Official Site/Forum Issues Thread

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indy900

[mXc]indy
Apr 8, 2006
63
0
0
www.mxcclan.com
went to check out the archives today on chrome 10.0.648.204. the banner ad smushed the main div into an inch wide column (19" full screen 1280x1024, 4:3). It does this on several other links as well.
 

Neon_Knight

Member
Mar 2, 2009
69
0
6
Argentina
I cannot access chaotic.beyondunreal.com:

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Diehard

New Member
I lost contact to almost half the forums.

If i enter the forums through the mainpage what i get is:

BeyondUnreal and the subsections:
- Site Discussion / Suggestions
- News & Articles
- Games
- Off Topic

Unreal Development and the subsections:
- Content Releases
- Mapping
- Modeling & Skinning
- Coding
- Recruitment
- UnrealEngine2 Runtime


But instead of the normal look it looks like this with large gaps in between the subsections:

Unreal Development and the subsections:
- Content Releases




- Mapping




- Modeling & Skinning




- Coding




- Recruitment




- UnrealEngine2 Runtime


Below that i get Community part with all the subsections like:

BeyondUnreal hosts forums for various Unreal engine based community sites.
Editing
Community Bonus Pack 3
HOLP 3
Unreal Wiki
Mods
BDB
CogWorks
Home of the former BuF Bonus Pack team and all around desperados
Defence Alliance

Etc. Etc.


All other forums seem to have disapeared and can only be accessed if you got the links. In my case from the notification mails. But if you lack those, the forums are pretty much all gone.......
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Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
83
48
Which forums are you looking for? All the game forums are sub forums to the Games forum.
 

Diehard

New Member
Previously i had the games already opened up, so it directly showed like this:

- Unreal
- Unreal 2
- Unreal Tournament 2003/2004
- Unreal Tournament
- Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict
- Unreal Tournament 3


Or effectivelly if you went to the forums it showed something like this(keep in mind i am doing this by heart):

BeyondUnreal and the subsections:
- Site Discussion / Suggestions
- News & Articles
- Games
- Off Topic

Games and its subsection:
- Unreal
- Unreal 2
- Unreal Tournament 2003/2004
- Unreal Tournament
- Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict
- Unreal Tournament 3

Unreal Development and the subsections:
- Content Releases
- Mapping
- Modeling & Skinning
- Coding
- Recruitment
- UnrealEngine2 Runtime

Below that i get Community part with all the subsections like:

BeyondUnreal hosts forums for various Unreal engine based community sites.
Editing
Community Bonus Pack 3
HOLP 3
Unreal Wiki
Mods
BDB
CogWorks
Home of the former BuF Bonus Pack team and all around desperados
Defence Alliance

Etc. Etc.


But if you now go to the fourms than its all grouped up, and you have to click ahead. If i now click on Games than it gets to a page with a list of threads instead if the subsections. Except that on top it says Classic Unreal titles and if you click on that than you get to the actual subsections.:

Classic Unreal Titles:
- Unreal
- Unreal 2
- Unreal Tournament 2003/2004
- Unreal Tournament
- Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict
- Unreal Tournament 3

So you needlessly click ahead several times to get where you wanna go. And its pretty hidden because you expect to see the subsection. But instead of those you get Threads, where you cannot see to what forum they belong. And you hardly notice that the head changed to Classic Unreal Titles, which you can click. And if you do so, than you DO get the games subsections. But than i still mis the section for other Unreal Engine games. (and maybe other stuff i simply forgot that were maybe there as well.

And as said, when you enter the forums through the mainpage than the Unreal Development and the subsections look like this:
- Content Releases




- Mapping




- Modeling & Skinning




- Coding




- Recruitment




- UnrealEngine2 Runtime

So those look pretty "misaligned" to me.
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Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
83
48
Yeah, The problem is that those forums see almost ZERO activity week to week. It makes very little sense to even keep them separated out that much but we haven't gone any further yet.

As far as the development forums, that is a nasty side effect of using images as thread prefixes. I'm not aware of a good way to fix that problem.
 

Diehard

New Member
Yeah, The problem is that those forums see almost ZERO activity week to week. It makes very little sense to even keep them separated out that much but we haven't gone any further yet.


I think that is a horrible statement and it makes me sad. A couple a weeks ago i read on a few other forums people deleted Beyond Unreal out of their bookmarks because Fileworks isnt functioning properly, Nalicity is pretty much gone. And this way its a selffulfilling prophecy, if you remove stuff or make it more difficult to be reached, and than saying numbers are declining.


And ill be honest, if you guys really are gonna merge all Unreal forums into one, than i am out. Theres no point in staying here than. And the most annoying thing is, forums in reality use 0 to none filespace on a server and i never understood why forums are shut down while moneywize, filesize wise it doesnt cost anything.


And if i look at the development forums, they dont atract that many more people. So from that point of you can safelly shut down all forums, and when the forums are gone you might as well shut down the entire site..........


I never will understand stuff like that. For years i have run the largests sites for Unreal and UT(which is a game i dont even play) in the world. The sites draw 500 gigabytes per month easelly on the downloads. And there is no adds on the sites nor am i rich, as i live on disability. Still i am able to pay for all my sites let alone the tremendous costs i have on a yearly base to create the textures for both games mentioned.


And while hosting has become incredible cheap, it seems that all Epic related games are always the first to disapear or turned into archives. Heck i bought UT3 directly after release and when you boot up the game it tells to visit www.physics.org or com and some site. Went to both of them to find out they dont excist anymore. They dont even have the decency to keep the sites alive one week after release of the games.


And as said, if some poor shit idiot like me can keep a site alive than i dont understand why larger sites and billion/million dollars worth of companies cant.....


And this site too, NaliCity booted Unreal from their files, and dispite my offers through the years it never returned which helped on the decline for Unreal because so many people were disapointed to never return. And now you are gonna tell me you are gonna merge the forums............
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Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
83
48
I think that is a horrible statement and it makes me sad. A couple a weeks ago i read on a few other forums people deleted Beyond Unreal out of their bookmarks because Fileworks isnt functioning properly, Nalicity is pretty much gone. And this way its a selffulfilling prophecy, if you remove stuff or make it more difficult to be reached, and than saying numbers are declining.
Those are hard choices we have to make to stay afloat. I don't know where you are doing your hosting, but the monthly bill to run BeyondUnreal the way we were before was well over $200. Fileworks was not sustainable, especially if we had been ad-less.
And ill be honest, if you guys really are gonna merge all Unreal forums into one, than i am out. Theres no point in staying here than. And the most annoying thing is, forums in reality use 0 to none filespace on a server and i never understood why forums are shut down while moneywize, filesize wise it doesnt cost anything.
Well, I would love to hear a compelling argument to keep them separate, really. I can't think of a single reason to keep a forum open and separate that, on average, gets 5 posts per month. It just adds to the clutter and people tend to start posting things in the wrong forums because they will get missed if they are in the right forum.
And if i look at the development forums, they dont atract that many more people. So from that point of you can safelly shut down all forums, and when the forums are gone you might as well shut down the entire site..........
You're right, they don't. But I would like them to. There are lots of great people here that can help with lots of different development issues. We get plenty of traffic.
I never will understand stuff like that. For years i have run the largests sites for Unreal and UT(which is a game i dont even play) in the world. The sites draw 500 gigabytes per month easelly on the downloads. And there is no adds on the sites nor am i rich, as i live on disability. Still i am able to pay for all my sites let alone the tremendous costs i have on a yearly base to create the textures for both games mentioned.
Well, again, I don't know where you are hosting things, but I wouldn't be able to afford a single month of running BeyondUnreal by myself, as would none of the BU team.
And while hosting has become incredible cheap, it seems that all Epic related games are always the first to disapear or turned into archives. Heck i bought UT3 directly after release and when you boot up the game it tells to visit www.physics.org or com and some site. Went to both of them to find out they dont excist anymore. They dont even have the decency to keep the sites alive one week after release of the games.
I think that just speaks to the unfortunate abandonment by Epic of all things Unreal. I don't like it, it is just reality.
And this site too, NaliCity booted Unreal from their files, and dispite my offers through the years it never returned which helped on the decline for Unreal because so many people were disapointed to never return. And now you are gonna tell me you are gonna merge the forums............
Me and many other people disagreed with that decision but it was not ours to make. Suffice it to say that, if it weren't for the behind the scenes efforts of many people, even the UT files that were associated with NaliCity would have been ditched years ago.

Look, we don't like this anymore than anyone else. But we have to make changes in order to 1) stay relevant to our userbase, and 2) get more visitors and attention. If we sit on our hands, let our forum index become overly cumbersome and cluttered with empty and inactive forums, then we won't get any better and the people that abandon the site won't be replaced by new people at all. I really don't want to see that happen.
 

SleepyHe4d

fap fap fap
Jan 20, 2008
4,152
0
0
I think that is a horrible statement and it makes me sad. A couple a weeks ago i read on a few other forums people deleted Beyond Unreal out of their bookmarks because Fileworks isnt functioning properly, Nalicity is pretty much gone. And this way its a selffulfilling prophecy, if you remove stuff or make it more difficult to be reached, and than saying numbers are declining.


And ill be honest, if you guys really are gonna merge all Unreal forums into one, than i am out. Theres no point in staying here than. And the most annoying thing is, forums in reality use 0 to none filespace on a server and i never understood why forums are shut down while moneywize, filesize wise it doesnt cost anything.


And if i look at the development forums, they dont atract that many more people. So from that point of you can safelly shut down all forums, and when the forums are gone you might as well shut down the entire site..........


I never will understand stuff like that. For years i have run the largests sites for Unreal and UT(which is a game i dont even play) in the world. The sites draw 500 gigabytes per month easelly on the downloads. And there is no adds on the sites nor am i rich, as i live on disability. Still i am able to pay for all my sites let alone the tremendous costs i have on a yearly base to create the textures for both games mentioned.


And while hosting has become incredible cheap, it seems that all Epic related games are always the first to disapear or turned into archives. Heck i bought UT3 directly after release and when you boot up the game it tells to visit www.physics.org or com and some site. Went to both of them to find out they dont excist anymore. They dont even have the decency to keep the sites alive one week after release of the games.


And as said, if some poor shit idiot like me can keep a site alive than i dont understand why larger sites and billion/million dollars worth of companies cant.....


And this site too, NaliCity booted Unreal from their files, and dispite my offers through the years it never returned which helped on the decline for Unreal because so many people were disapointed to never return. And now you are gonna tell me you are gonna merge the forums............
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First, the thread for this discussion is here: http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?p=2525403

Second, GET A GRIP. This is the only logical thing to do and it WILL increase activity, even activity with the classic Unreal titles. In fact the posting rate is so low that it would be best if there was an "Unreal Tournament" thread in Games just like there's a "Starcraft 2" thread in Games. Hell, Starcraft 2 doesn't get it's own forum section and it's posting rate is like 5 times that of all the Unreal sections. :lol:

Yes, this site is based on Unreal, but they must change with the times and the user base. Most users aren't going to the Unreal sections and BeyondUnreal has evolved into more of a community of friends and gamers instead of an Unreal community. Either way, these choices are a LOT more healthy than having these sections up that get 1 thread every month that ends up only ever getting 5 posts in it.

And as said, if some poor shit idiot like me can keep a site alive

Seeing as you don't get the point: IT'S NOT ABOUT KEEPING DEAD SECTIONS ALIVE, IT'S ABOUT HAVING A POINT OF EXISTENCE.

There's no point in entire sections existing if a few threads can replace them easily.


Oh and the posts in this thread just proves our point. You guys don't even notice the obvious news post discussing this subject. :rolleyes: :lol:
 
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Diehard

New Member
Those are hard choices we have to make to stay afloat. I don't know where you are doing your hosting, but the monthly bill to run BeyondUnreal the way we were before was well over $200. Fileworks was not sustainable, especially if we had been ad-less.


Because i have no idea how long i have to live i made preperations just in case. So i decided last year to extend the payment up to 2015 for my sites. And for a 5 year contract i payed 419 Dollars which is is 6.99 per month. But i could have had it for 4.99 per month if it wasnt for the fact i wanted to have the official Cpanel which costed an extra of 2 Dollars a month.

To be even more on the safe side i decided to split my site up into two sites being UnrealTexture and UTTexture, just to make sure it will survive after me being gone even without maintenance. But for that price you have a shared server with at least 500 gig of bandwidth a month, which i had before the split, and i never got complains about. Endless email accounts, 100 databases, endless inodes (my site had over 166000 inodes before the split)


The site(s) is running now for several years without any downtime or problems(except they hacked one of the sites end of last year, where they redirected the site to the worldfamous Canadian Pharmacy....) My host is www.lunarpages.com (Basic webhosting). And i went there because i already found out upfront they allowed server redirects and lots more than some other hosts. Aside that they already did host quite a few large gaming/clan sites.




Well, I would love to hear a compelling argument to keep them separate, really. I can't think of a single reason to keep a forum open and separate that, on average, gets 5 posts per month. It just adds to the clutter and people tend to start posting things in the wrong forums because they will get missed if they are in the right forum.


I dont mind if it stays under games, and still have all subsections under the button Classic Unreal Titles. But merging the forums to solve clutter will only add to clutter. Basically you do what you want to prevent, in order to prevent clutter you merge them so it WILL become cluttered. This already is sometimes confusing on a site like UNrealSP.org, where Unreal and UT are merged. There its often unclear to me if they talk about Unreal or UT. So merging all versions Unreal into oné makes it impossible to follow anyhting. And certainly not for new users.


But other reason can be:

- You at least narrow the searches if you need something.
- For historical purposes the forums should stay intact.
- Most people do find the right forum, so its a bit pointless to merge the forums for the few that dont.
- I dont see how it will atract new people if everything is merged, as new people by definition will get confused.
- You basically do exactly that you want to prevent.
- Why would people go read a thread to find out its the game they dont even play. If that happens time after time people simply will turn their back to a forum.


If you eat ice, the one likes strawberry, the other banana, and the other vanilla. To prevent people from ordering the wrong flavor you mix them all together. So my question is, why do you think icecreams are still sold seperatelly? Well for the same reason they dont throw an entire cow in the blender and sell the meat as already mixed for use regardles what type of meat you wanted on your plate.........


I would say leave the subsections intact, and if needed have the main Classic thrown to a lower level, but for peat sake dont merge the forums.




Me and many other people disagreed with that decision but it was not ours to make. Suffice it to say that, if it weren't for the behind the scenes efforts of many people, even the UT files that were associated with NaliCity would have been ditched years ago.


I am certainly aware of that, but i have pointed that out in the past, the prices for hosting simply are too cheap, and when i first adressed it, i already kinda made that point. Because i dont believe that helds ground at current hostingplans. I think what happens here is that this site stuck with the old host for prices that were maybe valid untill 10 years ago.


And certainly for files this aplies, and even more for files for the games Unreal(for which i even offered redirect to my site) and UT. Unreal is about 12 gig of data, UT about 30 gig of data(by both i excluded the S3TC textures) All those years this site could have easelly hosted those files for a few bucks somewhere else, as i proposed years ago.


And dont get me wrong, i am absolutelly not aiming at the people that work on this site before and behind the screens!!! I am merelly pointing out there might be other solutions outside the current host.


And at this moment i have no clue how much bandwidth is eaten by UT2003/4 and UT3. But if you would rent a site for each game than the costs would still be 20 dollars a month(if you use LunarpageCpanel). And at the same time you would have 400 databases and 4 times endless email accounts, and 4 times 500 gig bandwidth.


No clue what you guys pay now, but you might wanna have a look into that. And there are other hosts that are reliable like HostGator, GoDaddy that have similar packages.




I think that just speaks to the unfortunate abandonment by Epic of all things Unreal. I don't like it, it is just reality.


And for me goes, i dont stick at old stuff easelly. But i do find history important as well. And i am a strong believer that the internet should also be preserved into history and that sites, where possible should throw in their dime. For that matter i think the people from Unreal certainly throw in their dime alot, and sites like the internet archive do that as well. And companies like Epic, they have servers running in their basements and have large internet connections. Nowadays you can buy a 2 terabyte drive for less than a 100 bucks, bandwidth costs 0 to nothing and they still cant keep an archive............. THAT really is living in the past with past tense reasons to not host a decent archive! (And by that i am really aiming at companies and not to this site in particular)


As said i even can pay for it, and would be able to host it, me being on disability.




If we sit on our hands, let our forum index become overly cumbersome and cluttered with empty and inactive forums, then we won't get any better and the people that abandon the site won't be replaced by new people at all. I really don't want to see that happen.


No i wouldnt expect that from you guys, you should always look ahead and see what improovements can be made. So you got my blessings. But at the same time i do think you also have a responsibility to also preserve the past where you can, and as said, if needed throw it down one level but keep the split it is now intact. That way you can add on the top levels new sections for other games while at the same time you maintain whats already made and keep if for history. You can do the one thing without harming the other.
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Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
83
48
Diehard I don't really know what kind of traffic you do, but we'd probably be shutdown within a day of launching on one of those cheapo hosting sites. Stuff like this immediately turns me off to the one you posted:
You understand and agree that shared server space is for website operations and purposes only and not for unrelated data storage. Unrelated storage includes personal data storage and general business data storage. All accounts over 5GB of disk space used are subject to audit.
 

Diehard

New Member
To SleepyHe4d


I only noticed your post after i replied to the previous post.


Oh and the posts in this thread just proves our point. You guys don't even notice the obvious news post discussing this subject.


Thats just bashing, as the name of this thread clearly says Official Site/Forum Issues Thread which is made sticky and is on top of everything and i noticed the last post was made today also reporting a similar issue.


Secondary, the first reaction to me was clearly one that pointed theres something wrong with the forums, and only in the second reaction it was clear a change had been made. So after reporting an issue i reacted on what was written in the second post and not to go start searching on the forums to look for another thread to go post answers elsewhere.


Third, i am fucked up ill beyond believe and the only thing i did was, i noticed there is something broken on the forums and decided to report it, as i support these forums from my end as good as i possibly can. And since i am ill 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 12 months a year, and need to go to the emergency room on montly bases, i have better things to do than reading every thread made on these forums.


Third addon, And if you ever read post made in the Unreal and UT section than you would have known my condition isnt great. A fast calculation i spend over 35000 hours on Unreal and UT(which i dont even play) on my websites, posts, and mainly creating the S3TC textures for mentioned games.


Fourth,
Seeing as you don't get the point: IT'S NOT ABOUT KEEPING DEAD SECTIONS ALIVE, IT'S ABOUT HAVING A POINT OF EXISTENCE.

The existence already is what i pointed out, which is aside that people do post newly found materials, the site is also used to track down info from the past. And that does not neccesary mean that a post is being made. Threads are also being read without posting and thereby serving an important purpose that goes beyond posting. Which in turn means that info can be posted elsewhere.


Regardless how you put it, or for what reasons you do it. If the forums are merged than any chance of decent use will become history.


Fifth, My sites draw 500 gig per month and this is going on for years and years. People complain abot the lack of players in the servers for both Unreal and UT. Still, the downloads point theres still quite a bunch of players, and maybe invisible, but they are still there. If you only count posts your stupid, posts do not actually count what is being read.


Sixth, there is a whole group of people that still work on the games Unreal and UT. Effectivelly the team for Unreal working on patch 227 as well as me providing the S3TC textures is an efford to renew that game to nowadays standards. Its by far the largest project in the world. And if i live long enough and able to finish the project we will try get Unreal and UT on the map in cooperation with the largest game magazines in the world and GOG and Steam who will go provide the bandwidth(which is roughly estimated by me to 350 petabyte per month after release). Ruining one of the important forums for those games will also partially ruin those plans. So the least i am not amused.

And if you like to scream, that is something i can do as well: ITS NOT ABOUT THE F******* MONEY, ITS ABOUT THE GAMES, WHICH IS WHAT THIS SITE DEALS WITH, OLD OR NOT.


Seventh,
Second, GET A GRIP. This is the only logical thing to do and it WILL increase activity, even activity with the classic Unreal titles. In fact the posting rate is so low that it would be best if there was an "Unreal Tournament" thread in Games just like there's a "Starcraft 2" thread in Games. Hell, Starcraft 2 doesn't get it's own forum section and it's posting rate is like 5 times that of all the Unreal sections.

Yes, this site is based on Unreal, but they must change with the times and the user base. Most users aren't going to the Unreal sections and BeyondUnreal has evolved into more of a community of friends and gamers instead of an Unreal community. Either way, these choices are a LOT more healthy than having these sections up that get 1 thread every month that ends up only ever getting 5 posts in it.

What are you talking about, my personal thread in UT has 23 pages but has 64420 views. That thread started 3 years ago which means it has an averidge read of 412 readers per week or 58 readers a day.

While the tread you talk about started a couple a weeks earlyer as mine and has a staggering 62 pages but only 32677 views. And while your thread entire StarCraftII covers, my thread is just one thread next to tons of others.
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Diehard

New Member
Diehard I don't really know what kind of traffic you do, but we'd probably be shutdown within a day of launching on one of those cheapo hosting sites. Stuff like this immediately turns me off to the one you posted:


Well my site does draw 500 gig a month, why would BeyondUnreal go down with such a host? And in that respect, what you might forget to concider is this. You can always rent a site like that for a year, and move certain stuff to to it, just to see how long it will held up. I mean its that much cheap that you could do that experiment.




And the other thing to concider is, while they are cheap it does not mean they dont run serious business. At the end, the larger a host becomes, the cheaper they can work and offer cheap hosting without loosing quality. And as i said, the hosting is that cheap you can take several accounts and spread the risk per game.


In reality that is doable. And of course i dont know any specifics from this site but the main problem with shared hosting is the limited CPU use where they keep a strict finger on.


The TOS from almost any host is to cover their asses in case they want to boot a client. And for the most part you can set TOS aside except indeed CPU use. But as said, its that much cheap you can simply test it seriusly for a year.
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hal

Dictator
Staff member
Nov 24, 1998
21,409
19
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www.beyondunreal.com
Diehard, no one is looking to kill off anything related to Unreal/UT. Don't worry about that.

About your other point... we simply couldn't run this site on a host like that.