Site update news ...

[gerryvz]

All:

I've implemented a new feature to allow you to "embed" YouTube movies directly into posts. You can do this very easily by obtaining the "embed" URL from the YouTube page where the video is shown, or from the video box at the end of the video once it's done playing.

Then, you just do as follows in any post here on the forums:

[ youtube]PASTE EMBED URL FROM YOUTUBE HERE[ /youtube] (remove spaces)

And this will embed the video right into the post so that you can see and play t having to launch another browser tab or window and go to the YouTube web site.

You can also do this with Google Video too, with the same syntax as above except using [ googlevideo]PASTE EMBED URL HERE[ /googlevideo]

Below is an example of a YouTube video embedded:

Cheers,
Gerry

[youtube]3R8ZYBpCAn4[/youtube]

 

[Glen]

Thanks Gerry. This will really come in handy!

 

[gerryvz]

All,

Due to an increasing amount of Russian spammers getting onto the site, I have changed the registration settings so that all new registrations are no longer self-activated by the applicant. Rather, all new registrations are put "on hold" and the site admins are alerted, and must individually approve them.

The next revision of the phpBBB software, which is due out within the next month or less, has significantly more advanced self-registration systems. I expect that after I update the site software with this next revision, that I can reset the registration back to a "self-registration" mode.

Thanks for your patience. Unfortunately, the Russians have found this board and are doing their darndest to try to take advantage of it. Thanks to Glen for his admin work in eliminating and banning spammers as he comes across them. It's a thankless - and never-ending - task.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

My favorite thing is catching a spammer when he's on the board and doing his thing "live". I just delete his ass in mid-stream, then he's gone. Just love that. One second there and spamming away, the next second zapped.



Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

All:

I'm in the process of uploading the extensive collection of E500E-related magazine articles I've collected from all over the world.

There are several dozen, so this process is going to take a few nights. In any case, the first batch has been uploaded as of now. These are mainly English-language publications.

500Espot.com will live up to its mission of being the most comprehensive informational resource on the Internet for the E500E cars. This article repository will greatly assist this mission.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

Added 8-10 new "smilies" tonight, including a couple of good ones

Also lots of historical docs and photos from MB press archives.

Hope you all find it enjoyable!

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

November 17, 2009
12:32 PM London time

All,

Just noted that the latest version of phpBB has been released today. There are major upgrades on this release in terms of the functionality, the registration process (eliminating the 5-10 spammers who attempt to gain access to this board daily), and performance (caching data).

I am currently overseas but will plan to update the board in about a week or so when I'm home, so that any bugs in the initial release of this version have been ID'd and worked out. Of course, I'll make sure that everything is properly backed up and a copy of the board is made so that no data is lost. In addition, the board may be down for an hour or two during the upgrade process, but a message will be posted noting such. I'll perform the upgrade in the middle of the night West Coast time so as to minimize the downtime for most users.

If you'd like more information on this latest release of the phpBB, you can find it here:http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1859035

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

Site has been updated tonight. I apologize for the inconvenience if you tried to log on. There are quite a few new features and capabilities, many of which I haven't explored and/or turned on yet. I will update this space when they are. We may have more adjustments and tweaking over the coming days but the site should be up and operating smoothly for now.

Please let me know if you experience any bugs or issues.

Thanks
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

All,

I've enabled a new "quick reply" feature that allows you to immediately reply to a post right from the reading screen. If you want to use advanced features like smilies, etc. then you can click on the "Full Editor" button to obtain them. This should ease your ability to participate in message threads.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[Glen]

Cool, much easier to reply to posts now. Thanks!

 

[gerryvz]

All:

It appears that the "view unread posts" link is not working for some users, including me. New posts are included on the forum with the colored icon, but clicking on the "view unread posts" near the top of the page does not show the unread posts.

I am researching the issue, but it appears as if it is a bug with the new release of the software. In the meantime, I'd recommend that everyone LOG OUT of the board and then log back in to see if this resets the cookie that the board uses to communicate with your computer for board settings.

I will provide an update as soon as I have a solution/fix. Hopefully it will be quick and relatively simple.

Cheers,
Gerry



It appears if you use the "View New Posts" link instead of the "View Unread Posts" then it will show all posts since your last presence on the board. That said, for cookie's sake, I recommend you logout and then log back into the board.

 

[Glen]

Personally, I like the "View active topics" option best.

 

[gsxr]

Personally, I like the "View active topics" option best.

Same here. That is the only link I use.

 

[gerryvz]

I will be updating the site to the latest small revision of the phpBB software in the next few days. The site will be down for perhaps a couple of hours during this time. I will try to do it on Friday night so that it is of minimal disruption to everyone.

This is a small revision with not a lot of new functionality, but mainly a bug fix with some security related updates. I've been happy with the latest revision as it's solved nearly all of the issues with the weak security mechanism that allowed spammers to sign up automatically. I think we've only had one or two spammers in the past few months, as opposed to 10-15 per day in the past.

The big news is that I have purchased the vBulletin software and will be migrating this board to that over time. vBulletin is not open-source, but a subscription-based system that is much more full-featured than the free phpBB software that this board currently runs on. It also has much more in the way of cool features and functionality. It was a long decision but I decided to make the investment anyway. vBulletin is the same software that Scott's 500Ecstasy board is running on, FYI.

I will try to make this migration as seamless to everyone as possible. At the same time, I will be changing the hoster to a more reliable one and migrating back to the 500eboard.com domain. When everything is up and running, you will be able to type in either 500eboard.com or 500Espot.com and the new board will pop up. Again, this is some time off and there's lots of work to do.

My first priority at present is to complete the 560SEC head rebuild, and this is going to take several more weeks to a month to do (depending on how fast I get parts, and how fast the machine shop and coating company do their work). This migration will be my next priority. I've got the new board already up and running in prototype fashion but that was just a test mule. Lots more work to do.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

All:

I updated the site today to the latest stable release of the phpBB code, version 3.0.7 which was released in early March, and quickly updated to 3.0.7-PL1 a day or so later because of some niggling bugs.

This is primarily a maintenance release of the code, with a few minor features added. Those features are detailed below.

However, as I mentioned before, the future path for this board is going in a different direction. We'll be moving the 500Espot board to the more full-featured vBulletin system, which is what the 500Ecstasy board uses. This will give us many more features. I will be kicking off this process of the migration very soon, and when that system is stable I will be redirect this site to that one. Everything will be seamless and you should see very little change other than the "look and feel" of the vBulletin board, which I hope to make more attractive than this one.

This board will continue to be called 500Espot / 500Eboard and will eventually be accessible through either domain.

I will keep you all up to date as to the status of the changeover, but this process will be beginning in earnest very soon.

Thanks and regards,
Gerry



Changes to the latest phpBB software for this site:

Minor feature additions to phpBB 3.0.7

* You can now see private forums in your ATOM feeds using HTTP authentication by passing the GET parameter "auth=http".
* The INTTEXT token was added to custom BBCodes to allow for non-ASCII letters in html attributes.
* You can now enable quick reply in all forums with a single click.


Small functionality changes in phpBB 3.0.7

* Warn users about potentially dangerous BBcodes.
* Forum feed no longer includes posts of subforums.
* Speed up topic move operation by adding an index for topic_id on the topics track table. (Bug #56545)
* Move redirect into a hidden field to avoid issues with mod_security. (Bug #54145)
* Log user activations through inactive users ACP. (Bug #30145)
* Alter ACP user quick tools interface to reduce confusion with the delete operation.
* Show a proper preview for the Q&A CAPTCHA. (Bug #56365)
* Send time of last item instead of current time in ATOM Feeds. (Bug #53305)
* Split "All topics" feed into "New Topics" and "Active Topics" feeds.
* It is no longer possible to persist a solution for the login CAPTCHA.
* Friends and foes will not show up as private message rule options if their respective UCP modules are disabled. (Bug #51155)
* Offer for guests to log in for egosearch and unreadposts search before the search permissions check. (Bug #51585)

 

[gerryvz]

All:

I have moved the domain "500eboard.com" to another, more reliable internet hosting service that I think will provide better long-term service and support to fit my needs for this forum.

Secondly, over the weekend I installed the vBulletin forum software on this hoster (you can see it in test mode only - the board is de-activated at present - at URL http://www.500eboard.com/forums/).

Thirdly, I did a successful "import" of this forum, including all users, posts, photos and attachments) into this vBulletin software over the weekend. A previous attempt to do this a couple of months ago was less successful, but this weekend's test import was nearly perfect. In the coming weeks, I will complete one last test import into the vBulletin system to hone my technique and ensure that all comes across well.

Upon completion of that, I will do the full migration of this forum into the new vBulletin system. At that point, I will redirect this 500Espot.com URL to the 500Eboard.com URL so that typing either URL will bring you to the new site. After that stage is complete and well, I will migrate the 500Espot.com domain over to the new hosting service.

Again, I am planning all of this out very slowly and deliberately, testing everything along the way to eliminate disruptions for everyone. I would expect the final migration to the new system to happen in perhaps a month or six weeks.

Just wanted to keep everyone up to date on what is going on.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[500Espot]

Hello all,

Quick update on the site. I've added a few more smilies to keep things interesting for y'all, and deleted some ones that weren't used very often.

As far as the migration to the new software..... we will be migrating soon! I need to do one more test import of all of this site's information to the new vBulletin BBS system, and then will do the final import and move to the new system. This site will be down probably for about a half-day while this final import is happening. After this is done, this URL for this site (http://www.500espot.com/forums) will redirect to the new domain, which is the old http://www.500eboard.com URL. Eventually this site's domain will then be transferred to the new hosting provider. Most if not all of this should be seamless for everyone, so nothing will fundamentally change except for the look and feel of the forums.

However, when I implement the new forums, I promise to maintain a bright look and feel, and not to adopt the "dark" and difficult to read system that Scott updated 500Ecstasy to. The lighter board backgrounds are much easier to read and appealing IMHO.

Anyway, I will be doing this final test import to the new system over this long holiday weekend, and depending on how this goes, will do the final migration to the new vBulletin system within the next month or so. Of course, I will give everyone plenty of warning. Like I said, the actual migration should occur overnight, so hopefully it will be seamless for everyone. It will take some time after the migration to work out the kinks (smilies, etc.).

 

[gerryvz]

Welcome aboard 126 coupe fans!

I have added a sub-board at the bottom of the forum for fans of the 126 cars -- in particular the coupes. I intend to have this section be a source for high-quality information relating to the 126 coupes. It will remain an adjunct/subsidiary section to the main focus of this site, which is clearly the 500E/E500, but I do expect the 126 coupe section to grow over time as it gains content and followers. Reflecting that growth, I'll sub-divide it up into different child boards as the amount of content warrants.

There is a fair amount in common between 500E and 560SEC enthusiasts in terms of modifications, some subsystems on the cars themselves, increasing engine performance and just enthusiasm for the 1980s/1990s MBs in general. More than a few 560SEC owners currently own, have owned or strongly covet 500E/E500s. And vice versa. Folks like Jono are enthusiastic about both cars. So it seemed natural to start up this little sub-section of the site and to see where it goes.

So ... welcome aboard and look forward to your contributions!

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

Hello all:

I will be taking the site down tonight (Sunday, Nov. 21) around 9:00 PM for approximately one hour to update the forum software from phpBB 3.0.7 PL-1 to the new version 3.0.8. The new forum is mainly a bug fix but also adds a few new capabilities.

When you try to log in, it will tell you that the board is off-line temporarily. Don't worry - it will be back up shortly.

Thanks!
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

Just a quick update -- here's a peek at the site traffic statistics over the past 8-9 months or so. Look at the traffic spike since 500X went down !

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

We had a couple of threads about 500Ex site outages -- one thread from back in 2008 and another thread more recent pertaining to this year's outage.

For the sake of organization, I combined these two threads and they can be found here:

http://500eboard.com/forums/showthread.php?5-Scott-s-500ecstasy.com-site-(partial)

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

Finally updated the site to the latest phpBB 3.0.8 software. It was down for about 30-40 minutes this evening while the update was happening. Everything went smoothly and seems to be fine post-update.

If you find anything that is broken or any issues, please don't hesitate to let me know.

If you're interested in the new features and bug-fixes from this revision, you can find more information here.

Also, one other new feature that you may not have known about. 500Espot.com has ATOM feeds available so that you can read new posts with your RSS reader software, or via Google Reader, etc. You can subscribe to the specific feeds on individual boards, or you can subscribe to the full ATOM feed for the entire 500Espot.com site.

That feed is: feed.php

Your browser should be able to automatically show when feeds are enabled, because you will see the little "feed" icon at the end of your URL bar of your browser (see screen shot below). If you have a newsreader installed, or have Google Reader enabled, it will copy the URL and then you can paste it in your reader. I have enabled the feed up to 50 of the most recent posts. If you rely on newsreaders, then you won't have to log into the 500Espot site to check for new posts; they will appear automatically in your newsreader's feed.

Hope this feature is useful for some of you.

Thanks!
Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

All --

I made some adjustments to the user avatar settings tonight. I realized that the 10K file size and 120 x 120 pixel physical size limits of avatars was far too small.

My apologies if the system has not accepted your avatars in the past, if you have attempted to upload one.

I have adjusted the avatar size limits to 100K and 200 x 200 pixels. That should be more than large enough for everyone. If you still have problems, please let me know.

Also, if everyone could upload a favorite avatar, that would be great. It's really nice and enhances the board when everyone uses an avatar. Just re-use the one(s) you have for other boards, if need be.

Thanks much, and Merry Christmas!

Cheers,
Gerry

P.S. If you're interested to see site traffic this month to date, take a look at the stats graphic below. Compare that to the one above which I took a few days into the month. The site is running roughly even -- so far this month -- with the traffic we've had for a whole month in the past. Amazing! Thanks for your support.

 

[Glen]

Thanks Gerry!

 

[gerryvz]

Merry Christmas Everyone !!

Cheers,
Gerry

& the 500Espot Team

 

[gerryvz]

Hello all:

Well, after some months of relative peace and not being bothered by the spam-bots that auto-register users and spam the board, it looks like they've figured out how to get past the countermeasures that were implemented by the newest version of phpBB (i.e. the re-capcha).

We've been getting dozens of false registrations each day, with some of them actually going through to confirmed new member registrations and them on to spamming.

To combat this, I'm going to have to go back to the old method of manually approving new users of the board once they apply. It is quite easy to tell whether a new application is a real person or not, thankfully. We have seen a significant uptick in new members (legitimate) in recent weeks now that Scott's board has been down for an extended period. Unfortunately I am in the UK this week and thus not able to monitor the board with the frequency that I normally do.

I want to thank Glen and GSXR for their diligence in helping out as Site Admins in deleting spammers and their detritus they litter the board with. This nuisance should be dramatically reduced and/or eliminated in the future now that I will be personally approving all new member applications. I will try to approve all new member requests with 6-12 hours, or 24 hours at the outside.

Thanks for your patience in putting up with this spam nuisance. I will delete all of the "new" spam members that have succeeded in getting through over the weekend.

Cheers from the EC2, London,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

All,

Further research is showing that the "reCapcha" spam-blocking registration mechanism (the one that displays two words which you must then type in when you register) has been successfully cracked by Russian and Chinese spam-bots. Users of phpBB, vBulletin and other forum software and web sites that utilize the reCapcha system are reporting massive influx of spammers and fake registrants since around January 4th.

I have effectively dealt with the issue by requiring my own approval for all applicants; however I prefer to have a "self-service" system where registrants can self-register without administrative approval.

To restore this capability, I will implement an alternate registration mechanism, which uses a unique set of questions/answers that are specific to our cars/Benz industry. New registrants should be able to answer these easily even with a modicum of knowledge about the cars. That being said, I will also attempt to do a blanket blocking of all incoming registration/site traffic from Russian and Chinese IP addresses, and implement this at the server level.

By changing the questions regularly, and with the additional protection of the server-level IP block, it should dramatically reduce and/or eliminate the recent spam problem. This latest influx of spam is just the latest skirmish in the ongoing battle between bot-makers/spammers and the software makers, where new solutions to the spam problem are created and then cracked by the spammers and hackers.

Please note that if you are a current member of the board, you will be 100% unaffected by this updated registration process. If I find that it doesn't fully work, then I will go back to the fail-safe "admin must approve" method for all new site registrants, despite being reluctant to do that.

Hope you find this helpful and informative.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gsxr]

THANK YOU! The influx of bogus new user accounts in the last 24 hours has been unreal. I think I only spotted two or three valid new users, the rest were spammers. Extremely time consuming to validate!

 

[gerryvz]

All:

The influx of fake users has continued unabated, as the spam-bots have seemingly overcome the built-in defenses of the reCapcha anti-spam system.

Our system admins Glen and GSXR have been working overtime to stay on top of the flood of new registration requests from spambots. I am hoping that few, hopefully NONE, of these fake user registrations have turned into actual members that are able to log onto the system. Thanks to Glen and GSXR for their assistance in staying on top of this plague.

To help with this, I am prototyping a new system for challenging registrations that is based on a simple "Q&A" system. This means that all new registrants will have to correctly answer a question with an exact answer in order to let their registration proceed. At the same time, all registration notifications are coming to me for approval. This combination should, at least for now, help eliminate the deluge of spam. If/when the spammers overcome the question or use a brute force approach to guess it correctly, I will change the question and answer.

I will implement the server-level IP blocking against Chinese and Russian computers upon my return to the States, soon.

Thanks for your continued patience as we work to find and implement a more permanent solution for this.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

It appears that the addition of the "qualifying" question that double-checks whether a registering member is a human or a bot, is working. The number of fraudulent registrations has basically dried up since I added this step a couple of days ago. If this dropoff continues, I'll be able to (again) remove the manual approval step that I also added, which requires a Site Admin to specifically approve each registration. This will allow users to once again self-register.

Thanks to everyone for their patience. Looks like we've re-obtained the upper hand against the spammers, at least for now. An ongoing battle, for sure.

Thanks particularly to Glen and GSXR for stepping in and assisting while I was out of the country and not able to monitor things as closely as I normally can.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

COULD IT REALLY BE ???

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gsxr]

Nah, probably someone's idea of an early April Fool. I think Talbir got lost in the Bermuda Triangle along with his 6.xL engine!

 

[talbir]

Someone mention my name...?

Dave, sounds like you're really missing me !

Gerry -

Dave - you've got about 6 weeks to see the 6.3 M119 personally before it gets shipped across. LA is the venue.

Hope all are well....been very very busy with work and family so sorry for the silence ! Baby no.5 arrived in Jan, so full house now ! Feels more like a nursery actually !

Gerry - i need to send you those dollars for the Renntech steering........please pm me so i can sort...it's been way too long !

Not sure if i showed any pics of the second 500E i acquired back in 2009....stock car from Canada when it arrived and of course did my own mods to it. The Renntech M119 will go in the Black 500E i have which now has lots of Renntech goodies on it....roll bars, exhaust, air filter housing...and of course th special big block to come home finally !

Last toy i bought was March last year....a Brabus-engined, Lorinser bodied w140 S600.....with the very special 6.9 litre Brabus v12.....510bhp....


cheers
talbir


cheers
talbir

 

[bing]

good to see another uk car here! since i bought mine back in november i've yet to see one on the road. are u by any chance in the london area?

 

[gerryvz]

Added a variety of new smilies to the list ... probably about 7-8 new ones.

See if you can find them

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

All,

Wanted to update everyone on some important site news:

The migration of this board to the new vBulletin board is continuing to move ahead. We will be running a third and final "test migration" of this board to the new software tonight, to be sure that any migration issues are identified and solved ahead of the actual migration. You may remember that vBulletin is the software that the now-defunct "500Ecstasy" site has used since its inception back in August of 2003.

In any case, when the final "real" import & migration of this site to the new vBulletin platform happens in the near future, you will notice a few things. Chief among them are:

1) The domain of the new vBulletin-based site will be http://www.500eboard.com/forums This site's URL, (http://www.500espot.com/forums) will automatically redirect you over to the new site when it is up and live. Though you shouldn't have to change any of your bookmarks and so forth, you may want to update them once it happens.

2) When the new vBulletin-based site is up and live, your existing username here will be migrated over, and your user profile, posts and such will continue to be maintained. However, when you first log into the new vBulletin site, you will be required to create/input a new password. You can use the same password as you used here, or you can create a new password. The reason for this step is because the password database here at 500Espot.com is encrypted for security purposes, and the migration process cannot unencrypt and/or bring over the passwords. So, I wanted to warn you about this. You should keep your password handy if you want to re-use it, or be prepared to enter a new password if you want to.

3) There are likely to be some minor issues with regard to attachments, smilies, and other types of images not surviving the import. Please be patient if these types of errors crop up -- do let me know about them, and we will fix them manually. Do know that NO DATA WILL BE LOST, but anything that doesn't make the migration will have to be manually edited and/or re-entered. The test migration I've done and will do should mitigate these issues, but with a migration of this type it's always a possibility that something will break and then cause problems. I will do my best to plan for this and make it as seamless as possible.

4) If the migration has serious issues (which is the worst case scenario), we will just revert back to this stable, existing bulletin board until we are ready to re-migrate. Again, no data or other information will be lost as this site will be 100% backed up (doubly on the ISP's server and my own computer) before any migration activities occur, but the backup plan in the event of major problems is to revert back to this until any issues are solved.

5) I will provide at least 24 hours' notice of the final migration happening. I will likely perform the final migration over a Friday night and Saturday, which seem to be the slowest times on this site that are not in the middle of the night. You should not notice any disruption on this site, and I will "freeze" this site with a notice that says it's being migrated and thus no posting will be allowed. Again, any disruption in your ability to view and post will be 24 hours maximum -- and when the site returns it will either be the new vBulletin site or a reversion back to this site (picking up where we left off).

Thanks in advance for your patience.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

Wow ... 600 members as of today. That's quite a milestone for the 'Spot.

 

[szvook]

.....Gerry.

 

[gerryvz]

All,

The 500Espot.com board was down for about 15 minutes this (Saturday) morning from 6:30 AM PDT to about 6:45 AM PDT for a software upgrade. We went from phpBB 3.0.8 to 3.0.9, which was released about a week ago. Generally phpBB is updated once or twice per year to fix bugs and introduce some new features. This wasn't a major upgrade in terms of features; it was more of a maintenance upgrade and bug-fixer. This will result in a more reliable board overall.

In any case, everything went seamlessly well (other than a few folks who were on the board this morning and were probably wondering why the board was suddenly inaccessible) but now everything is back to normal.

Enjoy the 'Spot.

Cheers
Gerry

 

[500Eboard]

BIG Site Update News !!

Well, the migration to the new site is now officially kicked off. Lots of little things to do to get it all tweaked right, but I think we are basically in good shape. This was a massive project that was a long time in the testing and tweaking stages. This move to the vBulletin software should position us very well for the future, so I'm thrilled about the move.

A few items remain:

- I have a number of peoples' avatars to finish translating to their user profiles. Most peoples' avatars and sig photos (if they had them) are in place, but there are some folks who I haven't gotten to yet.

- I have to attach all of the old attachments to each of the posts, because the vBulletin software would not import the attachments within the posts. This was primarily due to an inconsistency between how the attachment files were stored in the old phpBB site and how they are stored by vBulletin. It's going to be a lot of manual work to get it done, but we'll get there over time. I hope to have it done say in about a week.

- Lots of little configuration changes and tweaks need to be made with the vBulletin software, but mainly I'll do these as I come across them. If you see anything that needs changing, please do let me know.

- If you have any anomalies with regard to the font size/color in your signatures, you can tweak these yourself using the user control panel. I would also encourage you to PLEASE upload an avatar if you don't have one, and also to indicate at least where you are from / area you live in for the benefit of the other users here.

That's all for now.

Enjoy the vBulletin. And please bookmark the new URL here: http://www.500Eboard.com/forums
The old site will redirect here automatically, FYI.

Cheers,
Gerry

P.S. Oh yeah, I'm going to change the site banner image to "500Eboard" soon. Just carried it over hastily because I needed the license plate number on the image for anti-spam purposes!

 

[Christian_K]

Hi, i am not able to change my avatar, means i have no permission for it.

 

[gerryvz]

Christian, I will be happy to do this for you. I will do it today.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

Just added YouTube functionality to the 500Eboard.com site.

All you have to do is to add the specific code for a video between the [ youtube]XXXXXXXXX[ /youtube] brackets.

 

[gerryvz]

OK, all avatars are done, and I have all attachments added and links fixed on the first very forum up through and including the "Maintenance Documents" forum.

I'll keep plugging away on the forums to get all of the other attachments added. Slow going, but we'll get there.

Check it out !

Cheers,
Gerry

P.S. Got about one-half of the Automotive Press Articles section uploaded too -- the thumbnails and PDFs of the articles. Will finish this section tomorrow (Tuesday) night.

 

[gerryvz]

Continuing to slowly add attachments and photos to posts here. It's slow going as I work sub-forum by sub-forum but I'll get there eventually

Also, I found a few very old backups from the initial 500Eboard.com days, back in the early 2009 period when I first activated it as an alternative to the then-down 500Ecstasy site. I didn't know that I had a few backups still available from that time period. If you may remember it was in late July/early July 2009 that my "other" hoster (where 500Espot.com was/is located) totally lost all of the site, and couldn't recover anything that they lost. So I had to start 100% fresh, which I did when I moved from the former "500Eboard" to the "500Espot" domain.

Anyway, with the backups that I found, it looks like I may be able to recover many if not most of the posts that I lost in that sad transition. Some posts I was able to obtain by using Google cache, but I probably only recovered about 25-30% of the posts as not everything happened to be cached. So the good thing is that I may well be able to get the complete threads To do this I will probably create yet another installation of the vBulletin software on that hoster and import the database backup to it. then I can merge those threads that I want to recover into this existing 500Eboard.com site. The process should be pretty seamless actually. In any case, I'll keep my fingers crossed that the couple-hundred-odd threads that I was not able to grab from the Google cache are available and that I can bring them into this resource.

If you got all the way through this long and rambling update, one request for folks: If there is a specific thread or post that you need photos added to immediately (for example a "For Sale" thread) please let me know and I can get the photos added for you very quickly. Otherwise the thread will be updated when I get to that specific sub-forum.

Enjoy the site !

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

Hello all:

Some progress on updating all of the links and including the attachments tonight to a few of the forums:

• AMG and Tuner Cars
• Appearance and Detailing
• In-Car Entertainment (ICE)
• De-Coding

Progress continues ... slowly. Just doing a few forums per night. The big forums are going to be killers....

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[samiam44]

thanks for all the hard work=0)

Who's car is on the front page of the website?

 

[gerryvz]

All attachments have been added and links fixed for the following sections (excepting a couple of my own posts, but they are not pressing at this time):

• Welcome Center
• 500E / E500 Tech
• 500E / E500 Resources
• C126 Coupes
• Speed Zone

Now we just have the all-important Classifieds, Other Discussions and Mechanical sections to go.

Sorry for the delay in getting all of the attachments done. It's a tedious task. I can only do it for 60-90 minutes at a time ... but tonight now that my workday is done, a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is starting to help things roll along a bit....

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

The following sections have now had all photos & attachments added, and youtube + other-thread-reference links corrected:

• Owners and Their Cars
• Events, Meets and Get-Togethers
• Member Roadtrips and Project Journals

Next up will be the all-mighty "Off-Topic Discussions" sub-forum. I expect this one will take a little while due to the huge number of threads entailed.....

Cheers,
Gerry


UPDATE: Off-Topic Discussions forum now has attachments added and YouTube links fixed.....

 

[gerryvz]

I've been traveling this week so not much work over the past few days....ALTHOUGH....

• I updated the header image from "500Espot" to "500Eboard"
• I added a "favicon" from 500Espot (the small MB logo that appears in the URL bar and/or bookmark bar)

I'll be spending some time tonight updating more threads to get the attachments set up. Also I will be working to bring back some of the original 500Eboard.com header logos. Some of these are attached to this post.

Cheers,
Gerry