MattyB
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Posts posted by MattyB
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Had mine 3 years and done 35k - it's been faultless and has cost pennies to run. They're great cars.
However for the love of God replace the Goodyears! They're well known to split - loads of stories. Either replace with PS4/PS5s, or I can recommend dropping down to 16" wheels - I've fitted some BBS and it's made a world of difference to the ride quality.
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Strange! Yeah there are a few virtual hosts running on this box, that's an old one that's not used. No idea how long that's not been working though, I've not messed with the config in quite a while.
Will have a quick look now, might be an easy fix.
Edit - seems fixed, but I need to regen the SSL to cover the redirect. CBA tonight
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Yep, latest forum software update. I was going to turn it off...then thought, nah. Shame it's not retrospectively counted, so everyone's a newbie.
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The ads are an unfortunate necessity to cover both the forum and hosting costs. All in, it costs just over £350 to keep this place running for the year - with the rise of ad blockers I don't even cover this cost, and I reduced the amount of of adverts and their size about 6 months back to try and make it as unintrusive as possible. I do use the hosting for a few personal things these days though so I'm happy to just pick the rest of the tab up myself.
It's a difficult balance...happy to hear any suggestions. We did have a CL "Premium" which was a cost option, but I stopped this because the footfall to the forum was too low to warrant making arrangements with companies so I could actually offer any perks so it didn't feel fair to charge people for what amounted to nothing more than a title.
So yes, happy to hear any suggestions.
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Yes - new forum update has changed the look a little. Not convinced yet, preferred the old look.
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You can use this if you want, but it's restrictive on sizes, so might be better to host elsewhere.
Imgur is probably the best bet.
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Yeah, we've had a few issues with the server it's hosted on running out of space. All sorted now !
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Two of my "must haves" were Tungsten and Climate Control (I think it tidies up and modernises the dash massively) plus 5 door, only because they're easier to sell.
No Lupo in storage, no, not owned one for a while now. My last attempt many years ago was when I bought a 1.4 Lupo with a bottom knocking end and tried to drop a 1.6 from a GTi into it, because Andi (Tigz on here) and someone else told me it was a straight swap. Turns out the loom is completely different and it's a massive job 🙃
I was looking to buy another LupoGTi as a daily, but ended up with the Up instead due to Volkswizard's praise (who I actually ended up buying mine from).
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So I purchased an Up GTi before XMas. I've not been massively impressed with it, but it's great for the daily hack, cheap to run, small and more than pokey enough for todays roads.
I am planning to fit some KW's and drop the wheels down to 16's (17's look fantastic, but they're too big). I reckon dropping a size, less weight and a bit more tyre wall (plus better tyres) will massively improve things. I want JBS's switchable traction control, but don't really want a remap....so I'll have to see about that.
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It'd need to be edited individually, unfortunately. Once the site goes dead, the links will too.
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I wish a mouse would eat all the data! Ran out of space. Increased, back to normal....well, as normal as possible.
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On 12/7/2018 at 12:25 PM, weslangdon said:
My internet protection server always marks this site as "not secure" placed next to a red warning triangle, with this in mind users might be cautious about personal stuff they upload
This has long been on the "to do" list - and is now done. It's all HTTPS'd up.
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On 12/8/2018 at 1:58 PM, mk2 said:
We need that wiki back up and running... loads a good info in there. @MattyB where are you?
Err...yeah about that....😰
We moved hosts a few months back. I thought I'd copied everything over, and I left the old host running for 5-6 weeks to make sure. Everything seemed dandy, so I deleted it (along with the old backups, as they're attached to the old account and non-transferable) and it was costing to run both.
That old host delete happened about 4 weeks ago, then I saw your message in the 'issues' forum, and I still can't figure out why it wasn't copied across as I was convinced I'd copied it all, and I've no idea why I'd skip the Wiki bit. I *think* I've got the database for it, but I can't find the actual files at all
So what that means is, if I can restore it from my local backups (as I don't have my remote backups now) we'll have content, but no pictures.
Anyway, I might have dropped the ball on that one. I'll let you know once I've got the database back and we'll see whats in there...
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Spotted this morning while having the Bora serviced - low, loud Silver GTi with Antracite alloys at Midland VW in Cannock. Anyone on here?
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Knocking on for 15gb. Most of it is 18 years of pictures
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Yeah, dropped for a few hours, ran out of space! Extended it and back in the game!
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CL allows you to sign in with your Facebook ID, and then it l links your FB profile picture with your forum picture (I believe, I've never used it).
So I guess it's just updating their forum pic along with the FB pic...
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http://www.evo.co.uk/volkswagen/21118/vw-lupo-gti-review-specs-and-buying-guide
I know a couple of you spoke to EVO mag a few months back - they've finally published the guide 8)
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There is a Chrome Plugin that (claims) to work:
Test/Use at your own risk, not tried it myself but reviews claim it does.
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A Merry Christmas and HNY to all.
It gets quieter here, year on year for obvious reasons - but we're now into the 17th year of CL's history, and we're still alive.
Fun fact: we were here before Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
Have a great holiday! -
18 hours ago, weslangdon said:
Kurtz und Klein Auto Klub inc Club Lupo for all small VAG cars, past present and future
Maybe if we had a .de domain
and the initialism would be KKAK...phonetically not great, and the wrong number of K's for my liking.
However, people like brand association with their club; it's difficult to do as you'll really be covering VW, Seat and Skoda. Having a "VAG" badge your car looks odd to people outside of car circles....
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I did consider rebranding at some point, but there's too much history here, I'd be like the desecration of an historical landmark
I can't create subsections that have their own identity unfortunately.
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3 hours ago, weslangdon said:
If you want to recognise their past efforts make them honourary Vice Presidents; a Mod is a real role. Voting Mods in or out is a great idea though, many motoring forums are little better than dictatorships
We just don't get the traffic anymore to warrant any of it though.
As an example, we used to get 30,000 page views per day back in 2011 - I'm sure it back in 2006-8 during the peak it was probably more than that (I changed to Google Analytics, so lost the stats).
Now? We're down to 3000 page views a day, so 1/10th of the activity. To be honest, most of that traffic is just unregistered visitors digging for info, I know we're only getting between 10-15 posts per day, so not worthy of heavy moderation....it's to be expected, they stopped making the Lupo 12 years ago!
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18 hours ago, lupogtiboy said:
Tigz probably still hasn't finished building it yet, so thats a given!
Shame Nicki doesn't come on anymore, I'm 'friends' with her on facebook, so I may ask her to pop in!
Generally speaking, we all seem to be well behaved these days but its always nice to have a helping hand nnow and then, God knows I'd like NOT to be the only mod of the Up Owners Club that bothers to go on there. Even admin are pretty redundant on there and never seem to reply to any PM's.
Funnily enough a few people asked me to setup a proper "Up" forum linked to this one (instead of our little subforum) but at $200 for another forum license, plus additional annual support fees...it's not cheap.
Otherwise it's some nasty free PhpBB or MyBB. Plus the fact there is already an Up forum.
Too much SPAM and 'bot takeover.
in Drivers Lounge
Posted
Yes, do check in occasionally to make sure things haven't exploded
So here's the thing. Way back when the forum used to generate enough revenue to pay for it, I used to subscribe to the IPB anti-spam service (it was actually a combined software update/tech support/antispam service). This subscription got more and more expensive as time went on, all the time while the traffic to the site declined, therefore the ad revenue started to massively decrease, further made more difficult thanks to ad blockers. Because I never used their support, as I never needed it, and the updates were pretty minor....I therefore stopped paying as I this point, I was having to pay out of my own pocket. And to be honest, spam seemed managable thanks to CAPTCHA picking up the worst of it.
Up to now, it's been fairly manageable, thanks to the fantastic help from @Silver! and @lupogtiboy who's work is very much appreciated. Unfortunately, moving forward there are very few options. Paying $200/year to turn the support service back on is madness and as mentioned, AI registration is probably getting good enough to get past most CAPTCHA or questions. I could throw in a very technical question into the registation page...but it would have to be something AI can't easily answer. Alterntatively, I can turn on manual registration, but that's just hard work. For now, I can't see any other solution other than reporting/blocking spammers