a rediculously long general address to the members

Well folks, I guess it's time to set some things straight, and maybe straighten out some of the misconceptions and rumors floating around amongst the members.

Before I get into what I am absolutely positive will be an overdrawn post that doesn't hold much interest to the majority, I just want to say that this post is not intended to elicit your money, sympathy, assistance, prayers or left kidney. I am, however, hoping that this helps some of the people understand my position, and why I don't always respond to pm's, emails or forum posts and also why I do some of the things I do(some can't be explained at all).

Who would have thought something as simple and seemingly innocuous as a "Supermoto forum" would wreak such havoc and cause me so much heartache. Since the post was started, I've received pm's and emails with the subject matter stating that:

1) I need to stop the manipulation of the dealers and distributors on the site.
2) I have become a corporate sellout
3) I need to make code changes to the site to allow for topic designations in the already existing forums
4) One member will be leaving never to return if I allow the forum because he thinks it will quickly degrade the quality of the site
5) I need to grow some testicles and regain control of the "unruly mob"

This is the jist of the 20 or so comments I've received in the last week pertaining not just to the newly proposed forum cat, but also to the running of the site in general.

Here's the deal:

This site does not have any paid advertisers. In the history of this site, two dealers have made personal donations and two dealers provided prizes for raffles. HNA donated two sets of tires and a graphics kit for a raffle. That's all I've ever received from any dealer or distributor. The banners are placed on the site as a "thank you" to dealers that place a link to this site from theirs. The BMG banner was also a "thank you" for everything they've done(visiting and keeping the members in the loop as much as they do). I can't be a sellout, simply because I'm not selling anything. Comments made by the dealers and distribs are theirs, and my comments are soley mine. I rarely speak to BMG, usually just to get an updated dealer list, and I only talk to dealers when I'm accosting them for raffle material or what-not. There is no great conspiracy, and I'm not making a load of cash on the member's ignorance. One pm stated that the bmg banner looked like a page header it was so big. That's my fault. I stole the header off of their page, and forgot to resize it. Since I don't see the banners on the site, I forgot to resize it. There's no big story in it. Sorry to disappoint the "conspiracist theory" crowd.

Now, I know this is only going to hurt many member's view of me but I think I need to say it to keep it honest. I am not a martyr. If I were smart enough to have been able to design the site to make money while keeping the integrity of the site, you can bet both your buns that I would have done it in a heartbeat. I would love to make a living doing this, but a few things make that impossible, those being:

1) The bike doesn't draw enough traffic to warrant any kind of advertising costs.
2) I can't offer the same "high speed" gimmicks that other sites do.

The first reason doesn't really need any explanation. Suzukis are plentiful, therefore they draw a lot of people looking for a community site. Husaberg(as yet) doesn't. You can't charge a vendor any kind of money to advertise on a low-traffic site.

The second reason is also very simple. I'm not a coder. I'm merely some guy who found himself buried in a site that required a lot more than I knew how to do. So I've hacked, borrowed and modified code for almost everything on this site. Everything you guys use on this site has been coded by other, much smarter people than I. The difference between the other sites' admins and I is simply that they know how to code php proficiently and I do not. Also, they have in some cases teams of people running and modifying the site. Aside from forum moderators, I am the only guy left to fix, modify or add things to this site.

This site started because my brother bought a Husaberg and we couldn't find parts or information for it. So I created a web page on Angelfire with a remotely-hosted ad-driven forum and it quickly picked up steam. By the time my brother sold his Husaberg, there were so many people using the site that I felt bad about shutting it down. So I moved it over to the server where I was starting my first(of many) failed venture at running a commercial site. The commercial site disappeared, and I was left with a recurring server bill and the Husaberg site. So I kept the server because I now felt bad about dropping everyone back to the free site and forums. Life went on until my host contacted me to tell me that the Husaberg site was causing the shared host that I was on to crash due to the amount of traffic it was consuming, with the ultimatum that I needed to move to a virtual dedicated server, or I would be dropped from them completely. So I sold my Honda to my dad to pay for the move to a VDS. Life again went on. I was happy running the site, and didn't mind paying the monthly charge to keep it available. Although this site doesn't make me any money, it's still my sole success story on the web. It's what I always tried to do, but always failed at. I created a site that was successful. I couldn't shut it down any more than someone could close down a successful business venture or hobby that they were good at.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think I did anything that someone couldn't do better. I know that at any time in the last 8 years someone could have designed a better, faster and more successful site than I did, but there is no money in it, so nobody else stepped up to the plate, leaving me to my devices. I was incredibly happy.

If everything stayed at that level, I wouldn't be writing this. So what happened? My hobby has become the largest(and most frustrating) part of my life. As the member base grew, so did the server bills and time required to keep the site running. I found the donation module on the front of the site, and it almost always pays for the cost of the server, which is all I want, so we won't talk about that aspect of it anymore, ok? The problem that this post is attempting to alleviate is the fact that the site is no longer a hobby. After a full day of work, I can expect to spend 5-7 hours a night, not to mention my morning visit before work, and a quick check when I come home for lunch and weekends. The site has become so large that I no longer seem to be able to add cool stuff to it, simply because I'm busy fixing breaks in the script, solving member's problems with the site, and trying to keep damage from malicious attacks at a minimum. I rarely even get to read forum posts anymore. I spend my first hour checking on the newly registered members to make sure it's not a bot that manipulates this particular site script to use it's email capabilities to use my mail server to send spam. This has become huge as of late, and I'd say I delete 10 registered users for every 2 that are legitimate. But before I can delete them, I have to search their usernames, emails and IP's on blacklists. After they're deleted, I have to do a DNS lookup and block their IP blocks so they can't come right back and do it again. After that I'm validating downloads tagged as broken, fixing member's account problems and answering pm's. Also I do a portion of a backup on the DB(being on dial-up, the backup process is over a week long). Then it's on to the mundane additions and modifications that are required in running a dynamic content site.

My point to all this is simply that I no longer have the resources to jump on every modification request and suggestion. Even if I had the time, the request is usually beyond the scope of my knowledge. I'm lucky to keep the site running as it is much less make large changes to it's structure. If you write me with a suggestion and you don't hear back from me, please don't feel that I am gaffing you off. It's simply that I don't have any more time to give. I've run out.

So why don't I add another admin? Great question. If this were a code site, or some other site pertaining to a computer based fan system, it would work well. Because there are plenty of people in that genre that would love to spend hours a day behind a computer working on a site that doesn't pay simply for the love of it. But for a site devoted to motorcycles of any kind, the enthusiasts as a general rule, have a real life, and can not or do not want to spend the time required to administrate a site. It's hard enough to recruite moderators for the forum. Many who apply quickly lose interest as the novelty of having the position wears off. They disappear and no harm is done. However, if I were to get a guy to help me with the site, what happens when it's big enough to keep two people busy, and my co-admin decides to sell his berg or otherwise decides to free up his off time? Now I've got a site that's twice as large, and I'm back down to one guy. So no second admin. The answer I think is to keep the site at a size that it's controllable by one person.

So what's the purpose of this post? Simply to let you know that if I don't respond or you don't feel that you're getting the same personal response that you've always gotten from me in the past, this is why. At the moment, I just feel completely overwhelmed sometimes, and it's become more of a second job than the hobby it started out as. I don't often get to do the things I used to be able to do(chat, post in the forum and generally goof around with the members), as now I'm busy trying to combat the naturally self destructive nature of the web and it's inhabitants.

Please don't think that this is a prelude to the site closing or making a drastic change. As long as there is a need for it, the site will be here. If a bigger and better site comes along and people begin a mass exodus, only then will I be putting up a "gone fishing" sign and will be over there with you posting and having fun.

I can't tell you guys how much I've loved getting to know everyone, and how much joy it's brought me to be able to give you guys something like this. It's given me a lot more than anyone could know and I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. If I had been smart enough to figure out a way to have turned this into a way to earn a living, I would have done it in a heartbeat. There's nothing I would have enjoyed more than doing something like this for a living. It didn't work out that way though, and you've been left with an admin that doesn't have the time, knowledge or resources to give you the calibur of site that you see elsewhere and deserve.

So in closing, I don't need anyone to respond to this, offer to help with the site or make a donation. If however you were planning to write me tonight to tell me that I'm a sellout, I need to make "X" change to the site, I've lost my integrity, I need to grow some balls, I'm allowing the site to go to hell, or something else along those lines and decide not to after reading this, then this post did it's job. It hurts more than I thought it would that quite a few people feel this way, and I'm sorry that they do. I've always tried to do what I thought was good for the members as a whole. I went into this endeavor with nothing but the best intentions, and I never attempted to manipulate, coherce or otherwise mislead the general population at my gain. I've simply tried to do the best that I could to make this site a useful site for all of you. Any shortcomings are mine, any comments are the owners and any conspiracy between other members of the site and myself is imagined. I've tried to make the site truly democratic, and although that might not have been the best way to run a site, it's what I ran with, and it's what we'll continue to strive for.

thank very much for your time and consideration,
json

RE: risky1 and dale

hi guys and thanks to both of you for your comments.

Dale, you're an incredibly awesome person, and I thank you for the years you've spent answering people's questions and bringing new stuff to the scene when nobody else even knew the scene existed

Risky, due to the fact that php is the most recognized open source(read: free) web programming language, there's not a lot of options out there for dynamic content sites. As for php-nuke, it's not that it's an overly bug laden script. Again, it's just the most well known, so obviously it's going to gain the most attention from the malicious script kiddies. Every CMS has it's problems, and believe me, I've installed them all in hopes of moving to something different. This site even ran XOOPS and Post-Nuke a few years ago. The problem with those is that due to it's smaller fan base, there are not as many modules available for it, like chat, gallery, forum etc. Also, porting the database would be incredibly labor intensive. So after years of looking around, I've decided it's best to stay put. If I could move to anything, it would be CPG-Nuke, which is much more security oriented. Again though, we would lose some of the things on this site that people really like.

A lot of exploits are via the phpBB script(our forum). It's the most well known GPL(again, free) script available. They're quick to make patches available, but due to the fact that our forum is embedded in Nuke, I have to modify the patches to work with this site, which leaves it open to exploits longer than I would like.

The other big player in CMS is .ASP(Microsoft), but due to the fact that you can't wipe your *** without MS charging you money for it, it's really not a viable option for me.

So really, the architecture of the site is pretty much going to stay the same for the forseeable future, simply due to the above reasons. When you're not paying for scripts and service, you sort of have to take what you get

As for you helping at the site, you do plenty. Don't sign up for anything more. My wife is almost to the point of burning my computer, and frankly I can't blame her

thanks,
json

How can you say these suck? I've traveled the intardnet picking these up over the years!

:moon: :spank: :BIG: :microwave: :eating: :grab: :forcefeed: :splat: :wickedfart: :eyeslam: :arcade: :cya: :fart: ottytrain3: ottytrain5: :transformer:



json

Hey guys,

thanks for all the comments, and maybe there will come a time when we need to look at our options, but this post really wasn't made in hopes of kudos, attaboys, offers of money or assistance, etc. It was just something that I really needed but loathed to do. It's kind of crappy to have to write a letter like that, but the writing of it itself is therapeutic.

I am not planning on jumping off of any bridges or visiting any belltowers. I am in fact going for a ride today..... I'm taking Chloe and her Cinderella bike to the park for lunch today, and sometimes she lets me ride it.

thanks,
json