Not a good sign

Mike Phillips

Mike Phillips

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Not a good sign

Clicked over to the geek forum this morning and saw this,

www.autogeekonline.net

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Besides being incredibly slow, we have to wonder if the geek's forum days are numbered?


Mike
 
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I saw the geek forum was down yesterday morning and it's still down this morning.

I think the geek is down to a skeleton crew consisting of any of the original employees that were there when I left in 2021.

It would be sad to see this forum lost forever. Best wishes to whoever is now in charge.


Mike
 
Mike Phillips said:
I saw the geek forum was down yesterday morning and it's still down this morning.

I think the geek is down to a skeleton crew consisting of any of the original employees that were there when I left in 2021.

It would be sad to see this forum lost forever. Best wishes to whoever is now in charge.


Mike
Click to expand...

Yes very sad. I first found that place around 4 years ago while searching how to properly use my megs mt300 and da correction system. It was where i found your name and the insane amount of information on everything detailing/paint correction. I went down that rabbit hole and learned so much from you and many other great contributors on that forum. My skill set and tool arsenal is now leaps and bounds from where i was 4 years ago.

I am beyond grateful to you and many others. I still try to contribute so that the cycle may continue for years to come. Hope it can be revived.
 
im not a memeber of autopia forum but their website says this...i wonder if this has anything to do with geek forum being down?
 

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Mak said:
I tried repeatedly to join that forum back before I found yours. I never received a response or membership approval.
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I don't think there's been anyone truly minding the forum since I left. Once in a while one of the Mods will ban a spammer or update why something's wrong but that's about it.

There are forum people and all the rest of the masses. When I was at the geek, I was the only person that I would consider a forum person. For the most part, the majority of employees at the geek that posted to the forum only did so because they had to.

The exception would be Andre and Bobby, who would post from time to time. Nick Rutter actually wrote pretty good articles. Other than that? Not much.

Things have really changed since Yancy and I both left.


Mike
 
I wonder if it's a hardware issue or, worst case scenario, a ransomware attack. They don't seem to have been practising good cyber hygiene, lots of spam posts, from accounts that were old, but hadn't been active for a while.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but here in Australia companies must report cyber attacks to the government, and it is illegal to pay the ransom in a ransomware attack.
 
Big Dave said:
I wonder if it's a hardware issue or, worst case scenario, a ransomware attack. They don't seem to have been practising good cyber hygiene, lots of spam posts, from accounts that were old, but hadn't been active for a while.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but here in Australia companies must report cyber attacks to the government, and it is illegal to pay the ransom in a ransomware attack.
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I dont know man.

Not that i was on there everyday, it sure feels wierd to have all of the vast amounts of information/conversations just poof...gone
 
Like many others, when I started to go deeper into the detailing world I searched out both Autogeek and Autopia (and Meguiar's forum) for info. Lurked for awhile, then joined. And like alot of folks, I was educated so so much and had the detail world opened up to me just how big it actually is. And the amount of amazing stuff posted to be able to learn?.... it's like a detail goldmine. Sites like those 3 I mentioned and now Mike's site here, they account for about 95% of valuable knowledge of this detail world that is online. For sure. To have the database of info disappear would be a loss that would never be able to be replaced. The amount of posts of people that have come and gone of topics that were made through trial and error, impossible to do that over again.
 
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I think that’s probably the end of it. Could see it coming with how hands off AG was with the forum. Tons of good info, and hopefully people think to come here. Lots of people I’d like to hear from periodically.
 
I had communicated with AG a few months ago and they said they were considering upgrading the forum when I was discussing access issues with them. On an optimistic note, this would likely be the first steps if they took the forum offline.

In its current form (before the current issue) it was often unusable at times. It could take a lot of time to fix the issues.

Of course, if that was the path then they could have proacticely noted the site would be down. But, they do not need two forums (autopia and AGO) nor two storefronts. If I thought a site would disappear it would autopia since it has a very low post and yet they continue to pay hosting fees and likely software license fees.

Has anyone called Customer Service to ask?
 
Bunky said:
I had communicated with AG a few months ago and they said they were considering upgrading the forum when I was discussing access issues with them. On an optimistic note, this would likely be the first steps if they took the forum offline.
Click to expand...

Correct. See post #3 in this thread,

TapaTalk and Xenforo Forum Software

I actually recommended Xenforo, what this forum runs on, to Juan, the Admin for the AG forum for a host of reasons. I know the yada yada yada on the geek forum about Xenforo was that it's not compatible with TapaTalk. But the thing is, there's options with Xenforo to upload pictures directly from your phone, it just takes a little poking around to figure it out. So for the most part, it's a non-issue.


Bunky said:
In its current form (before the current issue) it was often unusable at times. It could take a lot of time to fix the issues.
Click to expand...

I revisited all the "Detailing Class Threads" on MeguiarsOnline.com and while the threads are there, all the pictures are gone, making the threads useless. This is because, the company that maks photo gallery software usually goes out of business so there's no way to update it. Then, it becomes vulnerable to hacking from malicious entities. So when a company running old, outdated vBulletin software migrates to any other platform, you lose the gallery and thus you lose the pictures.

It's possible with Xenforo maybe someone has built hack for this? It would be great to see the AG Forum upgrade and retain pictures, but my hunches are it won't work.

Bunky said:
Of course, if that was the path then they could have proactively noted the site would be down. But, they do not need two forums (autopia and AGO) nor two storefronts. If I thought a site would disappear it would autopia since it has a very low post and yet they continue to pay hosting fees and likely software license fees.

Has anyone called Customer Service to ask?
Click to expand...

Not me. This is the contact info they list on the bottom of the store page.

Call Toll Free: 772-286-2701
Email us: info@autogeek.net


Mike
 
Just to add a little background...before the "database error" at AGO, there was a message under the normal AGO header/banner to the effect of "the board is down for backup and software updates", so I would assume that's what is going on...of course I believe that was last Wednesday, so things may not be going as planned.

Also, Autopia is working fine although they seem to have recently shut down the Autopia-CarCare store (as detailed in the screen shot above).

Finally, as Mike has noted on the forum here previously, it seems that Vision has finished moving the "Autogeek" warehouse to Indiana, co-located with Sonax USA in a new 50,000 sq ft facility that includes wet and dry detailing bays and a "testing and training" facility. This is detailed in a hard-to-find video at the AG site which was put up about a month ago.

PS I'd like to thank Mike for allowing me to join his forum, but mostly I'd like to thank him for creating this forum and maintaining it as his own, so that there will be continuity here, allaying some of the concerns noted above about loss of historical information at some of the other forums. Also this software seems to work great!
 
Setec Astronomy said:
PS I'd like to thank Mike for allowing me to join his forum, but mostly I'd like to thank him for creating this forum and maintaining it as his own, so that there will be continuity here, allaying some of the concerns noted above about loss of historical information at some of the other forums.

Also, this software seems to work great!
Click to expand...

Glad to see you posting Mike. I know FB and IG and whatever else comes along are great platforms for what they do, but when I want to showcase what one of my classes looks like, there's no better platform than a quality forum. It displays the text in a way you can format it. It also displays information in a linear format that works well for picture-heavy content, like some of my write-ups include.

I did a lot of research on forum software as I still own my original vBulletin license for showcargarage that dates back to the year 2002 (I think). So, I'm very familiar with vBulletin and all the similar forum software options - but after much research, it was easy to see that Xenforo was the way to go.

So I brought up my own forum just so I have a place to put my stuff. Others are welcome to post too, but I never planned to try and overtake legacy forums like DetailingWorld.co.uk

And when I first joined the Autogeek team in 2009, the geek forum was nowhere near as busy as it was when I left. I poke in over there to see what folks be saying, it's always good. :)


Mike
 
I don't know if this is good or bad, but when I just checked in on the AG forum, it no longer comes up with "database error", it asked me to login, which worked, but then came up with "network error".

The first detailing forum I went on was Detail Paradise, which I found through the Australian LS1 forum, which was mainly a Holden forum. I was in it for a few years, but then they updated it and made it a lot less user friendly. People started disappearing pretty quickly, a few mentioned the Geek forum before they left, so I ended up there. When AG started having issues a while back this forum was mentioned, so here I am, and I see some of the regulars from AG are here, fingers crossed more to come yet.

I checked on Detail Paradise a few days ago, it only exists as a FB group now, from what I could find. And I don't do Facebook, but I am on Instagram.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Wait a minute--that's Jason???
Click to expand...

Yes, same guy. Actually super smart. If anyone can get the forum switched over to Xenforo he can do it. I also offered to send him my Xenforo Mechanic's contact info but never got a reply from him, that was probably over a year ago. I have a GREAT forum mechanic.

Mike
 
I got this message from Deyon, DFB on the AG forum, who emailed AG customer service.

"We should have it back up shortly, we ran into some software issues and need to do a full update and migrate the forum into a new software due to unsupported software that is no longer available. " Juan Sierra
 
I wonder if they are going to do the same thing with Autopia or whether that is going to go away along with the store. I think that is probably a more challenging migration due to how many other forums got folded in there and old vB hacks from the original owner.
 
Mike Phillips said:
I'm very familiar with vBulletin and all the similar forum software options - but after much research, it was easy to see that Xenforo was the way to go.
Click to expand...

They have a very basic main page up now--will they be able to migrate the existing AGO content to XenForo, or is it going to have to be a clean sheet?
 
Setec Astronomy said:
They have a very basic main page up now--will they be able to migrate the existing AGO content to XenForo, or is it going to have to be a clean sheet?
Click to expand...

Supposedly Xenforo offers the migration tools necessary to move a vBulletin forum to the Xenforo platform. Have to wait and see if all the content/text shows as normal after the migration.

The problem is going to be all the pictures archived on the integrated photo gallery. Any picture posted to the Internet has a webpage address. It's very specific. For example, here's the CODE for an image on my site. I removed the first 5 letters - the https so the Xenforo software doesn't automatically try to display the image as a link.


https //themikephillipsforum.com/media/barry_karen_meguiar_mike_phillips-003-jpg.5140/full


ANY PLACE on the forum content where there's an image inserted using the BB Code image tags, that would be this one,


If through the migration process the exact webpage address for each image is not retained - then my guess is, while the content, for example an article I've written, the text will show up but the images will not appear. This tends to make the article, review, discussion, etc., worthless.

The other issue that might be the root cause of no images showing up would be if they simply kill or delete the photo gallery. I don't remember offhand which software the geek forum was using for archiving images, I think it was Photo Post, but it might have been Photo Gallery.


This is what happened at MeguiarsOnline.com - they upgraded to the latest version of vBulletin and from what I can tell, ditched the photo gallery altogether.

And if everything transfers or migrates without issue, then the pictures will show up.


Here's the image code above, inserted as a complete webpage address sandwiched in-between the BB Code for images.

full



Mike
 
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I know the photo gallery at Autopia hasn't been working for a long time, but on AGO it was, so maybe the photos will work there--but I won't hold my breath.

Time to thank you again for keeping this forum under your auspices, I'm sure it nags at you seeing all that content you created at MOL and AGO potentially be lost.
 
Well Mike

It seems that that somebody at AG was listening when you offered advice on using Xenforo as web format. It really shows good character on your part to try to help
a company that you are no longer involved with.

You're a good man, Mike. May your star rise even higher and shine brighter.

:)
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Time to thank you again for keeping this forum under your auspices, I'm sure it nags at you seeing all that content you created at MOL and AGO potentially be lost.
Click to expand...

Not really. I have a list of all the articles I've written, and all the info is in my head, so I can easily re-write and even update and improve any article topic I need or want to recreate.

Over the last few years at the geek, they had a guy extract a LOT of my reviews and how-to articles and insert them into product pages on the Autogeek.com store.

If you read any of them and pay attention, you can see they were all written in first person - me. And of course, if you look at the pictures, there's no one else at the geek before, during or after me that created so much content using really cool cars. That stuff didn't just happen on its own. LOL

In places they tried to remove the Mike aspect, but it's all my content no matter how they like to cut and slice it up. LOL

I'm actually thankful they did this as they have memorialized me and my writing style for the future. I'll always know the story behind the story.


Mike
 
So a few people have joined the new AG site and are already posting about the loss of info and how they had to join again

I am not going to even attempt to do anything until I see if they bring back the old info and let us resume our previous identities

If that doesn't happen I think I am done with AG
 
Max Burks said:
Well Mike

It seems that that somebody at AG was listening when you offered advice on using Xenforo as web format. It really shows good character on your part to try to help
a company that you are no longer involved with.
Click to expand...

Like mentioned previously, Juan is a sharp guy, even without my recommendation, after doing some research he would have found Xenforo and like me, figured it was the best option.

I can't remember, but I think I also recommended archiving the original vBulletin forum, that is, leave it be but close it to new members and new posts. Make it so it's read-only. THEN bring up a new forum.

Skip the entire process of trying to import the vBulletin databases into the Xenforo databases. Migrating an existing, legacy forum into completely foreign forum software always sounds like a good idea on paper but it doesn't always execute as planned.


Mike
 
chilly said:
So a few people have joined the new AG site and are already posting about the loss of info and how they had to join again

I am not going to even attempt to do anything until I see if they bring back the old info and let us resume our previous identities

If that doesn't happen I think I am done with AG
Click to expand...

I'd say give Juan some time, there's bound to be unexpected hiccups working through the process. I'm certainly glad I'm not in his shoes.

My guess is after they workout the bugs, all the old content will show up versus what you see now.

full



Mike
 
It looked like most of the people that were joining were spammers, along with a few impatient members. FWIW they have a message up now that says:

"Sorry, we're currently unavailable. Site Upgrading is in progress, we will be back soon. Thanks for your patience."
 
Setec Astronomy said:
It looked like most of the people that were joining were spammers, along with a few impatient members. FWIW they have a message up now that says:

"Sorry, we're currently unavailable. Site Upgrading is in progress, we will be back soon. Thanks for your patience."
Click to expand...

This is probably a good sign. Hopefully it means they are working out or have worked out the bugs and are importing the vBulletin databases into the Xenforo databases.

If all goes well, the new forum will be up and hopefully all previous members of the vBulletin forum will be able to login and their original account/posts will be intact. I wish them nothing but good luck.


Mike
 
Guilty as charged, I didn't want to lose my user name, imagine how confused you guys would be if Big Dave ended up being some guy in Austria, who drives a Land Rover.

It did actually happen on another website, I was Big Dave in their comments section, then someone else came in and used it as well, they figured it out in the end, but I added OZ to mine, and he added UK to his, because they couldn't figure out who was first.

I suppose I could have stolen Setec Astronomy, but then I'd be the one with "too many secrets".
 
Guilty as charged!

Actually, I came up with the idea for that user name out of frustration when trying many variations of whatever more pedestrian user name I was trying to use at a large email site, and they were all taken--and I said to myself "everyone has too many secret(s) email addresses" which reminded me of that movie, so Setec Astronomy it was.
 
I just realized something in another thread, I think this also happened when Autopia got merged, that if you have bookmarks to old AGO threads, or even links within posts there to other threads, that they are not going to work now with the new software.

Between that and the picture issues, makes a good case for what Mike suggested about about making the old vB forum an archive and starting from scratch with the new one.
 
Big Dave came from my soccer team when I was 9, there were 3 Daves, you can guess which one I was.

But 1970 must have been a very popular year for the name David, by the time I got to High School there were 10 of us in the same year.
 
Hold onto your hats! It's back up, with all the old content. As predicted, bookmarked threads don't work (as of right now). Going to try to log in.

EDIT: logged in first shot

EDIT EDIT: as Mike predicted, looks like the pictures aren't working (as of right now)

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Well, I checked one of Mike's threads and the pictures didn't work, I presume those pics were in the forum gallery. However, I see in one of the "timeline" threads pictures that people posted from Tapatalk seem to be working fine.
 
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