New Registrations

[Mighty306]

Hi there. You've probably all noticed that lately the site has been hammered by spammers. That was just the tip of the iceberg. There have been 40-50 daily non-genuine registrations. Luckily only a fraction of those have thrown up posts on the site.

It really isn't sustainable to deal with it personally as I'm not able / inclined to check in on the site soregularly these days. Consequently, new registrations to the site have been blocked. It's a sad state of affairs but at least existing members can still be involved if they wish. Cheers.

[Sinbad]

Hi there. You've probably all noticed that lately the site has been hammered by spammers. That was just the tip of the iceberg. There have been 40-50 daily non-genuine registrations. Luckily only a fraction of those have thrown up posts on the site.

It really isn't sustainable to deal with it personally as I'm not able / inclined to check in on the site soregularly these days. Consequently, new registrations to the site have been blocked. It's a sad state of affairs but at least existing members can still be involved if they wish. Cheers.

Understandable, and sensible mate. I offered elsewhere to help out on booting them (short of complete idiocy I'm not in favour of moderation per se so wouldn't offer that)
Offer still stands if you decide to go back to allowing them.

[Mighty306]

I think the site is built on quite an outdated.platform & can't easily be transferred across.to something more.modern. The tools for dealing with spammers.are pretty limited unfortunately. It was worth the effort when the site was busier ....not so much now.

[Martin306]

I think the site is built on quite an outdated.platform & can't easily be transferred across.to something more.modern. The tools for dealing with spammers.are pretty limited unfortunately. It was worth the effort when the site was busier ....not so much now.

I guess it must be vulnerable to that.

I've got automatic checks set on the mightycarmods forums, some of the spammers do slip through but only the ones that are set up by actual people from what I can make out.

Sneaky bastards make a post, then edit it quickly and add embedded links. As the spam checker doesn't check post edits...

[Fooby]

We do have stopforumspam and other tools but it looks like they are just been sussed by bots.

I could put in updated stuff but its not worth it. If there is a demand to register properly then i'll purge all 0 post spammers and re-enable. But we'll have to disable automatic approval. Just means someone might wait a while whist they are verified

[procta]

I think the site is built on quite an outdated.platform & can't easily be transferred across.to something more.modern. The tools for dealing with spammers.are pretty limited unfortunately. It was worth the effort when the site was busier ....not so much now.

I guess it must be vulnerable to that.

I've got automatic checks set on the mightycarmods forums, some of the spammers do slip through but only the ones that are set up by actual people from what I can make out.

Sneaky bastards make a post, then edit it quickly and add embedded links. As the spam checker doesn't check post edits...

Well were do i start,  since the forum was put online, i am not really sure if the owners ever bothered investing in many upgrades or changes like .net did. There was a thread on here years ago about making changes, and nothing really changed at all, except a few moderators. It seems to me that practically everyone in the last few years has really lost interest in the club or the forum for some reason. Its not for the lack of cars, i am a moderator on one of the 306owners groups on facebook, and that's busy, people posting up about their cars etc.   It could do with a major refresh, but i don't think that's going to happen at all.

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We do have stopforumspam and other tools but it looks like they are just been sussed by bots.

I could put in updated stuff but its not worth it. If there is a demand to register properly then i'll purge all 0 post spammers and re-enable. But we'll have to disable automatic approval. Just means someone might wait a while whist they are verified

fooby from what i have seen, its like no one seems to care now about the forum at all, Hardly any admins are active, you have only one active moderator now.  I think the club needs a total reboot, A few people have asked me on the 306owners club group, i am a moderator of, to link the forum, as i do try and push people to use this place, for the data base on the car.  The metro scene went through this, they changed from modding to save as many as possible. , as i said before years ago, and no one listened, all i got was a sarcastic reply.

[Fooby]

I think the site is built on quite an outdated.platform & can't easily be transferred across.to something more.modern. The tools for dealing with spammers.are pretty limited unfortunately. It was worth the effort when the site was busier ....not so much now.

I guess it must be vulnerable to that.

I've got automatic checks set on the mightycarmods forums, some of the spammers do slip through but only the ones that are set up by actual people from what I can make out.

Sneaky bastards make a post, then edit it quickly and add embedded links. As the spam checker doesn't check post edits...

Well were do i start,  since the forum was put online, i am not really sure if the owners ever bothered investing in many upgrades or changes like .net did. There was a thread on here years ago about making changes, and nothing really changed at all, except a few moderators. It seems to me that practically everyone in the last few years has really lost interest in the club or the forum for some reason. Its not for the lack of cars, i am a moderator on one of the 306owners groups on facebook, and that's busy, people posting up about their cars etc.   It could do with a major refresh, but i don't think that's going to happen at all.

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Not really sure where to start here. Firstly you are absoutely entitled to your opinion, but that doesnt mean its valid.

Lets just look at where .net are now. The reason this forum became so big was because .net didnt invest and even after i did what i could to keep the (what was equivalent a desktop PC spec or lower) from running the biggest 306 car forum. They always had problems, bugs, issues, most of which i fixed when i joined their admin team.

After much though i decided to launch this place, which is still going. It has no member costs like .net, its had multiple upgrades and improvements along the way to keep the forum fast and online. We have no adverts and still dont charge (and wont) people any money to use a forum that I believe should be free. Server hardware and hosting dedicated infrastructure is not free. However, this is all in the past, but i think its important to bring context when you are making such statments about "investment" and the like.

In terms of forums itself, they are a mostly niche medium now, most people use facebook and other such social media tools. I can see all the traffic and usership stats and the forum has been in decline for years.

We are also (to a degree) beholdned to our forum software mybb. We continually run the latest version and they've been promising "mybb 2.0" with a much refreshed design, back end, plugin support, and overall improved usability experiance. But they've had their own challanges and its not materialised.

I've always been very open how other people were made admins and moderators because i didnt have the time/nor will to do any of the proper club running that a place of its size needed. As i invested all my time into the back end and maintaince and keeping the forum itself running from a technical perspective. Over the years as traffic has died, i've not needed to spend as much time and there are also not that much more i can really do at this point without a total re-design. To which im not inclided to invest the effort for the volume of poeple using it.

We do have stopforumspam and other tools but it looks like they are just been sussed by bots.

I could put in updated stuff but its not worth it. If there is a demand to register properly then i'll purge all 0 post spammers and re-enable. But we'll have to disable automatic approval. Just means someone might wait a while whist they are verified

fooby from what i have seen, its like no one seems to care now about the forum at all, Hardly any admins are active, you have only one active moderator now.  I think the club needs a total reboot, A few people have asked me on the 306owners club group, i am a moderator of, to link the forum, as i do try and push people to use this place, for the data base on the car.  The metro scene went through this, they changed from modding to save as many as possible. , as i said before years ago, and no one listened, all i got was a sarcastic reply.

You may be right, but some people do still care, myself included, but you have to weight it all up in the balance of other life events and things people have going on. The forum is very quite, its full of bots (that get more and more difficult to remove as they always get better). With the forum software not really doing much in the way of building tools to support this it relies on my to do something about it.

The club is very likely to get a total reboot, i just dont feel there is the audiance now. Especially without a proper facebook page, with forum intergration it would be very difficult to relaunch and be competiive in terms of viewership. I would much rather people just do what they want to do. I'm not interested in trying to compete with other car clubs and their attitudes.

[Martin306]

Yeah I agree

Just had a look at the MCM reg stats, it's kinda flattened out but it's very low.

Funnily enough, the decline is about the same rate as the uptake in facebook pages.

We're going to persevere, Facebook will have its day. Forums will always be there as a great source of information which you can actually find, unaffected by ridiculous algorithms using your data to promote ads.

That's one thing that really bugged me with 106owners.co.uk. the fact that the forum was just closed. No offer to sell/give a backup to someone to host as read only. Luckily most of the wiring diagrams and such like are very similar on Saxperience, but not idea how much longer that'll last either...

[Mighty306]

First of all I want to say a huge thank you to you Fooby for your continued commitment. Although the audience is currently small, it is very much appreciated.

Competing against Facebook is definitely going to be a challenge for a while. It's been said so many times before though, it has no archive function or a way to categorise posts. It's a social site, not one for the exchange & storage of a body of knowledge.

Will the time come where 306OC becomes more active again? Hopefully. I think 306's are currently at an age where they are hovering between just being old cars and being classic cars. Once they are considered classics there may be a new & different place for the club. That may involve accepting new members again but how that's is done is the question, considering the limitations of the platform.

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I just had a look on How Many Left & there are still quite a few 306's on the road. I suspect a lot of those aren't owned by enthusiasts though ...could anyone be 'enthused' by an XND auto? I don't know.

I was surprised by how few GTI 6's were being driven. 3/4 of them are now SORN'd. It's sometimes difficult to keep them on the road though. I'll try to post up shortly to explain why that's true in my case.

[Fooby]

First of all I want to say a huge thank you to you Fooby for your continued commitment. Although the audience is currently small, it is very much appreciated.

Competing against Facebook is definitely going to be a challenge for a while. It's been said so many times before though, it has no archive function or a way to categorise posts. It's a social site, not one for the exchange & storage of a body of knowledge.

Will the time come where 306OC becomes more active again? Hopefully. I think 306's are currently at an age where they are hovering between just being old cars and being classic cars. Once they are considered classics there may be a new & different place for the club. That may involve accepting new members again but how that's is done is the question, considering the limitations of the platform.

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I just had a look on How Many Left & there are still quite a few 306's on the road. I suspect a lot of those aren't owned by enthusiasts though ...could anyone be 'enthused' by an XND auto? I don't know.

I was surprised by how few GTI 6's were being driven. 3/4 of them are now SORN'd. It's sometimes difficult to keep them on the road though. I'll try to post up shortly to explain why that's true in my case.

I think you are right, and if there is an uptick and there are more people to keep the mod team alive then i'll give it a go. 

I'm looking forward to actually migrating the forum to its fancy new version of MyBB whenever that is released and i'm hoping that will come with some decent SEO tools that dont break the forum.

[ekjdm14]

...could anyone be 'enthused' by an XND auto? I don't know.

From my viewpoint (as custodian of THE X1 Xantia 1.9D auto, although howmanyleft seems to have messed up it's database now and listed it in with the X2 TD autos) I think it's entirely possible for someone to be enthused by such a car, just not quite as many as a more "mainstream desirable" model.

Sorry, got distracted from the point of the thread. I refuse to use Wastebook & I think as time goes on and more people get tired of the manipulation of these social media platforms.  Hopefully forums will indeed have a second wind & fingers crossed this will be one of the survivors from "the old days".

[Eeyore]

I met with Fooby and discussed this some time ago now. We want to keep this up as there is a wealth of information and history. We do have a facebook group and again its only me at the minute. If anyone would like to be a moderator there please let me know as I could use some help!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2130186987106671

[Martin306]

I met with Fooby and discussed this some time ago now. We want to keep this up as there is a wealth of information and history. We do have a facebook group and again its only me at the minute. If anyone would like to be a moderator there please let me know as I could use some help!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2130186987106671

I really enjoyed the joining questions

I'd love to cummins swap a 306