Mamiya Forum

[herron]

Don't know if anyone (other than you, Bob ) has noticed, but my Collecting Mamiya 35mm Forum is down.

The site host, Conforums, has apparently been hit with a massive barrage of spam bots that has temporarily shut down their main server.

Cannot reach Conforums to find out what the time frame is for restoration. If it doesn't happen soon, I will be forced to recreate the Mamiya Forum on another server, like Proboards.

The only problem with that ... none of the info currently on the Conforums site is transferrable ... and I have no way of letting my 500+ members know what is going on ... except to link them to the new site from my main web site.

I hope the mental 10-year-olds who caused the problem are delighted with their little prank. Know any hackers you want offed? I'm in the mood. (sigh)

[vintageslrs]

Hi Ron

Conforums should had never allowed guest posting......that is what apparently has allowed this to happen......
I am wondering if they will ever recover from this.....
They have been down about 5 days now.......I'm looking forward to a new Mamiya forum on ProBoards.....

Bob

[PeterW]

Hi Ron,

I had to do a quick double-take when I first read your posting. I thought for a moment that your main Mamiya site was down. Whew!!

I never visited your Collecting Mamiya forum because I don't collect Mamiyas, but it's really tough if you've lost the list of members for good, not to mention useful archives.

I'm very surprised to learn that Conforums allowed guest posting without either them or the forum owners being able to moderate and approve new members - if that is what happened. Surely they weren't naive enough not to realise that they would get bombarded with automatically generated spam, spyware, viruses and just about any other nasty. What on earth happened to their firewalls and spam and spyware filters? Puzzling.

I think the only thing you can do is to kiss Conforums goodbye and start again on Proboards. I would imagine that a sizeable number of your members will visit your main site to find out what's happened - at least, the active ones will, and they're the members you want on your new forum. I suspect a prominent notice on your main site about a "new" forum, plus of course a link, will bring a lot of them over. I hope it will.

Best of luck!

PeterW

Edited for a PS: When, and if, Conforums manage to salvage your Mamiya forum my own inclination would be to treat what's on there with a jaundiced eye, just in case the low-life scrags managed to embed some time-bombed nasties which can be very difficult to detect and eradicate before they become active.

All right, I know I'm a cynical, suspicious old bugger, but I knocked around west and east (communist) Europe as a ferreting industrial journalist for a fair few years, and it's a regretable survival attitude that life taught me.

PW

[Randy]

I'm glad Pro Boards has the options.

[jack]

Hello Ron
I noticed the forum was down since Saturday. I usually check it Tues. and Sat. I have little time lately to read this forum or the Mamiya forum daily. If you change host I will fallow. I hope you don't loss all that history and members list.
Best of luck with this problem.

PS most good sites have backup files stored off line to recover from problems like this, so hopefully we will loose very little.

Sign me up for the firing Squad.
Jack

[davesworld]

Ron,
I can't imagine how you must be feeling, this sort of stuff makes my patient, tolerant and peace loving blood boil!!!! It seems nowadays that many of this worlds population seems to think that destroying something that some other person built with their passion and dedication, and has done nothing to harm anyone else, is somehow fun or funny......I fail to see the humour . Penalties and gaol time merely elevates these weeds to hero status. I think a wonderful idea would be to go around to the offenders abode and drag all their possessions that they have worked for out into their front yards and create a huge bonfire, dramatic but effective ;D
New or old Mamiya forum, you'll have my support

Dave

[Deleted]

I tend to be a sensitive person and don't want to overreact. I believe people who get their entertainment out of bringing down servers should be hunted down by large sadistic men and their knees and fingers broken using baseball bats. (aluminum baseball bats). All their pets should be killed and family members sold into slavery. And it that doesn't stop the scum we should take more drastic measures.

[herron]

My Mamiya Forum site is back up and running! ;D

And Wayne ... I think you wait too long to take those drastic measures!

[herron]

Heard from Conforums ... and I have to apologize to all the spam-bot hackers I was condemning a little while ago ....

... no, scratch that ... I still detest the little buggers.

But it wasn't hackers after all. Seems there was a fire in the facility that houses the Conforums servers. Things have been restored ... although they tell me there will be about five hours of down time to come ... as they switch from generators to the newly restored main power grid!