Alternate Oppo Home Option (Update with example threads)(repost)

"jminer" (jminer) 11/09/2020 at 12:50 • Filed to: None

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Monday Morning Repost

The site is still a work in progress but overall feedback is good and we’re at 110 members and counting right now. There are still conversations to be had around final setup on the site, but aside from an occasional glitch when registering (refresh and try again usually works) it’s been running well after a server upgrade last night.

I am still changing settings and tweaking things as we go along so it will occasionally go down for a minute or two or things change.

Thanks to everyone for checking it out and providing feedback. I’m very happy with everything so far!

**orig post**

Afternoon Oppos!

Out impending doom has an awful lot of us panicking as Oppo is truly the greatest place on the internet and will be truly missed.

I know a lot of folks have moved to DriveTribe, but I also know a fair bit don’t love the platform, especially the crappy experience on mobile.

The last couple days I’ve been working on an alternative. It’s a form, but the experience is a good deal like Kinja when using it. There are some quirks and it is an ever-expanding project at the moment. If you’re interested take a look at it. This was going to be more of a how-to post, but I don’t have time for that so here’s a very brief introduction.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

There are a few things that don’t work at the moment like email from the forum, and there are no registration challenges (to prevent spam) but it’s a solid functioning system at the moment. I’ve been working with several on the Discord to tweak things and it’s been great having their help (calling out MM54, rallydarkstrike, sn4cktimes, 4x98 and jb boin in particular).

At the moment it is running on a tiny AWS server so if more than a couple dozen users hit it, she will likely slow to a crawl. If we want to keep growing this I’ll redo the infrastructure to make it more scalable.

I don’t know if this is the next form of Oppo, but it does seem to fix some of the things we didn’t like about Kinja, as well as some of the things we don’t like about DriveTribe. It doesn’t look as good as DT though.

If you want to explore it create an account and start poking around. Let me know feedback, and I’ll see what I can do. This is still in Alpha for sure so it will go down periodically as I make adjustments/upgrades and the look will also be updated periodically.

The view now is set to recent posts (like Kinja feed) instead of categories, but there’s a categories button in the header which takes you to that familiar forum feel.

The last thing I want to do is fragment Kinja, this is just an option for us. If it doesn’t hit a critical mass of Opponauts I’ll shut it down to prevent a splinter Kinja (like FB kind of is).

Let’s all get through this together Oppo!

Update: RallyDarkStrike made an example post with a bunch of formatting changes and features here

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

There’s also a long form post by skyfire77

http://opposite-lock.com/topic/16/test-flight

You can view all of these without creating an account or logging in.

66P1800inpieces > jminer 11/08/2020 at 13:47

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Why is there so little spam on Oppo? I never really thought about it but it appears non-existent. Like the only thing Kinja things that work all the time are the search engine oppotimization and the spam filter.

jminer > 66P1800inpieces 11/08/2020 at 13:49

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It’s probably because G/O and all of their predecessors put a ton of energy into spam prevention. They (used to) realize that a thriving commenting community was a big part of the reason they were successful.

ttyymmnn > jminer 11/08/2020 at 13:55

4

jminer > ttyymmnn 11/08/2020 at 14:05

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This is the thought - I started it as I don’t love DT and I knew a good deal of others aren’t either.  This is also owned and managed by an Oppo (me) so it won’t go away unless we all want it to.

jminer > ttyymmnn 11/08/2020 at 14:08

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I also copied in one of your this day in aviation posts (then deleted) to see if there was a character limit and it didn’t balk at 2,700 words.

Chan - Mid-engine with cabin fever > 66P1800inpieces 11/08/2020 at 14:10

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Greetings, I did not believe in Wakandacoin until I was introduced to Prince Nibbles and Dr Zoidberg who gave me a free K-Roll trial. To claim your free trial, post 10 shit posts while you still can.

ttyymmnn > jminer 11/08/2020 at 14:12

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I've got some that push 5,000 characters. Please feel free to do whatever you like with them. 

Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire > jminer 11/08/2020 at 14:14

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Please email the Oppo mod email address  it’s oppomoderator at g mail dot com

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > jminer 11/08/2020 at 14:14

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Drive Tribe works well with what it does do but it is missing a lot of the community sharing features of Kinja. URL pasting, resharing, post tags, there are a few things I wish it had.

jminer > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 11/08/2020 at 14:20

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It also really stinks on mobile

CB > jminer 11/08/2020 at 14:21

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The mods are apparently working on something as well , but your site is looking pretty good.

Inb4 “dark mode when?”

jminer > CB 11/08/2020 at 14:28

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There is a dark skin but it has an annoying missing bit where the reply screen on mobile pops back to white and that bothered me so I put the skin back to white.

I’d love to hear from the mods about what they’re actually working on.  All we’ve gotten so far is they’re working on it.  And we’re t-8 days from death here.

CB > jminer 11/08/2020 at 14:31

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Understandable.

Shoot them an email maybe?

jminer > Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire 11/08/2020 at 14:35

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Emailed

jminer > CB 11/08/2020 at 14:35

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Archduke just replied asking me to do that. I’d replied to him a couple times before offering to help and showing them what I was doing here to silence though so I posted it out for the broad group.

Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire > jminer 11/08/2020 at 14:38

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We’ve also banned a lot of spammers 

jminer > Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire 11/08/2020 at 14:44

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I’m sure

Jayvincent > jminer 11/08/2020 at 14:57

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Signed up, gave it a test reply, looks good

I’d like a less jagged (jittered?) font, but that’s nit picking

jminer > Jayvincent 11/08/2020 at 15:04

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Thanks! Not sure how to change the default font, may need to be done when composing a post.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > 66P1800inpieces 11/08/2020 at 15:14

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Did you see this?

www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jminer 11/08/2020 at 15:17

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I am collecting contacts, as you know. The list includes several active mods. Also, someone secured the opposite lock.com domain name and I expect they'd be happy to see it pointed at your server. 

jminer > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 11/08/2020 at 15:19

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Yeah, it was just easier to buy opposite-lock.com to start since this is still in the experiment stage.

I know we’ll loose folks in whatever transition we make, just trying to do what I can to help give us a nice place to land.

ranwhenparked > 66P1800inpieces 11/08/2020 at 15:20

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Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jminer 11/08/2020 at 15:21

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No doubt. And I'm trying to gather as many contacts as I can so we can reach out. Beyond serving as Founding Secretary, is there anything else I can do to assist?

Urambo Tauro > jminer 11/08/2020 at 15:25

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Can I ask a favor? With all the Oppo liferaft options that have been popping up, I’d really rather not register for every one just to try them all out. Could I trouble somebody who’s already registered to make a test post first, showing off the platform’s features, and post a link for us to check it out before signing up?

Just a quick Lorem ipsum sort of thing, demonstrating what all the platform has to offer, like bold text , italic text , strikethrough ,

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

quotes,

etc. along with whatever built-in polls, image captioning, embedding (YouTube, Twitter, etc), or slideshow options that might be available would be really helpful in selecting a new home. Some test comments showing how replies thread would be nice too.

jminer > Urambo Tauro 11/08/2020 at 15:32

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You can view without registering and a lot of the folks I mentioned above have already done most of those things.

I’m with you on the confusing options, which is why I didn’t post this until I’d already garnered a fair bit of feedback on it.

jminer > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 11/08/2020 at 15:35

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The only thing I’d say is to pop over to the forum, tinker and give feedback.

It may still die if Oppo doesn’t want to use it, but wanted to work on an option for and by Oppo.

I think it has a feel that’s a nice blend of old school forum with modern platform like Kinja.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 11/08/2020 at 15:36

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Have you futzed around with his NodeBB test site yet? It’s not bad at all! I haven’t tried it on Mobile yet though.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > jminer 11/08/2020 at 15:42

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Thanks for all your work on this!

It’s awesome to see so many so dedicated to the survival of OPPO and keeping the community together.

Hope we get the RSS feed so we can migrate everything to a new place (for archive purposes, if nothing else).

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > 66P1800inpieces 11/08/2020 at 15:43

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Authorship had to be granted, and commenters stayed in the gray up  until then.

jminer > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 11/08/2020 at 15:45

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No problem - this place has been a lifeline for me this year (as with so many others) so I’m happy to put in the time.

I’m not optimistic about G/O hosting anything for us long term, especially since their biggest problem is hosting content they didn’t create.

Urambo Tauro > jminer 11/08/2020 at 15:47

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I think I foun d one: http://opposite-lock.com/topic/9/colour-enhanced/2

I see that the site has post categories and tags, as well as bold, italic, and strikethrough text. 

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Urambo Tauro 11/08/2020 at 15:49

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http://opposite-lock.com/topic/19/capability-test-post/1

Ask and ye shall receive ! :)

Urambo Tauro > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 11/08/2020 at 15:51

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Thank you so much!

Wacko > jminer 11/08/2020 at 15:58

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I made an oppo post there 

interstate366, now In The Industry > jminer 11/08/2020 at 16:09

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All right, I signed up.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 11/08/2020 at 16:09

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As fa as I know nodeBB can have RSS feeds for the forum whole, or even individual threads! :) (look near the thread title, you’ll see a little RSS icon)

subexpression > jminer 11/08/2020 at 16:56

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I never want to discourage anybody from building a community, but I do want to make sure that anybody who wants to run their own servers understands that these things can easily become a second unpaid full-time job with lots of volunteers who never manage to pitch in . Even people who are building community sites for their own businesses sometimes end up moving to some managed service because of the effort involved . With the outpouring of emotion and community that I’ve seen in the past couple of days , it would be a terrible shame if people had yet another orphaned site in a year or two because everybody got burned out on keeping it running and updated .

Sincerely - a person who’s been a community admin and done volunteer infrastructure engineering  for a charity in the past

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > jminer 11/08/2020 at 17:22

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This is really incredible.  You are an oppo hero

jminer > subexpression 11/08/2020 at 17:27

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I appreciate the input, that definitely could become a problem but I spend enough time on oppo a few hours a week maintaining this guy I don’t think will be much of a burden.

I plan on putting all the infrastructure into AWS with a pretty self-sufficient design. Not sure how often upg rades will be a problem we’ll have to see.

Oppo is also special and we’ve got a pretty dedicated community so if we do go the self hosting route I know there are folks who’ll help.  To fund it we'll probably setup a patreon and crowd fund, as of right now I don't want ads.

jminer > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 11/08/2020 at 17:31

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Thanks! Not sure if that’s true, just doing what I  can to keep oppo alive.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Urambo Tauro 11/08/2020 at 17:40

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You’re welcome sir! Join up and have a play to see what you think!

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jminer 11/08/2020 at 18:27

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I think you’ve nailed it. Can you make a category called Folding@home? Also, how do you get a photo to show up next to your title? I don’t know if we called that embiggen in Kinja Land...

We are going to need to think about moderating and about making a set of guidelines. I'm happy to propose a set of guidelines.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jminer 11/08/2020 at 18:28

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 I haven't seen anything to make me think that this is not just as good as we had before. I'm really impressed with how easy you made it look.

jminer > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 11/08/2020 at 18:44

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When composing you need to select a thumbnail - it’s a little icon on the right of the compose bar that looks like 4 squares. It is separate from the images in the post itself but of course can be the first image.

F@h might be a bit specific, but I think a Tech/Computer category is a great idea.

Thanks! I was immediately in love when I first spun it up, she’s not perfect by any means but a solid first stab a functionality.

jminer > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 11/08/2020 at 18:44

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I’ll give most of that credit to the nodebb devs.  Their documentation isn’t great but they built pretty solid product.

jminer > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 11/08/2020 at 18:45

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Also yes, guidelines will be necessary.  I’m game lifting the oppo rules of the road almost verbatim though.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jminer 11/08/2020 at 18:52

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I would suggest that F@h might deserve its own category because humanitarian and so on. It’s not like a category for favorite beer or something.

Are we going to transplant the same moderators from Kinja Land or start fresh?

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jminer 11/08/2020 at 18:53

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Is that something I can work on?

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > jminer 11/08/2020 at 18:58

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I can’t create an account. It keeps giving me some error message about an expired session.

jminer > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 11/08/2020 at 19:01

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I don’t know either to this or your previous question. It’s strange being the life giving deity to a new organism. I’ve been talking with (one of) the mods and am now in official communication with them so we’ll see what comes of that.

I’d say go for it though?

jminer > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 11/08/2020 at 19:02

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Yeah the server is overloaded at the moment- more interest than I expected already. Tonight I’ll take it down and fix that. Try again in a few minutes and it’ll probably let you through.

We’re about 50 concurrent users at the moment and I expected it to only make it to 25 in current config so doing better than I thought already.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > jminer 11/08/2020 at 19:04

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I haven't even been able to get signed in on mobile so that's a big problem. 

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 11/08/2020 at 19:06

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I haven't but what I did see I liked a lot. It loaded quickly and was very minimalist. Really let the content do the talking it seemed. I liked the flexible thumbnail v text options. 

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jminer 11/08/2020 at 19:09

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What say would they, should  they have? There’s the big question. Maybe this is a good time for a clean break and a fresh start.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > jminer 11/08/2020 at 19:13

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Still no luck, but anyways here’s some feedback:

I have no clue how much control you have over formatting but titles next to images get a bit cramped on mobile if the thumbnail is too large. Can we make the title be under the image, maybe?

Also maybe some light line breaks between posts

jminer > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 11/08/2020 at 19:16

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I really hate the email of a link every time you want to sign in on a device on DT.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > jminer 11/08/2020 at 19:19

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Why does it need to be so secure? Can I please just use the string of numbers and letters I use for my social media passwords?

jminer > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 11/08/2020 at 19:33

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I think we should definitely cull and expand the mod list some - there are way too many inactives on it. They’ve done a pretty good job on Oppo so far though.

jminer > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 11/08/2020 at 19:34

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For the pw? I did bump it up past lowest setting. I’ll see what that requirement actually is though.

I bumped it down from ‘safely unguessable’ to ‘somewhat guessable’.

It is just a forum so not storing any sensitive info here

66P1800inpieces > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 11/08/2020 at 19:36

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Yes, thank you for setting that up.  Happy to chip in to keep ads away. 

66P1800inpieces > Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire 11/08/2020 at 19:36

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You mods do a great job!  

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > jminer 11/08/2020 at 19:40

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Oh I meant Drive Tribe. I can’t get signed in on mobile there either in the app or browser. 

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jminer 11/08/2020 at 19:41

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Agreed, though a few of them are s**tstirrers in their own right.

jminer > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 11/08/2020 at 19:46

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Yeah, that’s what I thought you were saying.  It works fine (if the server isn’t overloaded like now) on my site.

jminer > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 11/09/2020 at 04:21

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Part of that issue was an active tinkering with settings, another is that a linked thumbnail seems to bypass server settings on size.

dumpsterfire! > jminer 11/09/2020 at 09:24

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FYI, i got the same message monday morning (today) when i tried to register. the layout looks like it will work well, i am amazed by your short notice page building skills.

jminer > dumpsterfire! 11/09/2020 at 10:20

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Hmmm - usually refresh gets it to behave

vondon302 > jminer 11/09/2020 at 13:01

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I’m really impressed that you whipped this up so quick. Just saying a quick thanks to you and everyone helping you.

jminer > vondon302 11/09/2020 at 13:06

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Thanks! It’s been a group effort for sure with MM54 and RallyDarkStrike in first with experimentation and feedback but now it’s a lot of oppos, both regular and occasional checking it out.

JMKarstetter > jminer 11/09/2020 at 13:14

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Awesome work! Currently I cannot use it at work due to it being blocked for “gaming”. I have submitted a request to get that removed, so we will see how it goes. Are you running this from home or are you using an online server service?

jminer > JMKarstetter 11/09/2020 at 13:20

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It’s running on AWS. There's also not am SSL cert at the moment so that's not helping. I'll fix that soon though.

HammerheadFistpunch > jminer 11/09/2020 at 13:28

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Have you talked to life of brian about migrating domains?  seems like working the same problem from two different ends.

jminer > HammerheadFistpunch 11/09/2020 at 13:34

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The mods added me to their slack yesterday and they mentioned the possibility of doing that. No decisions on their end though.

As of now people seem to like the hyphen name, but it would definitely be better long term at the full domain.

The oppositel ock.com is dormant for now with only beginning plans for anything else. I'm guessing t he name will shuffle over to my site and it’s used in a combo with DT until a more fully fledged solution can be built.

JMKarstetter > jminer 11/09/2020 at 13:46

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Are you going to be able to recoup the costs with ads? If not maybe we can look into some sort of monthly subscription for members willing to do it.

jminer > JMKarstetter 11/09/2020 at 13:50

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As of now I’m not planning on ads, probably the subscription for willing members. Not sure exactly where hosting costs will land, depends on traffic and load but should be only a few hundos a month.

Right now though I’m just trying to get it running and stable, we can figure out financing later if it’s a home the community wants to keep.

My bird IS the word > jminer 11/09/2020 at 14:11

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I have currently been unable to create an account, on mobile at least. "Unable to sign in, likely due to an expired session" multiple attempts, at different times.

HammerheadFistpunch > jminer 11/09/2020 at 14:13

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I saw that, I’m just playing catchup on all this.

jminer > HammerheadFistpunch 11/09/2020 at 14:18

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Oh you a mod? I honestly have no idea who our mods here are :)

jminer > My bird IS the word 11/09/2020 at 14:19

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Several people have had that same problem but usually get in on their second attempt.  I’m working on a solution though.

My bird IS the word > jminer 11/09/2020 at 14:29

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Thank you. Had that experience with the trans am forums. Idk if they ever fixed it, their admins arent active I think

HammerheadFistpunch > jminer 11/09/2020 at 14:38

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Aye, though I have to admit Im rarely on slack, not for a lack of interest, just because it seems to slip through the cracks.