[tom s]

1st time since early today and tried a LOT!Tom

[Cammer-6]

its painful to see it wither on the vine
surely amongst all the members we have a web master that can offer suggestions.

[Cammer-6]

its painful to see it wither on the vine
surely amongst all the members we have a web master that can offer suggestions.

[72projectbird]

Originally Posted by Cammer-6

its painful to see it wither on the vine
surely amongst all the members we have a web master that can offer suggestions.

There's forums that absolutely dwarf this place, and they dont have constant issues like this. Even forums that are microscopic dont have these issues. It's interesting how this place seems to be under constant attack.

The information here is invaluable, and unfortunately it's on shaky ground.

[jhein]

When I loaded the site today I was verified as a human. Now I see only 25 people here, not 25,000. Thank you to the Admin for addressing that.

[tempest1964]

I reached out to maxperfornceinc at 9:42 this morning. Spoke to Eric, long conversation. Went in depth about the troubles the forum has been having for quite a while now. He said he wasn’t aware. Said he would reach out to the 3rd party administrator of the forum. I told him this forum is a wealth of info for guys like me who want to work on their Pontiacs but don’t have 40-50 years of experience doing it. I told him I was afraid people would stop visiting and sharing info because of the difficulty/impossibility of logging in. He said a lot of people have gone to social media and away from forums. I said I don’t do social media. Now it’s fixed. Hopefully ‘verify you’re human’ will filter out the ‘bots that were overloading the server. Maxperformanceinc is 844-629-7373 in case anyone wants to know.

[johnta1]

Thanks for the update!


The human verification will work great I believe.

[unruhjonny]

post-human verification, it looks like individual pages take about a minute to load.

I was seeing that last night and this morning, i was unable to connect.

I did get pushback when I did it on the forums I ran for a time, but I'll tell anyone who will listen isp bans really work well - you can see the physical number where these bots/spammers are connecting from - and in my opinion, numbers from where NO Pontiacs are, or could possibly be, are pretty safe bets to block.

Just saying.

[72projectbird]

Originally Posted by tempest1964

I reached out to maxperfornceinc at 9:42 this morning. Spoke to Eric, long conversation. Went in depth about the troubles the forum has been having for quite a while now. He said he wasn’t aware. Said he would reach out to the 3rd party administrator of the forum. I told him this forum is a wealth of info for guys like me who want to work on their Pontiacs but don’t have 40-50 years of experience doing it. I told him I was afraid people would stop visiting and sharing info because of the difficulty/impossibility of logging in. He said a lot of people have gone to social media and away from forums. I said I don’t do social media. Now it’s fixed. Hopefully ‘verify you’re human’ will filter out the ‘bots that were overloading the server. Maxperformanceinc is 844-629-7373 in case anyone wants to know.

Yeah, we've seen this story unfold before.

I'd recommend guys start archiving stuff they find important on here.

[Shiny]

tempest1964, thank you for taking action to ask for help. I am truly surprised they were not aware. I guess the limited number of users is off their radar but I agree this forum is a big resource, a great education tool, and for me, entertainment... I am NOT a fan of social media for any of these purposes.

Perhaps better links to AMES catalog and/or a direct online ordering link from the forum would clarify the business impact? For me, I definitely buy stuff based on forum feedback.

Something like "captcha" or "reCaptcha" might help reduce these issues, but my knowledge and insight into forum software is near zero.

I did log out and back in on my PC (Edge browser) and had no indication of being verified as an animal and not a machine.

The "visitors", which I interpret as bots and/or scrapers, are still in the range of "has to be machines" so whatever fix was put in place may not be effective. Fingers crossed, I guess.

[srmmmm]

Originally Posted by GOAT8U2

If the administration needs to create a donation button so members can donate, they guarantee an updated forum with modern safeguards to keep the bots from destroying this place then let's do it.

I agree. With what we spend to keep our cars going, I would think coughing up $10 or $20 by each registered member (If there is a way to do a safe mass notification) would be something achievable and seen as valuable.

[indymanjoe]

Anyone going to Fakebook for info is in for a real treat! Lots of Bad info and scammers

[Shiny]

Online questions I posed to AI tools suggest updating the platform to modern software that will mitigate these issues would NOT be as expensive as I might have thought... ChatGTP suggests a total cost <$10K:

1. Migration Costs (One-Time):

• Basic Migration (using free or low-cost software and minimal customization): $1,000 to $3,000
• Full Migration (with professional services, custom design, etc.): $5,000 to $10,000

2. Bot Protection (Ongoing):

• Basic CAPTCHA (Google reCAPTCHA/hCaptcha): Free to $0
• Advanced Bot Protection (e.g., CleanTalk, Akismet, Cloudflare): $5 to $500/month depending on the service and the level of protection needed.

This doesn't sound daunting to me given the financial undercurrent experienced by anyone with a car hobby. A 1% fee, even if disguised as a price increase, on parts purchases at AMES, Cold Case, Pypes, etc. probably cover it with margin and I doubt it would hurt business.

[Shiny]

So I just clicked on a thread and got the captcha verification.

I did NOT get this when logging on. Can this tool be used as a requirement to access the site instead of what appears to be a requirement to access content?

[72projectbird]

Originally Posted by srmmmm

I agree. With what we spend to keep our cars going, I would think coughing up $10 or $20 by each registered member (If there is a way to do a safe mass notification) would be something achievable and seen as valuable.

Ehh, I'm not a fan of that. The amount of money some of us spend with our host, and their paying advertisers should cover the operating costs of a relatively small forum.

If guys want to donate that's one thing, but charging for a membership is gonna be a hard pass for me.

[KS circutguy]

Originally Posted by tempest1964

I reached out to maxperfornceinc at 9:42 this morning. Spoke to Eric, long conversation. Went in depth about the troubles the forum has been having for quite a while now. He said he wasn’t aware. Said he would reach out to the 3rd party administrator of the forum. I told him this forum is a wealth of info for guys like me who want to work on their Pontiacs but don’t have 40-50 years of experience doing it. I told him I was afraid people would stop visiting and sharing info because of the difficulty/impossibility of logging in. He said a lot of people have gone to social media and away from forums. I said I don’t do social media. Now it’s fixed. Hopefully ‘verify you’re human’ will filter out the ‘bots that were overloading the server. Maxperformanceinc is 844-629-7373 in case anyone wants to know.

Excellent and a Big Thank You.
Active user list is back to 'normal' as well.

[Longs]

As of now, 1:30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday 9/23/2025, the total users are around 200, with 50 members and 150 guests. That seems like an expected, real people type of number. Hopefully it holds up.

From an information perspective, social media is extremely difficult to use, lots of bad information, searching is extremely difficult, lots of overlapping pages and content. For example, on Facebook you have "Pontiac GTO", you have "GTO Tempest LeMans 1964 - 1967, Pontiac Midwest Connection, GTOAA and POCI pages, and a bunch of other pages. This forum is head and shoulders above the social media options that I've seen.

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

I couldn't get on board for either 4-5 days , until now.
First thing was the Auto-Captcha.
That gave some hope.

Was getting sparse minimal notifications during the time , so it was bleeping some short life at times during that period. But could never get on board.

Thanks for the new efforts .

[PAUL K]

Originally Posted by Baron Von Zeppelin

I couldn't get on board for either 4-5 days , until now.
First thing was the Auto-Captcha.
That gave some hope.

Was getting sparse minimal notifications during the time , so it was bleeping some short life at times during that period. But could never get on board.

Thanks for the new efforts .

Same for me .... Just glad we are up and running again

[GOAT8U2]

Got back on after 2 days, the human verification seemed to help, maybe that's enough to keep things normal.