Hi guys and gals Happy New Year!
2018 is gone and while we didn't have much satellite news to talk about, it was still a great year for SatelliteGuys.
Thanks to the Pub Members and supporters we were able to keep the lights on for all, so for that I thank you.
2019 is going to bring some changes to SatelliteGuys, so I am giving advanced warning now before these things happen.
First is our Satellite List service we call "The List" will be going away. The List has not been updated in over a year. The person who was running it just disappeared and we have not heard from him. I have tried numerous times to contact him and now all the addresses I had to contact him are no longer working. I do hope Jeremy is ok.
This list was made by him running custom software on his computer, and then changes were uploaded here as they were noticed and unfortunately this included our near live Dish Network Uplink reports.
If someone with the time and the ability would like to work on a project to bring back The List... or if someone has a satellite list site they host anywhere and would like to join the SatelliteGuys family then contact me. I will host it at no cost, and in addition that person can keep any advertising revenue they make off of their pages.
Second, sometime in 2019 we will be moving to the Xenforo 2.0 platform. This is not something I want to do as we have so many add ons that we have paid a lot of money for as well as some custom add ons that were written for us.
The reason for the move is because the Xenforo 1.0 is at its end of life and will no longer get security upgrades. When we do move I will make sure we have both a light and dark style available for all users.
As far as add ons go, unfortunately we don't have the money to buy a lot of them. Some of the important ones such as UI.X we will get, however many of them we have now we won't... in addition many of them were never converted from 1.0 to 2.0. Plugins cost anywhere from $10 to over $200 each. You can see a list of currently available plugins for the 2.0 series at XenForo 2
Besides the security upgrades, our current OS on our servers is also end of life and updates are not being issues for many parts of it. We have been planning for awhile to wipe the servers and reload them with the latest OS version. This should not only all us to keep things secure, but run better too. For example our serch engine we are running here is on version 1.3 and the current version is version 5 or something like that... I am sure a lot of improvements have been made since then.
When we do this wipe we only expect to be down a few hours, with the longest part of the process being restoring the data back.
I know people don't like change, and to be honest neither do I, but we need to keep with the times and keep things secure. The move to Xenforo 2.0 is not something I wanted to do, but we will need to do it.
Since we started almost 15 years ago, we have always been fueled by you our members your feedback and ideas. As always if you have any ideas on how we can make SatelliteGuys better please let us know.
Thank you for all your support and again THANK YOU for being SatelliteGuys!
2018 is gone and while we didn't have much satellite news to talk about, it was still a great year for SatelliteGuys.
Thanks to the Pub Members and supporters we were able to keep the lights on for all, so for that I thank you.
2019 is going to bring some changes to SatelliteGuys, so I am giving advanced warning now before these things happen.
First is our Satellite List service we call "The List" will be going away. The List has not been updated in over a year. The person who was running it just disappeared and we have not heard from him. I have tried numerous times to contact him and now all the addresses I had to contact him are no longer working. I do hope Jeremy is ok.
This list was made by him running custom software on his computer, and then changes were uploaded here as they were noticed and unfortunately this included our near live Dish Network Uplink reports.
If someone with the time and the ability would like to work on a project to bring back The List... or if someone has a satellite list site they host anywhere and would like to join the SatelliteGuys family then contact me. I will host it at no cost, and in addition that person can keep any advertising revenue they make off of their pages.
Second, sometime in 2019 we will be moving to the Xenforo 2.0 platform. This is not something I want to do as we have so many add ons that we have paid a lot of money for as well as some custom add ons that were written for us.
The reason for the move is because the Xenforo 1.0 is at its end of life and will no longer get security upgrades. When we do move I will make sure we have both a light and dark style available for all users.
As far as add ons go, unfortunately we don't have the money to buy a lot of them. Some of the important ones such as UI.X we will get, however many of them we have now we won't... in addition many of them were never converted from 1.0 to 2.0. Plugins cost anywhere from $10 to over $200 each. You can see a list of currently available plugins for the 2.0 series at XenForo 2
Besides the security upgrades, our current OS on our servers is also end of life and updates are not being issues for many parts of it. We have been planning for awhile to wipe the servers and reload them with the latest OS version. This should not only all us to keep things secure, but run better too. For example our serch engine we are running here is on version 1.3 and the current version is version 5 or something like that... I am sure a lot of improvements have been made since then.
When we do this wipe we only expect to be down a few hours, with the longest part of the process being restoring the data back.
I know people don't like change, and to be honest neither do I, but we need to keep with the times and keep things secure. The move to Xenforo 2.0 is not something I wanted to do, but we will need to do it.
Since we started almost 15 years ago, we have always been fueled by you our members your feedback and ideas. As always if you have any ideas on how we can make SatelliteGuys better please let us know.
Thank you for all your support and again THANK YOU for being SatelliteGuys!
