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Hi Guest !
Welcome to the 500Eboard forum.
Since its founding in late 2008, 500Eboard has become the leading resource on the Internet for all things related to the Mercedes-Benz 500E and E500. In recent years, we have also expanded to include the 400E and E420 models, which are directly related to the 500E/E500.
We invite you to browse and take advantage of the information and resources here on the site. If you find helpful information, please register for full membership, and you'll find even more resources available. Feel free to ask questions, and make liberal use of the "Search" function to find answers.
We hope you will become an active contributor to the community!
Sincerely,
500Eboard Management
Site update news ...
- Thread starter gerryvz
- Start date
Quick checks of the site's system logs for the past week or so, is showing that things have returned to normal and no spammer/abnormal traffic is happening. The site is back down to normal levels of activity, which are around ~2-2.5 GB of web traffic per day and <75 e-mails sent.
Work continues [slowly] on preparations on the other server for the new forum. Balancing with the 126 rear axle work that is commencing.
Work continues [slowly] on preparations on the other server for the new forum. Balancing with the 126 rear axle work that is commencing.
FYI to SF Bay Area members: you may not have seen this, but Rocketeer has created a group especially for you guys.
http://www.500eboard.com/forums/search.php?searchid=1054353
http://www.500eboard.com/forums/search.php?searchid=1054353
Cool, but the link doesn't work.
How does one join a group?
I see the Spruce group, but I don't see the join+
I see the Spruce group, but I don't see the join+
We have added a new smilie, which can be activated with the name "mauiwowie" between colons. The name, for some reason, just seemed appropriate.
Nice idea. Need to start one for the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area!
Done !! http://www.500eboard.com/forums/group.php?groupid=4
If you live in the Greater Wash DC area, feel free to join the group. I have invited a few folks already.
I am very proud to announce we have a new dignitary among us -- our "nocfn".
He has officially been appointed "Benzworld Ambassador" and his profile reflects his new exalted status among us. Nocfn goes by "281lxm" on Banzworld, and he is an active contributing member there with the respect of the 126 forum regulars and administrators alike.
And here, he is also an active contributing member who plays well with others in the sandbox.
So, it only makes sense to promote him to this position of prestige and status.
Please share in my applause for our good Man Louis / nocfn / 281lxm !!
.gif "OMG :omg:")
He has officially been appointed "Benzworld Ambassador" and his profile reflects his new exalted status among us. Nocfn goes by "281lxm" on Banzworld, and he is an active contributing member there with the respect of the 126 forum regulars and administrators alike.
And here, he is also an active contributing member who plays well with others in the sandbox.
So, it only makes sense to promote him to this position of prestige and status.
Please share in my applause for our good Man Louis / nocfn / 281lxm !!
My guess is, not enough lube. Try again?
Intereseting tidbit...
This morning I did the latest backup of the Forum database, which uses the open-source MySQL database as a back-end to the forum. All of the forum's posts, member information, and other related data are stored in the forum database.
Generally I run a full database backup about once or twice a month. If the forum ever fails or there is a catastrophic issue, I have a (relatively) current set of information so that we don't have to start over with all the cumulative posts and such.
In any case, when I do a database backup, I save the downloaded database in compressed (gzip, which is a form of the ZIP compression) format.
The very first database backups I did were a whopping 490K (in uncompressed format, July 2, 2009) and then 928K (compressed gzip format, October 21, 2009).
The latest database backup I just did was 102.7 MB in compressed format. I "uncompressed" it just to see how large the database is in real life, and it came out to 392.8 MB -- it's pushing half a gigabyte and I expect it to reach that point in the next 12-18 months!!
That's a large difference in size between the initial and latest backup sizes (uncompressed) -- almost a thousand-fold growth from the initial database backup over nearly 9 years.
At current levels of forum usage/activity, the database size is growing at around 2-3 MB (uncompressed) or 1 MB (compressed) a month.
Cheers,
Gerry
This morning I did the latest backup of the Forum database, which uses the open-source MySQL database as a back-end to the forum. All of the forum's posts, member information, and other related data are stored in the forum database.
Generally I run a full database backup about once or twice a month. If the forum ever fails or there is a catastrophic issue, I have a (relatively) current set of information so that we don't have to start over with all the cumulative posts and such.
In any case, when I do a database backup, I save the downloaded database in compressed (gzip, which is a form of the ZIP compression) format.
The very first database backups I did were a whopping 490K (in uncompressed format, July 2, 2009) and then 928K (compressed gzip format, October 21, 2009).
The latest database backup I just did was 102.7 MB in compressed format. I "uncompressed" it just to see how large the database is in real life, and it came out to 392.8 MB -- it's pushing half a gigabyte and I expect it to reach that point in the next 12-18 months!!
That's a large difference in size between the initial and latest backup sizes (uncompressed) -- almost a thousand-fold growth from the initial database backup over nearly 9 years.
At current levels of forum usage/activity, the database size is growing at around 2-3 MB (uncompressed) or 1 MB (compressed) a month.
Cheers,
Gerry
Folks,
In recent days, I have been starting to see more and more errors at the hosting provider relating to the server that hosts the MySQL database that back-ends this site.
When I see this happening, it is generally a pre-cursor to a problem at some point in the future (could be days, could be weeks, could be months down the road) where the provider's database server goes haywire and needs to be rebooted.
This seems to happen about once a year, and often results in a lot of error messages that you will see, and also some site down-time of typically a day or three.
If you do get some error messages or the site does go down in the future, do know that it isn't the fault of the vBulletin software or MySQL database - it is solely a malfunction of the hosting provider's internet servers. No data will be lost or anything like that.
Just letting people know, as I expect more problems to slowly crop up in the coming days and weeks as the database server continues to descend into hell before being reset.
Cheers,
Gerry
In recent days, I have been starting to see more and more errors at the hosting provider relating to the server that hosts the MySQL database that back-ends this site.
When I see this happening, it is generally a pre-cursor to a problem at some point in the future (could be days, could be weeks, could be months down the road) where the provider's database server goes haywire and needs to be rebooted.
This seems to happen about once a year, and often results in a lot of error messages that you will see, and also some site down-time of typically a day or three.
If you do get some error messages or the site does go down in the future, do know that it isn't the fault of the vBulletin software or MySQL database - it is solely a malfunction of the hosting provider's internet servers. No data will be lost or anything like that.
Just letting people know, as I expect more problems to slowly crop up in the coming days and weeks as the database server continues to descend into hell before being reset.
Cheers,
Gerry
Today I'm happy to announce that I've finally implemented the site's SSL certificate, and it is live and active.
This means that the site is serving content to your browser through a secure, 256-bit, encrypted connection.
I am still going through the site and fixing a lot of things related to this -- particularly with content that is served from external (non-500Eboard.com) connections that don't have SSL implemented. This includes things like externally hosted photos, sites like YouTube and Vimeo, and others. If you link your personal signature photo/image to one that is not on this site, then it will flag the browser as being insecure.
The goal is to have everything served to you as secure under SSL. Unfortunately if a site (such as www.fuelly.com) doesn't have SSL implemented, then its content is going to be insecure and served to you this way.
A secure connection will show itself in your browser in this way:
Firefox:
View attachment 70106
Safari (Mac):
View attachment 70109
Google Chrome:
View attachment 70111
A page that is served with a mixture of secure and insecure content (meaning there is probably an externally hosted image(s) on a non-SSL secured server), is illustrated this way, for example on Firefox:
View attachment 70112
This is an important upgrade for the site, and one that I've been planning for quite some time. I had a bit of extra time this morning and decided to make it happen.
View attachment 70110
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Some additional background on me doing this move to SSL is here.
https://www.500eboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=358&p=69002&viewfull=1#post69002
https://www.500eboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=358&p=69106&viewfull=1#post69106
https://www.500eboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=358&p=87589&viewfull=1#post87589
Cheers,
Gerry
This means that the site is serving content to your browser through a secure, 256-bit, encrypted connection.
I am still going through the site and fixing a lot of things related to this -- particularly with content that is served from external (non-500Eboard.com) connections that don't have SSL implemented. This includes things like externally hosted photos, sites like YouTube and Vimeo, and others. If you link your personal signature photo/image to one that is not on this site, then it will flag the browser as being insecure.
The goal is to have everything served to you as secure under SSL. Unfortunately if a site (such as www.fuelly.com) doesn't have SSL implemented, then its content is going to be insecure and served to you this way.
A secure connection will show itself in your browser in this way:
Firefox:
View attachment 70106
Safari (Mac):
View attachment 70109
Google Chrome:
View attachment 70111
A page that is served with a mixture of secure and insecure content (meaning there is probably an externally hosted image(s) on a non-SSL secured server), is illustrated this way, for example on Firefox:
View attachment 70112
This is an important upgrade for the site, and one that I've been planning for quite some time. I had a bit of extra time this morning and decided to make it happen.
View attachment 70110
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Some additional background on me doing this move to SSL is here.
https://www.500eboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=358&p=69002&viewfull=1#post69002
https://www.500eboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=358&p=69106&viewfull=1#post69106
https://www.500eboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=358&p=87589&viewfull=1#post87589
Cheers,
Gerry
All,
This morning, I added some new code into the Administrative control panel that will methodically go through every thread on the forum, over time, and will import each and every externally hosted image it finds. The code will then add these images to the server in a new folder called "images/imported". This will provide a permanent and local image for these external images, and is being done in conjunction with the SSL certificate I enabled yesterday.
For background, all 500Eboard content, images and other code that is served directly from the hosting company to your browser is now (as of yesterday) served in an encrypted manner -- meaning it is is encrypted as it leaves the server and is then unencrypted once it reaches your browser. Just like your on-line banking, PayPal, or other sites like that. This is to improve security of the site and all content.
Furthermore, as of January 2017, Google has begun ranking (in its search engine rankings) higher sites that use SSL encryption, as part of its search ranking algorithms. So, to help maintain search rankings for the site, it was prudent to add SSL encryption.
So...to summarize.....the reason for doing this, is so that these (formerly) externally hosted images are also served to you as part of the encrypted data stream. When the 500Eboard encounters externally hosted images, today it flags the page as only "semi-secure" because there is a mixture of both encrypted and non-encrypted content.
So, the way to get around this is to serve ALL content as provided by the site, using SSL. The only way to do this is to "cache" these images and content used in non-500Eboard sites, in our own database and on our server. Hence, the impetus for creating the code that automatically goes through the site's posts and threads, flags non-encrypted content and images, and snags and then caches them on our own server for secure, future serving to you.
Hope this makes sense and is an informative update.
Cheers,
Gerry
This morning, I added some new code into the Administrative control panel that will methodically go through every thread on the forum, over time, and will import each and every externally hosted image it finds. The code will then add these images to the server in a new folder called "images/imported". This will provide a permanent and local image for these external images, and is being done in conjunction with the SSL certificate I enabled yesterday.
For background, all 500Eboard content, images and other code that is served directly from the hosting company to your browser is now (as of yesterday) served in an encrypted manner -- meaning it is is encrypted as it leaves the server and is then unencrypted once it reaches your browser. Just like your on-line banking, PayPal, or other sites like that. This is to improve security of the site and all content.
Furthermore, as of January 2017, Google has begun ranking (in its search engine rankings) higher sites that use SSL encryption, as part of its search ranking algorithms. So, to help maintain search rankings for the site, it was prudent to add SSL encryption.
So...to summarize.....the reason for doing this, is so that these (formerly) externally hosted images are also served to you as part of the encrypted data stream. When the 500Eboard encounters externally hosted images, today it flags the page as only "semi-secure" because there is a mixture of both encrypted and non-encrypted content.
So, the way to get around this is to serve ALL content as provided by the site, using SSL. The only way to do this is to "cache" these images and content used in non-500Eboard sites, in our own database and on our server. Hence, the impetus for creating the code that automatically goes through the site's posts and threads, flags non-encrypted content and images, and snags and then caches them on our own server for secure, future serving to you.
Hope this makes sense and is an informative update.
Cheers,
Gerry
Gerry, this is AWESOME.
If the images are already attached (as well as embedded) will the code not duplicate attachments?Also... how will the code handle the Photobucket fiasco? If you try to import an image from a PB account that isn't "upgraded", it won't error out, it just imports their ransomware image demanding the user upgrade the account (pic attached). We don't need a bunch of those ransomware signs auto-imported. Can the code detect this and skip affected PB image links? For examples, look at most of SparkVader's posts with attachments.
If an image is attached to a post, then it is already on the server in the 500Eboard image database.
This code only applies to images that are called on via external, non-secure "http" only URLs.
There was, as you know, a recent hack/script to "get around" Photobucket's onerous shutdown on external image calls for free-tier users. To the best of my knowledge (and I am still researching this, to see if I can also get around it), PhotoBucket closed the loophole and invalidated those scripts lo around the middle of October for many (but not all) situations where the hack worked. I'm working on that now .... but if an image has been removed, then no amount of PB hacks will bring it back.
The good thing is that the code that I created and applied, will work on an ongoing basis (going forward) to bring all external images into the database for the site.
It will also modify URLs in the affected posts with external images, to refer the posts to the "cached" images that have been downloaded.
There is more work to do. The system (as of 11:30 AM EST today) has already scanned and downloaded about 1/4 of the images from the affected posts. It is doing it starting with the initial posts from 2009, and is working its way through the system methodically by date.
Cheers,
Gerry
This code only applies to images that are called on via external, non-secure "http" only URLs.
There was, as you know, a recent hack/script to "get around" Photobucket's onerous shutdown on external image calls for free-tier users. To the best of my knowledge (and I am still researching this, to see if I can also get around it), PhotoBucket closed the loophole and invalidated those scripts lo around the middle of October for many (but not all) situations where the hack worked. I'm working on that now .... but if an image has been removed, then no amount of PB hacks will bring it back.
The good thing is that the code that I created and applied, will work on an ongoing basis (going forward) to bring all external images into the database for the site.
It will also modify URLs in the affected posts with external images, to refer the posts to the "cached" images that have been downloaded.
There is more work to do. The system (as of 11:30 AM EST today) has already scanned and downloaded about 1/4 of the images from the affected posts. It is doing it starting with the initial posts from 2009, and is working its way through the system methodically by date.
Cheers,
Gerry
About one-half of the site's externally hosted photos are now indexed and downloaded. I had some technical difficulties yesterday that I had to deal with, regarding the php memory being too small for the process, and the database server timing out, but I think we are on track after some judicial work with the mySQL database software and "doctoring" some database tables. It's dicey work, working directly on the database, because one wrong keystroke.....the entire site goes "POOF!!" and then it's a restore from a backup (which I did just a couple of days ago).
The site's database is pushing half a gigabyte in size now (about 104 MB compressed), which is amazing. We started out with a database that was about 5-10 kilobytes (compressed) back in 2009.
I'm seeing anywhere from 50-150 "externally hosted" images per month, which the system is now methodically downloading to the server, where they are being stored.
As a result of all of this, you should start to see more and more "green padlocks" in your browser URL bar, meaning that ALL of the content being sent to your browser is being served from the 500Eboard server, safely and securely (as it should be).
Cheers,
Gerry
About 3/4 of the site's externally hosted images are now downloaded and inserted directly into past posts.
One thing I am seeing is that there are a LOT of images on this site that have been hosted at Photobucket and ImageShack and the like. PhotoBucket is not allowing web sites external to them to access images directly anymore, unless the person who has stored the images on their servers pays them for the privilege. This is resulting in quite a number of blank images on past posts on the site. This has caused a LOT of people all over the Internet to be very upset with Photobucket for cutting access to the ability to call up photos stored by free-tier customers on their site.
I would ask that folks here on this site DO NOT support Photobucket, and DO NOT host your images at these free sites like Photobucket and ImageShack. There are also plenty of other sites that folks have used to reference externally hosted images, such as car dealerships, parts companies, eBay, and so forth, where the images no longer exist because the car was sold, the images were deleted, and so forth. Some of these images are going back as far as 2009 and 2010, so it's no wonder if a photo is deleted or changed or moved some years later.
In the future, none of this will be a problem. This is because the code that I have implemented will scan all new posts to the forum every 10 minutes, and download any externally hosted/called images, and insert them automatically into the original post. So, it won't matter what happens to the external image once it is downloaded here. We will have a permanent record of all images posted here -- whether they are attached to posts, or referenced externally. This will make the administrators' jobs much easier, because we won't have to manually download every external image, and then attach it to the original post. This has been particularly important for images associated with cars that come up for sale, because the images/web pages are often deleted after the owner sells the car and moves on.
In any case, this will probably be the last update on this little project, which is quite significant. I wish I had implemented this many years back when the forum was in its infancy, but better late than never, I guess.
Bottom line -- DO NOT use or support sites like Photobucket or Imageshack. Attach your images to posts here, or contact me and I can host your photos for no cost whatsoever.
Cheers,
Gerry
For the 10th birthday of the 500Eboard, next year, we will commemorate with special T-shirts, stickers and other items that will be available for sale through the forum to members. If there is something that folks would like to see, in terms of a useful/lasting item, please let me know your thoughts/ideas.
Hmm. A tasteful keychain might be nice, and be something that would last awhile. Maybe one that replicates the E500E trunk badging in some way?
Simple and classy t-shirt designs are always a welcome addition to any enthusiasts closet.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Simple and classy t-shirt designs are always a welcome addition to any enthusiasts closet.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Just a heads up — I’ve been seeing an increasing number of database related errors over the past 2-3 days. Nothing critical yet, but when I start seeing this happen it can be a harbinger of problems to come based on the hoster’s database server going down & needing to be reset.
I’ll monitor the situation closely. This seems to happen about every two years.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I’ll monitor the situation closely. This seems to happen about every two years.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The hosting company was having some issues with their servers today, and this led to some duplicated posts, extreme site sluggishness, and such. It was not the fault of the 500Eboard software. You may have noticed that I took the site down for about 90 minutes as a result of these problems.
It appears they have fixed the issues over the past hour or two (they had posted some technical updates that they were having problems with their web servers), and the site speed and operation seems to be getting back to normal.
It appears they have fixed the issues over the past hour or two (they had posted some technical updates that they were having problems with their web servers), and the site speed and operation seems to be getting back to normal.
Since updating things back in early February, I'm still continuing to see a modest number of database errors (a few every day), and I'm keeping my eye on things.
No significant site performance degradation, but the hosting provider's database server remains a concern.
No significant site performance degradation, but the hosting provider's database server remains a concern.
I did a quick update today of the Tapatalk plugin from 5.6.14 to 5.7.1. This is an update that had a few bug fixes, as well as an update to accommodate the GDPR data privacy compliance mandate, which takes effect "officially" tomorrow.
No disruption/downtime to the site. This was the first Tapatalk update in some time.
Cheers,
Gerry
No disruption/downtime to the site. This was the first Tapatalk update in some time.
Cheers,
Gerry
Re: w124 E500E Non Standard wheel picture thread.Post your pics
A new version of the Tapatalk plugin has been released, and I just now installed and updated it. Hopefully this should help alleviate the problem. There were a number of bugs that were fixed with the most recent release.
Cheers,
Gerry
It seems there has been a bug with Tapatalk in this regard, recently. I have experienced the same problem.
A new version of the Tapatalk plugin has been released, and I just now installed and updated it. Hopefully this should help alleviate the problem. There were a number of bugs that were fixed with the most recent release.
Cheers,
Gerry
A few administrative updates, just to keep folks informed:
Cheers,
Gerry
- Folks, after the recent Tapatalk plugin update, please let me know if your Tapatalk app continues to not display inline images properly. Hopefully this issue is fixed. You may want to log out of the forum with Tapatalk and log back in to "reset" the app on your mobile device. Also, make sure you download and install the latest Tapatalk version on your device -- the app is updated by Tapatalk every few weeks, and I know there is a new version that has been released just in the past few days (at least for Apple devices).
- We recently crossed the 7,700 member number, which is amazing. We should hit 8,000 members later this year. We are continuing to grow at a rate of 500-750 members per year. I will likely do my annual "state of the Forum" post next month, which will provide updated stats on growth and such.
- Over the past year, we have seen site activity continue to pick up. We are seeing 200-225 registered users log in every day -- getting closer to breaking the 249 daily user record that was set back in early 2015. There have been a lot of days where we have just missed breaking that record.
- I did the latest backup of the 500Eboard database this morning ... it grew from 112.2 MB (compressed) to 114 MB in just one month! The total size of the database (uncompressed) is around 550 MB now. The default database maximum size is 1 GB (uncompressed), so we have several years' worth of overhead, but eventually I'll have to work with the hosting company to get an "exception" once the database nears that limit, so that we can have a larger database.
- I continue to delete unused accounts as they pop up -- generally a few per week. I define "unused accounts" as accounts where I get an e-mail kickback from (undeliverable e-mail) and where the member has not logged into the site for at least 3-4 years, meaning they are not active on the site. If the member does have more than a few posts, then I will generally leave the account, but if it's an account where the person last logged in say in 2012, and never posted anything, and their e-mail is bouncing, then I generally delete the account. Once in a great while the bounced e-mail is attached to an active or near-active poster, so generally then I contact them via PM and let them know that their e-mail is bouncing or no longer valid, and ask them to change it. If it is someone who has logged in during the past couple of years, poster or non-poster, I generally leave it alone.
Cheers,
Gerry
I am strongly considering creating a new member category specifically for professional sellers, dealers and flippers of these cars. Stay tuned for more information as I work through the details.
All of their posts will be moderated (meaning they will have to be specifically approved by a moderator) and will require appropriate detail and information in order to list a car for sale, or to comment on a car that one of our members spots that they are selling.
I am sick and tired of dealer/flipper BS.
All of their posts will be moderated (meaning they will have to be specifically approved by a moderator) and will require appropriate detail and information in order to list a car for sale, or to comment on a car that one of our members spots that they are selling.
I am sick and tired of dealer/flipper BS.
