[JMI]

Greetings back:

I do indeed know a great deal about what is happening with the RCE Messageboard and have posted several times here about this issue, although some of those posts seem not to be here anymore.

Last month there was a crash of the server when attempts were made to establish "virtual hosts" for Yates and to convert crackz' site to an active one, rather than an archive. There was then a dispute with the hosting company about restarting the virtual server and Woodmann decided to move.

I offerred a substantially less expensive host who was offerring a complete server, rather than a virtual server. It turns out the woodmann site had never been set up to be a "website" because it had no "frontend," only vBulletin and archives. This was important because of the way the server was being set up and I probably miscommunicated information about that with the host, which caused some delay in efforts to get running on the new host's site.

With that situation straighten out we commenced our attempts to get vBulletin running in a secure environment under windows and IIS, rather than Apache on linux, which was how the old server was configured. It's actually a rather trivial exercise to get vBulletin running on Windows without IIS, but there have been substantial problems attempting to get php, mySQL and vBulletin to talk to eachother under windows/IIS. The issue for our potential new host was security and preventing hacking attempts on the Woodmann site from threatening his other servers, which have commercial operations running on them. We continue to work on those issues. Running vBulletin on Windows with IIS is not the usual configuration nor very well understood. Everyone who has discussed it on the net offers something different, and conflicting advise as a solution to the issues that arise between the components under that system. We continue to attempt to work through those issues and will do so because it is an interesting problem.

As these efforts were ongoing, Woodmann, as did we, became frustrated at the rate of progress getting the server operational. Woodmann then made a decision to open a different server and with a completely different bulletinboard system. That board is currently operational, with some continuing issues, at wxw.Woodmann.com.cjb.net. Several of the archives are also linked through that site. That board system, to the best of my knowledge, is not compatible with the vBulletin system and the "old" messageboard's files can not be imported into it and it's files can not be imported backwards into the vBulletin system.

Protools was previously hosted on woodmann.com and was also linked at the woodmann.cjb.net site, but was not current and they appear to also have a new server. You can find them at:
hxxp://pham.bulhosting.com/protools/.

Woodmann did not have a copy of the files from the prior host. I have offered him whatever assistance I can give, including all the files I have from the former host, to help him set up vBulletin where ever he may want. As I reported here previously, I have a copy of the backup of the vBulletin Woodmann site from four hours before the crash and a running copy of the Messageboard on my local machine, as well as all the former archives. If he sets up vBulletin somewhere else, with or without my assistance, he can install that backup and have the RCE Board "restored" to where it was four hours prior to the crash, with all the registration and user accounts restored as they were.

Communication with Woodmann has often been complicated by inconsistent operation of his email accounts. Hopefully all these issues will be straightened out soon and the Board, with all its valuable information, will be restored somewhere of his choosing and under his control and available to everyone who is interested.

Regards,