318ti Is closing down??
 

Hello everyone, not sure if I am posting this in the right section but I read this notice on the forum today that we are closing down 318ti?

Is there someone I can talk to about this? I believe the 318ti is a great resource for the BMW community and should not be just thrown into the bin?
This is an open letter to the admin, dont throw it away, it helps a lot of us. if you are grown tired of it, then maybe there is something some of us can do.

I have sent an email to the webmaster. Please let me know.

I just saw it the other day as well, it would be a huge loss to the community to lose all the information stored here.

But, like Steven mentioned, Ad revenue is down and he still has to pay $180 per month. I've always admired that Steven wouldn't let sponsors come in and pay for the privilege of getting posts deleted or edited if people don't like their products. A few years ago that was happening a lot on other BMW forums.

It would be nice to find a way to reduce the costs of keeping the site up and all the history intact.

I tried sending Steven a message but it wouldnt let me, I saw last he was active in the BMW CCA community. Now I sent this email as well not sure if it went through but its something I would like to leave as a open letter to the current administration.

Basically I am willing to take over totally if it comes to that and pay out of my own pocket and have the whole forum software upgraded, which would be a few thousand dollars budget and all. Find a new home in new servers and all the fancy stuff, I have the resources, I wouldn't want this community gone.

Here is the open letter, if its worth anything or if its in the wrong section or I am out of line then my apologies. But I think with some old loyal members or moderators, my background and reach, we can make a difference.

Oh wow, I know this site is super slow, but there is a ton of good information stored here and the site is the only type of contact I have with the 318ti community. Honestly part of my reason for keeping my 318ti in the first place is because I have a community to share my progress with, even if it is just a few posts a year.

I cannot do much, but if a one time monetary donation could help I would definitely do it.

Keep this site running!

I saw the notice a couple days ago and felt poorly. This site was actually one of the reasons I became interested in the Ti's. I was searching the interweb for a reasonably priced car to restore/rebuild and this community spoke to me. We good people!

It's been a nice run. Everything anybody needs to know is on this site via search. I still visit regularly to search and/or lie to the noobs. I'd be sorry to see it go. It's about the extent of my social media profile.

Maybe 1996 328ti is right. The knowledgeable old timers' are gone and feeds have slowed significantly. We no longer make the calendar, which seemed a staple. There are a lot of good cars out there. I feel like the E36 in general is in a sunset, so makes sense that the .org here is the first to succumb.

Don't know what it means when a site closes, but I hope all the info isn't lost. Long live the RWD hatchback!


PS. I'd expect a resurgence when the 1 series hatch is importable.
PPS. Send me more .org stickers!

Well its a great deal of resources but ultimately things are slow here I guess. I still feel like it ought to be a resource left to public, helps out a lot of folks just reading old topics and what not to do with repairs on these cars/motors, and I myself have a love hate relationship now with the 4 cylinder bmw' being just so frail but fun when they go (same for the 8 cylinder which is basically two of these motors together). I love the 318ti still and would likely grab a Z3 in the future. That said would be sad to see I wont have a resource for it. Guess I will have to find another forum.

That said if some of us are interested, I would still take up the forum and give it a new home. And if not me then consider someone else, I mean if you are going to close it down and all, might as well pass it on and such? But upto the old staff and owners really. Guess we had a fun run, I was just late to the party, but what a party it was ;)

See you fellas around the forum while its still here, the domain is set to expire in a couple of months from the whois records so I dont know how long we all got here but I am on other forums too. Say hello and I will say hello back. :wink::smile:

This might be a really temporary solution, but Discord (originally used for gaming communities) is being used to create all kinds of forums. The drawback is not being able to create new threads, but it would at least help us Ti people hang together. You can literally created a new Discord server in five minutes for free.

There is the "Hatchback Haven" subforum of the bimmerforums E36 section, it's only one subforum but it has been there for years with not much posting since ti.org existed. It would be possible to move a lot of the DIY threads over there if we wanted to.

I, personally, avoid facebook groups. I think it's a poor format for actually sharing and storing information.

I would had it migrated properly by an professional to Xenforo, so that the gallery and everything stay as is, then setup a separate server for it on the HMW side of things. That would keep the current and future generations happy with content. but the sites owner hasn't replied to my email nor come here, I think he wont be handing it over and likely just let it die. Which is a shame. Oh well, if I can be of any help, message me, I am a regular on the bimmerforums and the fest.

Don't be too quick to make assumptions about whether the site owner will get back to you or not. People get busy 'n stuff. :-D

I agree that Facebook is NOT a viable option.

I don't think a Discord server would be a good "replacement" for this site, but it might be good to have "in addition to" the site as a way for 318ti fans to chat in real time.

I will also be down to help take care of some of the costs to maintain this website. I've used it in silence for three years daily my ti and I'm bought to start an m52 swap and there way too much info on here to give up. I don't have much but am willing to help. I was also going to message him and ask to take over but I see you already did.

I'm here. I'm busy with work right now. Maybe what I need to do is simply prune down the database of those who have never posted or visited in the past several years. Get rid of the garage which is currently disabled anyway. Photos take up a lot of space.

I can probably find cheaper hosting if I didn't need so much disk space.
Bots and spammers suck up the bandwidth though. Spambots attempt to register every few seconds.

Well there are a few problems,

One is we need to get 318ti org off vbulletin 3.8, PHP 7.2 wont work with it, but 7.0 might. If you get a different software, like Xenforo it will go a long way.

Second is the site is already hijacked according to the securi test. ( [url]https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/[/

How much space / bandwidth are you needing every month? $180 a month is just too much going on for the little activity we do get here. there are much better options these days, even VPN would go far.

Now I would say dont prune down the users or close down anything just yet. Best to hire someone to transfer the whole thing to a different host and software. The sites security need to be upgraded, probably also a CDN/ hosted over the cloud. Will likely be a $1K - $2K budget job for that alone. I say just try to retain as much as you can, most of can be made to work if you find the right persons.

So there it is, and if you need some ideas or resources, dont be shy to ask me, and if you absolutely want to give up, consider just passing it on to someone, if not me then someone else, but don't close it and delete everything I'd say. :)

NO WAY I'd move it to vBulletin. I already migrated to Xenforo when Xenforo was in beta as a test.

I've been hacked once but there was no real malicious damage done. It was a php injection into one of the templates. The result was the site displayed ads and revenue was directly to someone else.

Many, many years ago I was hacked when it was UBB.

Not totally convinced that there is still malicious code on the site.
vBulletin is very out of date which is a problem.

cpanel to cpanel transfer is easy. And if I keep my username the same, it is almost seamless.

The reason I've stuck with the current hosting is that their support is excellent.
I've had websites since the mid-90s and have had my share of hosts.
They are all good until something goes wrong.

The other concern is the legacy of the site. What happens when I'm gone?

Yeppers, I say not to go with vbulletin, I have had first hand admin experience with it some 10 years ago, vbulletin 4 was just unfinished, bloated and poor vs vb 3.8 in my experience at that time, and having read a lot, it seems that has not changed with Vb5.

Xenforo has come a long way, not sure if IPB is still a thing, But with any forum, just need to put up some security up, a firewall and then serve the site through a CDN like cloudflare. But if not Xenforo then pick another forum software, just not vBulletin.

Yep cpanel to cpanel is no big deal, even any host will do that, but its getting the forum transfered to new software and keeping things intact and all, thats the hard part. Although there is not much you want to change in the forum, else you may lose some existing members, on the upside you may gain new ones. There needs to be a balance in the design too. Hiring someone would be the best, and how I would do it.

I checked happytogather a while ago, I think it was a linkage of sites you ran? You could try Hawk Host, I have exprience with them in the past and they offer the best service I have received. Webhosting talk forums will have some more info. But agreed, they are all good till something goes wrong.

Now, as for the Legacy, well thats a day bound to come, hopefully not anytime soon, but it will. Goes for you, me and everyone reading this. You could setup something so that in such a event the details of the cpanel/ftp/forum are given or transferred to some trusted folks. You must have some old moderator folks if they are up for taking the responsibility.

I might had spoken too soon myself, as I will be moving back towards Germany later this year so things get busy but with my resourced I would had taken over if you wanted to. Thing is though I believe you still have a lot left in you still ;) I know that you dont want to turn this place into a cheap advertising wall, which some folks do when they take over. So lets do that, and move hosts to something that works. And one day when you do get tired or feel like you could use a hand or what not, You can count on me or some of us to. If you ever feel like dropping me a line or a call, you can find my details here :smile:

I did a quick check.
I currently use 55g of diskspace. Not sure if that includes the database)
100-150g bandwidth/monthly

Managed dedicated server running 8 processors.

a modern semi dedicated would go for starters, with the low volume traffic we see now a days, dont think we need 8 cpu's either. depends on the age of the hardware too.

I'm figuring a VPS would work. I can't tell how much RAM I have.

Try this for some historic data, you have cpanel there right?
https://forums.cpanel.net/resources/...x-servers.379/

I would say lets start with something like a semi dedicated as here https://www.hawkhost.com/semi-dedicated-hosting or we can even try professional shared (yuk I know) to see how much we actually use realistically, we dont see a thousand members all active on the board at the same time. I am happy to chip in half if you want to cover the other half.

I don't like hosts that claim unlimited. I'm fearful that they oversell. I do think I need to migrate to a new forum though. It's only a matter of time until this version of vBulletin gets hacked.

Well, I have used those guys before and can vouch, their service is top notch. But that said there are others too, might be worth while to start looking and settle on one, then move the site, and finally start picking the forum software to use, the longer you stay here on this host the more the costs rack up.

Here is also a great one,
https://www.hetzner.com/managed-server

I've had offers. I forgot what I was offered at the time. One figure wasn't bad for a small niche forum. But it wasn't anything to write home about either.

And what did they want to do with it? Well, I would say to keep the spirit of the forum this has grown to be, it has to be left the way its found, slightly improved but for the most part, relaxed and left to the public to discuss these cars. Not turned into a cheap advertising / marketing tool for some joint corp. I guess profit is not the reason you created this either so selling for some little money and all may not be as rewarding as passing it down as a legacy to the right person(s) when the time is right.

I created this site because when the ti was new people would create their own personal ti website. Sell the car and delete. Valuable information was gone. It was never about the money.

Was hoping to install Xenforo here. Too much is out of date.

Requirements not met
The following XenForo requirements were not met. Please contact your host for help.

PHP 5.6.0 or newer is required. 5.4.45 does not meet this requirement. Please ask your host to upgrade PHP.
The required PHP extension Iconv could not be found. Please ask your host to install this extension.
XenForo also requires MySQL 5.5 or newer. Please manually check that you meet this requirement.

I know where you are coming from Steven. Thats why I said dont just go and delete it, this site maybe 15 years old but that doesn't mean anything, the Ti is becoming more and more of a niche. Look 5 years ago I would never consider a Ti or a 4 cylinder. I am glad I bought it, and although mine went kaput in a speed bump, I plan to buy a 318ti again when I am in Germany! See, now would I without this forum? Would I care about making supercharger kits for the 318ti? without this community? I know my work will have users here, people will see it, they will like it.

We are using the latest PHP 7.2. Now dont try to install Xenforo yourself and do the whole conversion, I say we hire someone to do it. Cut it in half. we can have the forum members pay us some as well. Although you could likely change the ph version yourself from cpanel too, I would suggest not to, it could break things.

PS: Whats your number, if you drop me a message with it I will give you a ring later and we can talk over the phone if you like. I tried calling the BMW CCA but they put me on a machine.

I love this site. I go to it weekly. I have been a supporter. I am willing to help. TI's FTW!

I need to wait until Sept for some free time. I've migrated to a few times. I was a very early adopter of Xenforo.

Does anyone know the admins contact? I'm fairly new here, but I have a server and I'm willing to cover the costs of moving it over and taking over. I would also delegate a couple people to be moderators etc. If the admin reads this, can you please pm me? I'd like to keep this running.

In all the years there hasn't been a need for moderators. :)
I'm going move the forum over to another forum package and look for another host. The articles section may not be easy to port over.

Maybe you can "print" the articles into PDF files, and present them that way, when you move to the new servers.

--- Jay

Great to see some activity here. Hopefully the migration can happen smoothly and seamlessly.

I hate to suggest it, as it could push away a lot of members, but a "pay to play" plan for full access to deeper stuff might not be a horrible idea.

But, if operational costs can be dropped in half, perhaps user donations can keep us afloat.

Re moderators, we got a few of those left. I was on a tear in the "wheels and tires" thread or whatever it was, deleting posts that were roaming off the reservation. If I, and other mods, take on a monster thread a week for the next month, we can trim a lot of fat (potentially), although photos are what eat up the space clearly...

I'm open to helping as I can but my time is quite limited as well.

PS: messages to members who have bloated mailboxes but haven't visited in quite a while (say six months) might allow them to come in and clean up; also be made aware of the situation and possibly be able to help somehow.

When the car breaks down, we fix it, not scrap it!:smile:

EDIT: I am on another forum where you cannot sell unless you are a site supporter. I think this is fair, and I happen to see a new member with two posts, and both of them are for sale posts... This is a great platform for selling a ti; however it should not be the ONLY reason you are here...

Steve and others, we have been here too long to let it go. Let's work on a plan to keep it going and do whatever it takes! Steven said he would have more time to figure it out in September, Let's do this guys!!!

I like that idea. I'm not sure if the current forum software could facilitate that limitation, but the general concept is worth pursuing.

I made a pest of myself on a few for sale threads...

Let’s hope the honor system works.

I'm new to the forum, but I can already tell that a lot of great information would be lost if this forum were to disappear. Is there anyway that you could partner with another forum and just let the current 318ti become a sub section of another forum? (Like within the dead 318ti subforum on bimmerforums)

One day this car will be a classic and people would be glad to have all the information collected here.

It already is a classic!

(Photo of my car, taken this morning)

Become a site supporter! It doesn’t cost much and you’ll feel good doing something to help.

Well technically I think it has to be 25 years old to be a classic by some definitions.

As for the forum, how serious is the owner about keeping it going? The operating cost sounds pretty high and I don't think there are enough active users to support it in its current state.

Your car looks great, certainly an inspiration for me. I also have a red m sport and I'm working on painting my style 24s so that they can go on. What's the deal with the black b pillar trim on the door? Is that a factory part, my car is just red there but I think the black looks better.

25 is antique status around here. “Classic vehicle” is 20 or older.

The black is factory. It’s a sticker than can peel off and some leave it off; others paint the B pillar instead. Mine is still the original sticker.

Some options are kicking around to save the site. A lot of clean up is required first, and the members need to contribute once in a while too. Some have offered to host the whole thing but there are issues with the age of the software etc.

It’s not a simple fix.

So whats happening around here these days? Ever since the news of closure its made me not want to come by anymore and I feel unless we are absolutely sure we are really closing down then that banner at the top of the forum is already hurting the visitors encouragement to join or post.

Go well gentlemen, many have come forward and if we can be of any assistance, let me know.