mozillaZine Forums

malliz wrote:We know who the admin is we just cannot contact him

Does anyone have a clue about what is wrong with Kerz? To be such a champion of MozillaZine and then to just vanish without putting in place a successor, is wrong.

Nick

ndebord wrote:

malliz wrote:We know who the admin is we just cannot contact him

Does anyone have a clue about what is wrong with Kerz? To be such a champion of MozillaZine and then to just vanish without putting in place a successor, is wrong.

Nick

Read: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3059877

WildcatRay wrote:

ndebord wrote:

malliz wrote:We know who the admin is we just cannot contact him

Does anyone have a clue about what is wrong with Kerz? To be such a champion of MozillaZine and then to just vanish without putting in place a successor, is wrong.

Nick

Read: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3059877

Thanks, am aware of that thread. What I don't get is if someone says it is over for me, but refuses to give the admin password to others on that site, then either I'm missing something or it is just bad behavior.

Nick

tanstaafl wrote:
We've been running on auto-pilot with no admin for over a year. Eventually either our dedicated hardware will die, we'll lose the domain name because it wasn't renewed, or things will become untenable with our hosting provider because they're tired of dealing with a obsolete configuration with no admin that we were supposed to have moved away from to a centrally OSL managed virtual machine.

We have a potential replacement for the admin. Perhaps its time to think about forking and submitting a request to OSL Labs as a new project. We'd have to get a new domain name and its probably not feasible to migrate the existing threads (since we don't have anybody with admin privileges for this web site). The current forums would still be alive, but meant to be used just for reference.

OSL Labs is well aware that Kerz (our admin) has been unreachable for over a year but they don't appear to want to get involved. So they might be receptive to a fork as the way for us to deal with the problem.

Thoughts?

For whatever my two cents might be worth, I would be fine with any plan to fork this site however that pans out, and would surely join the new site...

It would be a shame for this site to go down. Seems a lot more quiet here than it was around 10 years ago (I've been lurking here for a while).

For what's required... the phpBB forum software looks out of date. I think it's on 3.0.x which is unsupported, latest version is 3.3.

I would happily port the current theme to phpBB 3.2 or 3.3 so that it looks the same as before. It looks like a modified version of the original theme. Seems to be some mod to put the User Agent on each post as well.

As for the upgrade, the database requirements for phpBB are ridiculously conservative - they support PostgreSQL 8.3 and MySQL 4 in the latest version. 3.3 requires PHP 7.1.3, and 3.2 requires PHP 5.4. It also now requires some extra PHP modules (json and XML). I don't think an upgrade would be that difficult.

IMO it would be way better if the mods here could convince OSUOSL to give them access to the system so it can be maintained again. Even despite the ageing material, the forums contain plenty of useful information and it would be a shame if it eventually disappeared. Web crawling/archiving is a possibility, but usually the end result is not that good compared to having a "real" copy of the site.

realdense wrote:It would be a shame for this site to go down. Seems a lot more quiet here than it was around 10 years ago (I've been lurking here for a while).

For what's required... the phpBB forum software looks out of date. I think it's on 3.0.x which is unsupported, latest version is 3.3.

I would happily port the current theme to phpBB 3.2 or 3.3 so that it looks the same as before. It looks like a modified version of the original theme. Seems to be some mod to put the User Agent on each post as well.

As for the upgrade, the database requirements for phpBB are ridiculously conservative - they support PostgreSQL 8.3 and MySQL 4 in the latest version. 3.3 requires PHP 7.1.3, and 3.2 requires PHP 5.4. It also now requires some extra PHP modules (json and XML). I don't think an upgrade would be that difficult.

IMO it would be way better if the mods here could convince OSUOSL to give them access to the system so it can be maintained again. Even despite the ageing material, the forums contain plenty of useful information and it would be a shame if it eventually disappeared. Web crawling/archiving is a possibility, but usually the end result is not that good compared to having a "real" copy of the site.

would be easier to wait for phpBB4.0 final an then fork it, that way ya gonna have php8 support an a Newer looking forum. one could still use OSL ( or whatever they're called ) to host the forums

Get in touch with the admins at the support forum at phpBB. ASAP
https://www.phpbb.com/support/
They can help give one of the moderators here admin access.
They have done that for many other sites with similar issues to an admin not transferring ownership, etc.
Contact the people at OSUOSL to continue hosting for the forum.
The site is still running at the moment and the domain name for the site is still valid.
Hopes this helps.

realdense wrote:It would be a shame for this site to go down. Seems a lot more quiet here than it was around 10 years ago (I've been lurking here for a while).

For what's required... the phpBB forum software looks out of date. I think it's on 3.0.x which is unsupported, latest version is 3.3.

I would happily port the current theme to phpBB 3.2 or 3.3 so that it looks the same as before. It looks like a modified version of the original theme. Seems to be some mod to put the User Agent on each post as well.

As for the upgrade, the database requirements for phpBB are ridiculously conservative - they support PostgreSQL 8.3 and MySQL 4 in the latest version. 3.3 requires PHP 7.1.3, and 3.2 requires PHP 5.4. It also now requires some extra PHP modules (json and XML). I don't think an upgrade would be that difficult.

IMO it would be way better if the mods here could convince OSUOSL to give them access to the system so it can be maintained again. Even despite the ageing material, the forums contain plenty of useful information and it would be a shame if it eventually disappeared. Web crawling/archiving is a possibility, but usually the end result is not that good compared to having a "real" copy of the site.

Good comments.
The admins at the phpBB support forum can give full admin access to another person when the admin of a forum site suddenly disappears, or death of admin.
https://www.phpbb.com/support/
Perhaps all of the moderators here and members can make that request to OSUOSL.
Been a long time member myself here. 11 years now.

"Perhaps all of the moderators here and members can make that request to OSUOSL"

Please don't. Getting full access to the forum database is not the gating issue.

tanstaafl wrote:"Perhaps all of the moderators here and members can make that request to OSUOSL"

Please don't. Getting full access to the forum database is not the gating issue.

Fully understand and 100% agree with your comment.
Would like to see the domain name kept as is for mozillaZine and the site as is.
And that the posts here at the forums be placed in a backup folder on a computer, just in case.
It would be a real shame if the site went down again and access to all the posts here were totally lost.
This is the best place on the internet to get helpful information for the browsers i.e. Firefox, SeaMonkey, etc.
And very helpful moderators here and members.