[sdbob]

I agree with mgabilik. Just as a personal experience. A couple of us grew up with one owners sons of the Rolling Rock Brewery. One guy I knew personally, we built his brothers Vinces home in Ligonier ,Al become CEO of the brewery at the end. He said once the name is sold or moved it will never command the same respect and you will lose customers that will never come back. They'll find other beers to enjoy. I belong to couple other sites one is world wide they do not seem to have these problems at all. I hope and pray someone straightens out the internet problems. I buy usually right before Norwalk so I can pickup there. Bob

[KS circutguy]

Originally Posted by sdbob

I agree with mgabilik. Just as a personal experience. A couple of us grew up with one owners sons of the Rolling Rock Brewery. One guy I knew personally, we built his brothers Vinces home in Ligonier ,Al become CEO of the brewery at the end. He said once the name is sold or moved it will never command the same respect and you will lose customers that will never come back. They'll find other beers to enjoy. I belong to couple other sites one is world wide they do not seem to have these problems at all. I hope and pray someone straightens out the internet problems. I buy usually right before Norwalk so I can pickup there. Bob

Dad would say to us as kids;
"Hope in one had **** in the other, then tell me which one gets full"
We need action not hope

[performerrpm]

i cant even get py open with google. i have to switch over to firefox before i can get it to open up


gonna be a sad day when py and all of it years of info disappear.

[dataway]

Surely this forum is not hosted on a PC somewhere or on some local ISP with a few servers .... right?

I notice the actual Max Performance website runs fine.

I just noticed something ... I turned off my adblocker and the site runs WAY faster.


Update: Did more testing, still WAY faster with the adblocker turned off. Quite possible the forum content is being served up by a source the adblocker is trying to block. ie ... if the ads are sourced from the same location as the forum content ... problems will ensue.

Update 2: I give up, within a few minutes it was back to SLOW again, even with the adblocker off .... so, nevermind.

[johnta1]

I image it's a server issue.
If like before, their certificate expires and they don't update it.
I figure they got Cloudfare to get rid of the AI bots and spammers, etc.
But there setup doesn't work with an expired certificate. (it's not secured)
Who is the server for here and who manages it?
May just need an IT type guy to muck around.
Don't know what their contract says for the server people.

[Bills Auto Works]

Originally Posted by mgarblik

The forum is certainly running slower than ever. But I posted my understanding and hope that it would get straightened out in a reasonable time frame. But the posts from Bart and a few others concern me some. I am a very loyal person, sometimes to a fault. I do buy the vast majority of my restoration parts from Ames Performance and talk up the aspect that Ames supports the hobby, unlike all the other vendors. I was a good friend of Steve Ames from the beginning to his passing. We all know that the vast majority of parts Ames sells are the exact same stuff all the other vendors sell. They may be re-bagged, carry a different part number, or be priced slightly different. Yes, I know, Ames has some specific parts that are unique to their company, but not that much. My point is, I always go to Ames first, and I am even willing to pay a little more for Ames parts vs the other vendors, because of their support of this forum. With Steve Ames passing, and if Ames gives up on this forum and lets it die, why would anyone go out of their way to seek out Ames as a first choice for their parts needs?

So the owners may say they derive NO benefit from this forum, but they may see a drop in sales if it goes away. I can't say for sure, but I can't be the only one who helps Ames Performance succeed through their support of this forum. Let me know if I am.

I agree with this sentiment,

Over the last 6 or so years I have spent a bunch of money with Ames, most of which is because of the support for this site.

Honestly .....The Ames site itself (even after an update a few years ago) is so woefully out of date, that the problems with this forum is not surprising. Don't get me wrong, I love this forum & I know Bart tries his best, but if their own site went from something that looked like DOS to something that looked like Windows 97 & they called that an upgrade.... you can't expect too much better for this forum.

Having said that, I still come here every day, sometimes it is normal & other times it is so slow I move on & come back later to try again. I hav e made lots of friends/customers here & would hate to see it go away, but those folks can find me & I can find them if it happens.

God Bless
Bill
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/...closed.614419/

[Shiny]

Originally Posted by dataway

Surely this forum is not hosted on a PC somewhere or on some local ISP with a few servers .... right?

I notice the actual Max Performance website runs fine.

....

Originally Posted by johnta1

I image it's a server issue.
If like before, their certificate expires and they don't update it.
I figure they got Cloudfare to get rid of the AI bots and spammers, etc.
But there setup doesn't work with an expired certificate. (it's not secured)
Who is the server for here and who manages it?
May just need an IT type guy to muck around.
Don't know what their contract says for the server people.

I often see this timeout message from Cloudflare that suggests this recent episode may well be something like expired certificates.



I am grateful to Maxperformance for paying the bills to keep this forum open. The lack of ads on the forum makes me believe the business value is perceived too low to even justify managing advertisers and sponsors. This makes me even more grateful for the financial and technical support.

The only sources I trust before spending money on my Pontiac are this forum and Cliff's. I shop brands and retailers that are recommended here. I don't trust a thing off social media and don't invest time in any other forums. So I find it hard to believe there is ZERO value to a business in keeping this open but I'm totally blind to the facts.

I personally don't see this forum ever getting updated, given that would be a significant expense to transfer to a new/modern platform.

But we have all seen this run a LOT better in its current configuration than it is now. Something broke. Hopefully it's minor and inexpensive to address.

While it's here, I thank all of you for keeping me interested, motivated, and on a rational path.

Mike

[68 Firebird]

Reminds me in AOL dialup!!!!

Please fix it.

[433lemans]

All of a sudden it's quick...at least at the moment...

[muscle_collector]

out of curiosity (i have absolutely no clue) what does it cost to run a site like this?

[pont3]

Originally Posted by 433lemans

All of a sudden it's quick...at least at the moment...

I noticed this too. Question is, what causes the slowdown?

[salem1912]

Mine normal now also!

[1965gp]

If there is a $$ amount needed to get the site running smoothly they should tell us so we can raise it. This is a very valuable site to me because of the people and the information. I would pay a fee but I feel it needs to be voluntary as the site should stay free if possible.

I can say THE ONLY reason I buy anything from Ames is this website. Good products but any time I talk to customer service they act like they are doing me a favor.

[bdk1976]

I think I've mentioned this before, but my biggest concern if this site goes away is the immense amount of Pontiac knowledge that will be unavailable. I search old posts all of the time and usually find an answer to just about anything I am looking for, or at least some good information to at least help me move forward.

Before classical pontiac shut down years ago (appears to be back up in some form now(?)), I was able to grab a copy of all old posts using a web scraping utility. I halfheartedly tried to import it into a SQL database so it would be easier for me to use/search, but ran into some issues due to the format it was saved in, so I shelved it after a while as this site pretty much superseded it, and it's been a great run. Now I'm concerned that this site may be gone forever - unfortunately sooner than later the way things have been looking - and I have no way of grabbing a copy of it for personal use. I just hope someone with the ability has the forethought to create an archive/backup of all of the information here so it isn't lost forever and it can be made available to others in the future as it is an outstanding resource. I'd love to get my hands on a backup copy of the database behind this site - I'd be willing to pay a fee for a downloadable copy of the archives (may be a good way to raise some $$ if need be - maybe I'm the only one who would be interested?). Not sure I'd be on board with a subscription type thing moving forward as those never seem to work well when something is already on the decline - I've seen and been personally burned by similar schemes in the past.

If people new to the hobby have to rely on garbage sources like facebook and AI searches to build/maintain/restore vintage Pontiacs they are 100% screwed. There is some good stuff out there on youtube and perhaps a few other places these days, but nothing like the repository we have here for our little niche in the automotive hobby.

[fyrffytr1]

Now mine is running very slowly.

[fyrffytr1]

It goes from slow to quick then back to slow. I am using Firefox.

[burd]

I switched over to GREEN and it’s fast.

[george kujanski]

Sunday, midnite......working really well right now !

George

[Half-Inch Stud]

Works now!

[KS circutguy]

They probly just did a reboot.
Give it 8hrs.