflect that as well. Another surprise: we also own GearheadsMotor.Club for future plans to incorporate more local gear heads who own cars other than Miatas.

So that's it for now. Stay tuned for further updates and please post any thoughts.

Thanks!

[clownheart]

Thank you for continuing to maintain this forum. Personally I prefer this over the standard social media because it's so much easier to organize threads.

[mx5er]

My other car is a 2019 Mazda 3 sedan AWD (necessary when one lives in WNY). Good idea to add other marks to increase membership.