As many members know, vtac, the founder and sole administrator of FC, has been absent for many months—since April 14, 2018 to be exact. Unfortunately, he did not leave anyone with enough power to perform several important administrative tasks. This situation has slowly deteriorated to the point where we felt we either had to abandon the site and the community, or take drastic action. We therefore built a lifeboat.
These are the problems FC is facing:
We would like to try to get everyone interested moved over to the new FC as best we can. This will not be easy and we will have to leave behind much of the vast knowledge base that has built up at FC. There are efforts underway to try to archive some threads and we will do everything we can to salvage what we can prior to the impending demise of our beloved forum. In the meantime, some threads on the new site will link back to a legacy thread here on FC and FC threads may close down with a re-direct to the new site for the conversation to continue.
This will happen gradually over the next few days/weeks and we want to make it clear that we are not pulling the plug on FC by any means. Rather we are just pulling up a lifeboat alongside the Titanic that is FC as it heads straight towards an iceberg with no captain, no rudder, and taking on water.
If anyone is interested, we made this announcement over the weekend in front of some sponsors, retailers and other commercial members via Zoom meeting that you can view below for further information.
We encourage you all to register at our new home by going to newfuckcombustion.com or fcombustion.com.
Thank you.
These are the problems FC is facing:
- The owner and administrator, vtac hasn’t been heard from for over two years.
- The domain is registered only until October 26, 2020. We don't know if it will be renewed. We expect that it won't.
- Hosting service renewal is anyone’s guess, although it is likely tied to domain renewal.
- The forum software hasn’t been updated since vtac left and the current version is no longer supported.
- We are unable to update critical parts of FC without an admin (maintain rules, add/remove staff, assign members to groups such as Retailer, etc.)
- The database is showing increasing signs of instability. This is not yet apparent to members but quite noticeable to moderators.
- We do not know if the database is backed up, and even if it is, we don't have the access needed to restore a backup.
- The daily bombardment of spammers is maddening and difficult to manage. We lack the ability to strengthen the registration procedure.
- FC does not support SSL (https).
We would like to try to get everyone interested moved over to the new FC as best we can. This will not be easy and we will have to leave behind much of the vast knowledge base that has built up at FC. There are efforts underway to try to archive some threads and we will do everything we can to salvage what we can prior to the impending demise of our beloved forum. In the meantime, some threads on the new site will link back to a legacy thread here on FC and FC threads may close down with a re-direct to the new site for the conversation to continue.
This will happen gradually over the next few days/weeks and we want to make it clear that we are not pulling the plug on FC by any means. Rather we are just pulling up a lifeboat alongside the Titanic that is FC as it heads straight towards an iceberg with no captain, no rudder, and taking on water.
If anyone is interested, we made this announcement over the weekend in front of some sponsors, retailers and other commercial members via Zoom meeting that you can view below for further information.
We encourage you all to register at our new home by going to newfuckcombustion.com or fcombustion.com.
Thank you.
