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Why The Site Has Been Up And Down Warning: The following will contain strong language! You may be asking yourself what the hell has been going on with Retromags since last week. Lets start with some background information, the Retromags forum runs on Invision Power Board software. Our forums, download section and the new blog section are all Official Invision products. Now with any website, people want to customize their sites to accomplish a goal that is not built into the existing software. These "modifications" to the existing Invision software is not supported by Invision, they only support the basic install. These "third party" modifications can be free or paid, and they can created by a company or an individual with PHP coding knowledge. Retromags runs quite a few of these third party modifications, the Arcade, Battle System, Casino....are all examples. Now that you understand how this site works, we can go into why we have been up and down! About 8 months ago I bought a third party modification for Retromags, this software was called Community SEO and it promised to make Retromags show up better in search engine results. This Community SEO software rewrote our existing URLs to become less cryptic. Before http://www.retromags.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4932 After http://www.retromags.com/forums/topic/4932-reputation-system-online/ As you can see the After URL is much more descriptive and results in us being higher up in search engine results. Well last week I got to thinking that it would be nice if we had a shorter URL, I had wanted to do a small change on Retromags. Before http://www.retromags.com/forums After http://forums.retromags.com Well the third party software I had purchased from Community SEO, they have a key that is critical to the functionality of the software working. I sent a polite request to the Owner of Community SEO and asked if he could issue Retromags a new key that would allow us to change our current URL. This initial request was made on August 13th at 2:41PM....I left work at 5PM and arrived home at 6:30PM later that night. At 7:30PM I was about to go on my daily walk around the neighborhood and all the sudden Retromags collapsed! I spent the next two hours trying to figure out why NO links worked on Retromags, and why NO links from Google to Retromags were working. The entire site fell apart and I could not figure out why, I left work at 5PM and made no changes that I could see would bring the entire site down. Finally around 9:30 I figured it out, the Owner of Community SEO fulfilled part of my request.....the part of disabling my current key (but not issuing a new key). The entire site was down and I tried EVERYTHING to bring us back up. I tried multiple ways to contact the owner of this modification to have him issue me a key to make our website work again. Well the fucking douche bag never got back to me! Now I paid this prick for his software, and all I asked was for two simple things.....First to disable my current key.....Second to issue a new one! Now he could have done nothing at all, he could have done it....but nooooo he had to do a half ass job. Finally at 11:30PM I made a decision.....to upgrade our website in order to bring us back up. As of August 13th we were running Invision Power Board 2.3.5....about 2 months ago Invision came out with a major release of Invision Power Board 3.0. I had told Meppi and Triverse that I had wanted to wait 6-8 months so that they could iron all the bugs out of IPB 3.0.....I also wanted to have this time to allow the authors of the Arcade/Battle system we use to come out with versions of their systems for this new software. Now my hands were tied, I had a totally down website....and had to make a choice. So I decided at 11:30 on August 13th to upgrade us to IPB 3.0. This meant that our Battle System, Arcade, Casino and a few other features would not work afterwords. Just so you guys know....today is August 17th and that prick has still not answered my emails to him. So if I had not upgraded us to 3.0....the site would still be down. The rest of the past few days has been trying to iron out some of the more major issues with this recent upgrade. I think most of the big problems have been solved....but I still have many smaller issues to take care of. So now onto the Q+A..... Q: Will the Arcade/Battle/Casino return? A: I am 90% sure they will, We just need to wait for the coders to get us a new version for this software Q: Will my scores be retained? A: They should, cant promise though. Q: Where is the subscription manager so I can become a Premium Member? A: That was a built in feature of 2.3.5 but now in 3.0 it is an addon.....and is still in beta testing Q: Where did the Wiki go? A: Invision 3.0 does not like how our wiki is set up, so I moved our wiki to http://www.retromags.net/wiki Q: Where is the Dark Skin? A: That was only compatible on 2.3.5, I am looking for a suitable dark skin for 3.0. Its at the top of my list. Q: Can you put the "most recent discussions" back on the Portal? A: At this moment I can only do the most recent topics on the Portal, I can only get the most recent discussions to work on the forum index. Will try to fix soon. Q: You say you installed this third party software for nice urls, but they seem nice now without it? A: The new 3.0 software has Friendly URLS built in, the old 2.3.5 software I was running needed an addon. Please feel free to ask me any other questions you may have, and I will do my best to answer

Game Informer 72 and Game Informer 73 indexed. *huggles* Areala

I personally don't care or use the arcade and all that, though I know almost everyone else does and it's a nice addition to the forums. I'm just glad RM is back up! Thanks for going through all the trouble lately!

You need Free Rip. It's just that simple. http://www.freerip.com This thing is simple, fast, free, under 2mb in size, and will rip to WAV, MP3, OGG, WMA or FLAC format in any quality or bitrate you desire. In addition, it will convert any of those formats to another (WAV to FLAC for instance), offers you a choice of two different databases to query for track information, allows you to upload your own info to fix/correct database entries, and will let you edit MP3 track information with a couple of mouse clicks. About the only thing it won't do for you is burn the CDs. Know it, use it, love it and never look back. *huggles* Areala

I think it's just that weird Java more than IE. I have used this new system in IE 7 and IE 8, and it is plenty fast.

It's all in how creative the story you tell them they now are to think is real, is. You could really mess his mind up.

Got an email address where we can send hate mail? They closed down flag@whitehouse.gov. Also...if there is no email address for the guys giving you a hard time do you have a physcial address? I know some guys in dark suits...

Wow, I didn't know there was so much drama behind the changes. Thanks for all your hard work, as always.

Game Informer #77 indexed. Our wiki has a new server! *cheer* *huggles* Areala

So we only rate what we really like and what we hate? I can do that. note: The reply thing at the bottom of the thread takes forever to let me write. Is it just me?

OK, game break everybody. Drag out your NES and see who can beat World -1 the fastest. First one to complete it and provide pics wins bragging rights. *huggles* Areala

Nah, Hidinger is cool. I don't mind being the lightening rod of fun around here.

Sarcasm doesn't translate over the web

There's a big difference between having a different opinion from others and having someone who, nearly every time he posts, you notice his name at the end of a thread and before you even enter it you know it'll be a snarky remark, derailment of a topic or discussion he doesn't like, argumentative BS, or just plain old trolling or having the exact opposite opinion of every single person in the thread even though they were not even agreeing among each other. I'm sure you'll be the first one in line. Now that the cat is out of the bag thanks to blabbermouth here, yes, we were planning this for the 10 year anniversary of the Dreamcast. So let me hear all the people who would be opposed to us scanning and adding Dreamcast only magazines to the line-up? Who knows, if we get enough people on here who vote against putting DC mags online, E-Day may get his wish and we might put it off for another 10 years or so.

They go toward your Reputation on the forums, the total number will show up on your profile I gave you a +1 on the post above so you can see it on your Profile

Not really the point of the system, You are not meant to rate every single reply/topic. Its just a way to give feedback to users who tip the scale one way or the other. It will help members on the forum get feedback on how others perceive them. If you see that one week you have a reputation of 50 points......and the following week you have dropped to 40 points.....you know you need to reevaluate what you posted in the past week. Only give feedback if the scale is tipped one way or the other. Plus This system works similar to Youtube, You can now choose to ignore posts that fall under a certain threshold. You can tell the system that if any reply has -10 votes on it....to not even show it to you

Awesome! I'm at -7. Thanks meppi!

Just over 1000 more posts and you'll have more than Philly. I reckon it won't take you more than the end of the year to do it at the rate you go!

Stop being a grouch. I was JOKING. Hence the laughing face. I know they weren't all you since you can only vote once. So when I post seriously, I'm being "negative", but when I am joking around, that's not good enough for you guys either? Remind me again as to why I am spending my free time to scan and edit 20 magazines for this site? Seems like nothing will make you guys happy. Would you rather I replied to what people posted using private messages? Again, JOKING. I thought you guys understood the use of smilies and such.

E-Day, calm down. I wasn't taking your comment badly or anything. I was just saying that because of the reference to Gamefaqs (where my posts usually receive no replies-but stuff I post to for some reason receives a boost of almost 100 visits within an hour of posting there). I don't take everything you say without a smiley, or in some cases with, in a bad way. For the most part, I try to ignore the stuff that is ennuendo, as most of your stuff is, until it is brought up again and again, or reworded to be offensive so just calm down. I try to be extremely lenient with stuff, until pushed, so your cool, just go have some fun and stop thinking everyone is out to get you man (is it a lack of naked prince pics that is the problem?).