Not a good sign

[Mike Phillips]

Not a good sign

Clicked over to the geek forum this morning and saw this,

www.autogeekonline.net

Besides being incredibly slow, we have to wonder if the geek's forum days are numbered?


Mike

 

[Mike Phillips]

I saw the geek forum was down yesterday morning and it's still down this morning.

I think the geek is down to a skeleton crew consisting of any of the original employees that were there when I left in 2021.

It would be sad to see this forum lost forever. Best wishes to whoever is now in charge.


Mike

 

[opie]

I saw the geek forum was down yesterday morning and it's still down this morning.

I think the geek is down to a skeleton crew consisting of any of the original employees that were there when I left in 2021.

It would be sad to see this forum lost forever. Best wishes to whoever is now in charge.


Mike

Yes very sad. I first found that place around 4 years ago while searching how to properly use my megs mt300 and da correction system. It was where i found your name and the insane amount of information on everything detailing/paint correction. I went down that rabbit hole and learned so much from you and many other great contributors on that forum. My skill set and tool arsenal is now leaps and bounds from where i was 4 years ago.

I am beyond grateful to you and many others. I still try to contribute so that the cycle may continue for years to come. Hope it can be revived.

 

[Mak]

I tried repeatedly to join that forum back before I found yours. I never received a response or membership approval.

 

[opie]

im not a memeber of autopia forum but their website says this...i wonder if this has anything to do with geek forum being down?

 

[Mike Phillips]

I tried repeatedly to join that forum back before I found yours. I never received a response or membership approval.

I don't think there's been anyone truly minding the forum since I left. Once in a while one of the Mods will ban a spammer or update why something's wrong but that's about it.

There are forum people and all the rest of the masses. When I was at the geek, I was the only person that I would consider a forum person. For the most part, the majority of employees at the geek that posted to the forum only did so because they had to.

The exception would be Andre and Bobby, who would post from time to time. Nick Rutter actually wrote pretty good articles. Other than that? Not much.

Things have really changed since Yancy and I both left.


Mike

 

[Mike Phillips]

im not a memeber of autopia forum but their website says this...i wonder if this has anything to do with geek forum being down?

My guess is both forums are on the same server. I could be wrong, who knows?


Mike

 

[Big Dave]

I wonder if it's a hardware issue or, worst case scenario, a ransomware attack. They don't seem to have been practising good cyber hygiene, lots of spam posts, from accounts that were old, but hadn't been active for a while.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but here in Australia companies must report cyber attacks to the government, and it is illegal to pay the ransom in a ransomware attack.

 

[opie]

I wonder if it's a hardware issue or, worst case scenario, a ransomware attack. They don't seem to have been practising good cyber hygiene, lots of spam posts, from accounts that were old, but hadn't been active for a while.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but here in Australia companies must report cyber attacks to the government, and it is illegal to pay the ransom in a ransomware attack.

I dont know man.

Not that i was on there everyday, it sure feels wierd to have all of the vast amounts of information/conversations just poof...gone

 

[Silly Rabbit]

Like many others, when I started to go deeper into the detailing world I searched out both Autogeek and Autopia (and Meguiar's forum) for info. Lurked for awhile, then joined. And like alot of folks, I was educated so so much and had the detail world opened up to me just how big it actually is. And the amount of amazing stuff posted to be able to learn?.... it's like a detail goldmine. Sites like those 3 I mentioned and now Mike's site here, they account for about 95% of valuable knowledge of this detail world that is online. For sure. To have the database of info disappear would be a loss that would never be able to be replaced. The amount of posts of people that have come and gone of topics that were made through trial and error, impossible to do that over again.

 

[JD Golden]

I think that’s probably the end of it. Could see it coming with how hands off AG was with the forum. Tons of good info, and hopefully people think to come here. Lots of people I’d like to hear from periodically.

 

[Bunky]

I had communicated with AG a few months ago and they said they were considering upgrading the forum when I was discussing access issues with them. On an optimistic note, this would likely be the first steps if they took the forum offline.

In its current form (before the current issue) it was often unusable at times. It could take a lot of time to fix the issues.

Of course, if that was the path then they could have proacticely noted the site would be down. But, they do not need two forums (autopia and AGO) nor two storefronts. If I thought a site would disappear it would autopia since it has a very low post and yet they continue to pay hosting fees and likely software license fees.

Has anyone called Customer Service to ask?

 

[Mike Phillips]

I had communicated with AG a few months ago and they said they were considering upgrading the forum when I was discussing access issues with them. On an optimistic note, this would likely be the first steps if they took the forum offline.

Correct. See post #3 in this thread,

TapaTalk and Xenforo Forum Software

I actually recommended Xenforo, what this forum runs on, to Juan, the Admin for the AG forum for a host of reasons. I know the yada yada yada on the geek forum about Xenforo was that it's not compatible with TapaTalk. But the thing is, there's options with Xenforo to upload pictures directly from your phone, it just takes a little poking around to figure it out. So for the most part, it's a non-issue.

In its current form (before the current issue) it was often unusable at times. It could take a lot of time to fix the issues.

I revisited all the "Detailing Class Threads" on MeguiarsOnline.com and while the threads are there, all the pictures are gone, making the threads useless. This is because, the company that maks photo gallery software usually goes out of business so there's no way to update it. Then, it becomes vulnerable to hacking from malicious entities. So when a company running old, outdated vBulletin software migrates to any other platform, you lose the gallery and thus you lose the pictures.

It's possible with Xenforo maybe someone has built hack for this? It would be great to see the AG Forum upgrade and retain pictures, but my hunches are it won't work.

Of course, if that was the path then they could have proactively noted the site would be down. But, they do not need two forums (autopia and AGO) nor two storefronts. If I thought a site would disappear it would autopia since it has a very low post and yet they continue to pay hosting fees and likely software license fees.

Has anyone called Customer Service to ask?

Not me. This is the contact info they list on the bottom of the store page.

Call Toll Free: 772-286-2701
Email us: info@autogeek.net


Mike

 

[Setec Astronomy]

Just to add a little background...before the "database error" at AGO, there was a message under the normal AGO header/banner to the effect of "the board is down for backup and software updates", so I would assume that's what is going on...of course I believe that was last Wednesday, so things may not be going as planned.

Also, Autopia is working fine although they seem to have recently shut down the Autopia-CarCare store (as detailed in the screen shot above).

Finally, as Mike has noted on the forum here previously, it seems that Vision has finished moving the "Autogeek" warehouse to Indiana, co-located with Sonax USA in a new 50,000 sq ft facility that includes wet and dry detailing bays and a "testing and training" facility. This is detailed in a hard-to-find video at the AG site which was put up about a month ago.

PS I'd like to thank Mike for allowing me to join his forum, but mostly I'd like to thank him for creating this forum and maintaining it as his own, so that there will be continuity here, allaying some of the concerns noted above about loss of historical information at some of the other forums. Also this software seems to work great!

 

[Setec Astronomy]

I actually recommended Xenforo, what this forum runs on, to Juan, the Admin for the AG forum for a host of reasons.

Wait a minute--that's Jason???

 

[Mike Phillips]

PS I'd like to thank Mike for allowing me to join his forum, but mostly I'd like to thank him for creating this forum and maintaining it as his own, so that there will be continuity here, allaying some of the concerns noted above about loss of historical information at some of the other forums.

Also, this software seems to work great!

Glad to see you posting Mike. I know FB and IG and whatever else comes along are great platforms for what they do, but when I want to showcase what one of my classes looks like, there's no better platform than a quality forum. It displays the text in a way you can format it. It also displays information in a linear format that works well for picture-heavy content, like some of my write-ups include.

I did a lot of research on forum software as I still own my original vBulletin license for showcargarage that dates back to the year 2002 (I think). So, I'm very familiar with vBulletin and all the similar forum software options - but after much research, it was easy to see that Xenforo was the way to go.

So I brought up my own forum just so I have a place to put my stuff. Others are welcome to post too, but I never planned to try and overtake legacy forums like DetailingWorld.co.uk

And when I first joined the Autogeek team in 2009, the geek forum was nowhere near as busy as it was when I left. I poke in over there to see what folks be saying, it's always good.


Mike

 

[Big Dave]

I don't know if this is good or bad, but when I just checked in on the AG forum, it no longer comes up with "database error", it asked me to login, which worked, but then came up with "network error".

The first detailing forum I went on was Detail Paradise, which I found through the Australian LS1 forum, which was mainly a Holden forum. I was in it for a few years, but then they updated it and made it a lot less user friendly. People started disappearing pretty quickly, a few mentioned the Geek forum before they left, so I ended up there. When AG started having issues a while back this forum was mentioned, so here I am, and I see some of the regulars from AG are here, fingers crossed more to come yet.

I checked on Detail Paradise a few days ago, it only exists as a FB group now, from what I could find. And I don't do Facebook, but I am on Instagram.

 

[Mike Phillips]

fingers crossed more to come yet.

Sad thing is, I have TONS of fresh new content to share, just no type to create it with all my other life and job duties.

TONS of content.

Maybe some day...

 

[Mike Phillips]

Wait a minute--that's Jason???

Yes, same guy. Actually super smart. If anyone can get the forum switched over to Xenforo he can do it. I also offered to send him my Xenforo Mechanic's contact info but never got a reply from him, that was probably over a year ago. I have a GREAT forum mechanic.

Mike

 

[Setec Astronomy]

Yes, same guy. Actually super smart. If anyone can get the forum switched over to Xenforo he can do it.

He was always really good with the forums so I presumed he wasn't there anymore (since there were forum problems) after PBMG pulled out of Florida.