ElectricMotorcycleForum.com

General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Specter on October 12, 2025, 10:06:26 AM

Title: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on October 12, 2025, 10:06:26 AM
Lately i am getting a lot of errors while trying to access the forum.
it's too busy error
too many requests error
misconfiguration error
among other

is the site being DDos'd or something, or maybe the forum needs maintenance, a db corrupted or pruning is needed?  or just a crappy server.

any idea?

Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on October 12, 2025, 06:53:50 PM
Lately i am getting a lot of errors while trying to access the forum.
it's too busy error
too many requests error
misconfiguration error
among other

is the site being DDos'd or something, or maybe the forum needs maintenance, a db corrupted or pruning is needed?  or just a crappy server.

any idea?

Aaron

Almost every time I try to log in, I get the "Too many requests" error. If I try a couple more times it goes away. But too many requests on this forum? Is it April Fools day again?
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: TheRan on October 13, 2025, 03:42:43 AM
I would get them every now and then but the past couple days it's been really bad, and even when the site does load it's super slow and will often have broken icons. It does seem a bit like a DDOS but I can't imagine why that would be happening.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on October 13, 2025, 06:42:21 AM
I would get them every now and then but the past couple days it's been really bad, and even when the site does load it's super slow and will often have broken icons. It does seem a bit like a DDOS but I can't imagine why that would be happening.

Not enough ads running on the forum, perhaps.  ::)
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Grauteufel on October 13, 2025, 06:06:42 PM
If the site owners are lurking around, I’d be more than happy to pay a little blood
Money to keep this place ad free.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on October 13, 2025, 07:34:52 PM
If the site owners are lurking around, I’d be more than happy to pay a little blood
Money to keep this place ad free.

My guess is that since there are no ads to bring in any cash to keep the forum going, the site gets the short end of the stick when it comes to internet service.  ???

And also perhaps because there are so few posts here every day, whomever is running the site can't find any company that wants to pay to post there ads here. (Like LiveWire and Zero.  ::) ) Just not enough viewers to make it worth their time.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on October 13, 2025, 08:46:06 PM
given the fairly low traffic of this place.
you could have reliable hosting and internet and domain ownership etc for 300 a year tops.  That's what i pay for my sites.  they are fast, pretty much never down etc.

who owns this?  maybe they might consider selling it off, handing off to someone else if they are losing interest.  or do a bit of a fund raiser, hey guys how about kicking in a few bucks to pay for next years hosting etc.  im sure the folks who do post here would be more than happy to donate.  my one site, i can in theory host unlimited domains on the one account,  that site is slower traffic'd, it'd probably work fine there, as an example.

there are many ways to 'fix this'.and im sure membership would be willing to help out too.

aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Fran K on October 14, 2025, 01:04:12 AM
Isn't Brammofan the origionator of this site?  I see he (assuming male) is listed as an administrator if you go to the membership.

It isn't only this site.  I have my bookmark and chrome puts bookmark like things on what should probably be just a blank page that is for the most recent posts.  If I cut it back to just https://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/ the problems mostly go away though a few hours ago it woud give me too many request.  On another site I have my start or bookmark as a sub section and similar just cut it to the shorters main landing page and it works like before.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: T.S. Zarathustra on October 14, 2025, 04:10:00 PM
It's hosted ad Godaddy so the service should be stable.
createaforum.com is a free forum host. 7.99/month for ad free and 12.99 for unlimited. 
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on October 14, 2025, 07:35:45 PM
The forum seems to be working much better today. I am not getting any error messages and moving around to see new messages is very fast. This is quite an improvement over the previous week. So hopefully, whatever was going on has now been fixed.  :)
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: princec on October 15, 2025, 06:13:39 PM
Suspect it was some stupid bot scraping the crap out of it.

This forum is actually not that quiet compared to many. It's a good resource.

Cas :)
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on October 15, 2025, 07:15:29 PM
it still keeps going down and now seeing insufficient storage.  This usually means well derp the disk is full or your allocation is exceeded.  Often happens if you are not pruning stuff or emptying error logs.  Given how many times it shits on people trying to get in, that generates a log every failed attempt, those logs get huge and take up room.

if there is not someone paying attention to the forum and doing basic housekeeping, it will eventually 'overflow' start shitting errors, which just makes the situation worse, then need an eventual reboot after you cleaned out the files.

Set up a daily task to purge or something if you don't want to be involved with it, like a cron or something.

Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Motoproponent on October 15, 2025, 10:25:58 PM
yeah, I can select individual threads but If I try to view "New Replies to your posts" or "unread posts since your last visit" I get an insufficient storage error
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on October 24, 2025, 03:06:36 AM
"Knock on wood", but I think the forum is almost back to normal. 90% of the time I can access the forum or a thread without receiving an error message.  :)
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: TheRan on October 24, 2025, 03:25:46 AM
I had the insufficient storage error as I clicked on this thread, earlier today I had it 4 or 5 times in a row with every new page, usually a refresh will get it to work but sometimes two.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on October 24, 2025, 03:57:13 AM
The problem with that is, it sounds like they have the thing on a cheap ass hosting plan.
every time that error comes up, it will generate a log / listing in the error file.  It may also generate entries in the exceptions handling logs too.  Soon this shit is going to take up gigabytes of storage with bullshit error messages, it will exceed your allocation for disk space you are allowed, generate even more errors, and eventually could lead to a hard crash / reboot needed or suspension of your plan until you get your storage back down to it's limits.

this is not going to go away until someone actually takes action,  if it does go away, its going to go away by the forum going away.

just saying.
Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: princec on October 24, 2025, 04:02:03 AM
Who is supposed to be the administrator anyway?

Cas :)
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: TheRan on October 24, 2025, 05:28:54 AM
Brammofan and Skadamo, the former hasn't been online since 2023 and the latter June of this year. I wouldn't hold out any hope of this ever getting fixed unless someone has an email for Skad, and if the forum does go down it will probably be for good.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on October 24, 2025, 06:13:00 AM
I'll put this out here now.

people get tired of forums and such.  what once was a great idea, after running it for years one can get burned out, don't really want to do it anymore, BUT.. there's a lot of love and work that went into the project / product and you don't want to just dump it either.
peoples ideas change, lives change, what one had time for, now they don't etc etc.

to the point.
to the owner.. if you are becoming disinterested in the day to day running of the forum, the upkeep, the hosting etc etc.
i would be happy to take it over for you, keep it hosted, keep the files clean etc etc.

everything stays the same, the only thing that changes really is who had the keys to the front and back door.  ill throw it on my hosting plan, for my existing sites and it'll purr along, error free i will add, and everyone can keep hugging their bikes but most importantly....

MOST IMPORTANTLY...

the history is preserved.  that is the important thing.

if you are interested, reach out to me.

if you are not interested, but also do not want to really keep it going, instead of letting it expire, please allow me to scrape it and ill host it as an archive under one of my sites for historical purposes.

thank you
Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Curt on October 24, 2025, 06:29:59 AM
The SMF software is ancient and has all these limitations with images. The forum should be upgraded to Xenforo. There is a Xenforo plugin that will import an SMF (Simple Machines Forum) database.

A couple years ago, my forum expert friend wanted to take over this forum and I inquired about it, but the owner didn't want to let it go. With the sad shape it's in, maybe he's had a change of heart.

I'd also offer to run the forum. The maintenance of the host and Xenforo wouldn't be a big deal. The bulk of the ongoing work is in approval of new users and moderating to deal with spammers and scammers.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: TheRan on October 24, 2025, 06:33:44 AM
People have already offered to help out with no reply and they're not going to see your post. Honestly I'm not sure how this forum is still running, who's paying for it. I would assume it's not Brammo and he's just given up on it completely because why pay for something and then not even log in, unless he's paid 3+ years up front. If it's Skadamo then while he has at least logged in this year his last post was at the beginning of 2024 asking for donations for the founder of Brammo (the brand) and before that his last post was in 2020, so why pay for something you haven't been actively involved in for half a decade and before that averaged like 5 posts a year if that.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on October 24, 2025, 07:47:22 AM
Well, for what it's worth, im putting the offer out there to keep the forum alive.  if someone wants to help run it, that's great too.  this isn't a good ole boy network or lookie what i am thing, this is just wanting to preserve what we have here and if people who know how to run this stuff, although smf is not that hard want to help out, even better.

the owner does not even have to give it up, just allow another body or two at the back end so we can clean up the db's prune what is needed and fix the errors before smf shuts down.

aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: T.S. Zarathustra on October 24, 2025, 12:57:03 PM
I'm willing to offer my help here, but there are weeks when I don't log in so it would not be ideal.
Owners contact information is through Domains By Proxy. That and the host can be contacted. Contact details on this website.
https://ie.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?itc=dlp_domain_whois&domain=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.electricmotorcycleforum.com%2F
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on October 24, 2025, 06:41:36 PM
I'm willing to offer my help here, but there are weeks when I don't log in so it would not be ideal.
Owners contact information is through Domains By Proxy. That and the host can be contacted. Contact details on this website.
https://ie.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?itc=dlp_domain_whois&domain=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.electricmotorcycleforum.com%2F

Forum admin / mod is not a full time job, especially one like this, at most, unless you get a shithead storm, someone would log in once a day check the logs, flush error logs IF that is an issue ad take care of the occasional spammer or two, that would take all of 5 minutes.

maybe a few with backend tools ie C-panel, this would flow like clockwork, honestly there really is no need to go into the backend unless there is a problem, maybe once a week to take a quick gander at the state of things.  The only reason i go into mine is to change passwords on e mail accounts from time to time when i lose them or when bluehost does something stupid like changing versions of php w/o telling me first :(

it's pretty simple BUT... if your life changed, or you are working 80 - 100 hour weeks now, you just don't have the time to do that stuff anymore, when you do get some precious time off, you don't want to spend it babysitting a forum, i totally get that.  When it starts feeling more like a job than fun, it's time to rethink things.

The mods we have now seem to be doing a good job, personally id be swinging the ban hammer on the spammers a bit harder but that's just me.  We really don't have any problems here except needing someone to take care of administrative tasks, like this going on with the files and such.  A helping hand, or two... he retains all the rights / ownership etc of the forum, but when things go south, has a helping hand to get it back on track w/o the forum going down for days at a time like it has in the past.

Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on November 26, 2025, 05:23:41 AM
Dear Administrator:
your error logs are probably gigs deep by now, causing all this grief.
get into your c panel, look at the directory tree and dump the entire thing, purge it, don't just move to recycle folder.
this should help with the insufficient storage issue

if you need help, dm me ill give you my phone number and walk you through it
thank you
Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: TheRan on November 26, 2025, 04:39:08 PM
As has been mentioned, the last admin to be online was back in June, they're not seeing your post. ADVENTURESonZERO and Demoni are global mods and were online yesterday so maybe send them a DM and see what they have access to or if they have any way of contacting the admins.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on November 26, 2025, 06:27:08 PM
global mods is a software derived title, it won't give them access to the actual server  where the files are kept in raw form.
Depending on which version of smf they are running, they may be able to do a limited prune but depending on server settings it may just dump in recycle bin.
They could be lurking in another avatar too, sometimes admins don't want to log in as admin to not get annoyed by 200 dm's etc.
Demoni, checks the entire forum i believe, if you post it, he'll mostlikely see it.

FWIW if the owner no longer wants the forum, ie you are moving on, just lost interest in the admin part of it etc,  make an offer, i bet someone might bite, just to keep it going.

Aaron

Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on December 16, 2025, 08:09:31 PM
It could be my imagination, but it seems to me like the forum is back to normal now and functioning as well as it ever did.  :)
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: T.S. Zarathustra on December 17, 2025, 02:59:04 PM
Certainly seems like it.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on December 18, 2025, 02:15:49 AM
yes it does, lets hope it keeps this way too

aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: ESokoloff on December 18, 2025, 06:03:10 AM
Nope!!!
Buggy @ 4:03 PST
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on December 18, 2025, 06:19:39 AM
Nope!!!
Buggy @ 4:03 PST

Not for me - yet.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: ESokoloff on December 18, 2025, 08:53:17 AM
6:53 pm pst & buggy when attempting to post.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Curt on December 20, 2025, 11:31:38 AM
Anyone else interested in starting a new forum before everyone's permanently cut off?

A global EM forum should be hopping, even if there were only a few thousand of them. I don't know what's going on these days. The big SF Bay Area regular motorcycle forums are about finished too. I don't think it's Facebook stealing all the traffic -- there's not much there either. Motorcycle shows are done in the US. Half our local motorcycle dealers are gone. Motorcycling is dying.

So maybe no new forum?
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on December 20, 2025, 09:14:28 PM
Anyone else interested in starting a new forum before everyone's permanently cut off?

A global EM forum should be hopping, even if there were only a few thousand of them. I don't know what's going on these days. The big SF Bay Area regular motorcycle forums are about finished too. I don't think it's Facebook stealing all the traffic -- there's not much there either. Motorcycle shows are done in the US. Half our local motorcycle dealers are gone. Motorcycling is dying.

So maybe no new forum?

My guess is that these sort of enthusiast forms are just not generating enough views (money) for their owners to keep running, much less to be interested in starting new ones.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on December 21, 2025, 07:04:17 AM
Well if you truly are an enthusiast, you are not doing it for the money.  you do it for the love of the sport.
these forums are pretty much plug and play once you get them initially set up, however they DO need periodic maintenance, which can be automated almost 100 percent.. or they start acting up after time, as we are seeing.

someone updates a php version on your backend and does not tell you and it hits your old style databases and you are going to have a bad day.

as for making money, no ads here thank you praise jesus !!, so no money coming in, the ads don't pay shit anymore anyways using cpm models, so you'd have to do inhouse.   on that, if you are relying on advertising for income, especially to keep the place running, you already lost the battle.

I think in general, forums are quickly becoming old school and dying out like us old bastards are.  the kids today want their 20 second sound bytes on tictard and twatter.  Anything longer than 2 or 3 sentences tldr.  If they were educated in a government school, they probably don't understand half the words anyways.

how are the other forums for bikes in regards to having active mods / owners in them?

As for motorcycling dying, naah i don't see that.  pretty much everyone i know would rather be riding, than reading about someone else riding in a forum!  bikes are not going away anytime soon, no matter how shitty florida assholes drive.

aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on December 21, 2025, 08:55:36 PM
I frequent a couple of BMW forums and the activity on them has really trailed-off this year. Mostly, there are questions, concerns and comments asking about mechanical and electrical problems and how to repair them. Most of the BMW owners are asking how they can repair the bikes themselves without needing to take it to a $$$ franchised dealer.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: alexanderfoti on December 21, 2025, 11:14:23 PM
I run an IT msp a d would be happy to take over hosting and maintenance if the current owner/hoster reaches out to me.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Motoproponent on December 23, 2025, 11:40:41 PM
Theres a very active regional forum here, Bay Area Riders Forum, that has actually picked up in traffic lately. I think because we are all bummed with regular "social media" so we use it to facilitate IRL socializing. Theres an "Electric Motorcycles" subforum that meets my needs.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on December 24, 2025, 01:04:46 AM
Forums are just easier imo to dig up valid info / history  the search function makes it easy to go find old topics to maybe shed light on your current problem.   Fakebook / Twatter / Tictard, you have to scroll through endless cat pictures et al to get to anything if it even parses it properly for you.  then lets throw in advertising and all the other shit they bury you under.   ill stick with the  forum's thank you.

even with AI, if it's trained on garbage, which it is,  ie Fakebook, tictard, and twatter, it is not much use either, as some still need to learn.  It does not have the capability of telling truth .vs. fiction many times and will very easily hallucinate and provide an answer to please you, that is dead wrong.  ive seen it invent part numbers and make up stuff that does not even exist out of the blue, just to have something to show you.  You don't get that with a forum search.  AI is also lazy, well, it's trained to be like people so... like an engineer...there you go.   

Even if you ask it for something specific like, what size plug fits my whirlygitzer it'll do a search then come back and say oh, that's a 2.1mm plug.  Then you find out your gadget has a 2.5 mm plug, and the klanker goes, oh my bad.. 2.1 is the common size so i just assumed it fit that too.  WHY would you assume when i asked you about a specific item, you couldn't go and research that item, or my specific use profile so you knew for sure?  No, that takes an extra 200 milliseconds of time, let's go with the easy/lazy answer, just like it's programmers. 

This is the danger of blindly cutting and pasting and then running with an AI answer to something, it does not know any better and you should!   With a forum search, someone saying it's a 2.1 as an example, should immediately get called out by the other owners saying, ehh it's actually a 2.5, meaning for the most part  the info  HAS been double / triple checked and verified.

Forums may be old fashioned, but really, can't be beat for good first experience hands on knowledge.   Even the so called Chiltons manual type books, tell you how to fix a thing properly... sometimes you need to just get it working,  most AI won't tell you too much how to rig something out of liability issues,  forums now, yah, we're here for ya buddy!

moto, nothing wrong with going to forums and i actually think you will be seeing a sort of renaissance emerge where people start going back to forums, because they are burnt out on the current models of feeding the flesh units.

now..where did that acoustical modem and my bbs 0.01.0a floppy disk goto.

Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Fran K on December 24, 2025, 07:08:02 AM

498 Guests, 3 Users
Users active in past 15 minutes:
Fran K, ddennis669, scottwstevenson

I was on the other day and one of the names was in blue.  Global moderator

How many of these 498 are spiders.  One place I was looking at a breakdown of the ones that get counted, lots of spiders.  Not here though. 
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on December 24, 2025, 07:56:39 AM
plenty of sites, like wayback machine, google, and of course the ai's   chatgpt, grok etc scrape here frequently for their various purposes.

googles bots try to find e mails so they can sell them to their spam partners for those reasons.  others search on demand, like grok, chat gpt when someone asks a question about motorcycles, specifically the electric ones, this forum is considered a better source of info w/o being biased heavily due to politics, fanboy crap etc etc, and others like wayback, do their daily archiving.

Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on December 24, 2025, 08:32:09 PM
I wonder if all of that AI scraping is what made this site blow up earlier this month?
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on December 25, 2025, 05:04:43 AM
it shouldn't have, most of it is supposed to be rather passive.  databases from time to time need to be pruned, or if there are errors that are not processed / repaired, eventually they can cause hell.  Another common issue is the error logs get overfilled, using up all your allocated disk space, then things start blowing up as well.

recently a number of the hosts upgraded their versions of, i want to say, sql/php i can't remember tbh, but DO know if you did not update your databases to the same version, it started unravelling a lot of crap.  While they usually try to warn the owners of these pending upgrades, if the owners are not around much or don't know what this means to them, well... you have seen potential results.

Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Sklith on February 24, 2026, 11:11:11 AM
Welcome back, forum.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Grauteufel on February 24, 2026, 01:03:49 PM
Thank you to whoever fixed it and brought everything back online
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: MVetter on February 24, 2026, 02:13:22 PM
That'd be the forum owner, Skadamo. https://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?action=profile;u=1
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: TheRan on February 24, 2026, 06:07:39 PM
Finally. And this is what happens when you have a forum run by someone who doesn't check in daily.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on February 24, 2026, 08:58:13 PM
Yes. Welcome back. It seems as if the forum was corrupted for the past couple of weeks and is now finally repaired.  :)
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on February 24, 2026, 09:50:44 PM
holy fucking shit.
you know how aggravating it is to SEE what the problem is, and it's literally a 20 second fix. but having no way to tell someone what it is?

bro, if you need help with the upkeep, reach out, many people have already said they'd help you, being down for weeks over simple stuff is kind of bullshit.  if you can't handle it anymore, don't have the time, don't really care much anymore, whatever is going on, ask for help, it's not a crime.

Aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: TheRan on March 19, 2026, 07:12:35 AM
Well that didn't last long, the errors have returned. Skadamo hasn't been on in just over a week so we'll probably have to put up with it for a bit longer, may even go down again.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Specter on May 13, 2026, 10:31:38 PM
getting ready to crash again.
might want to empty that dump file before it shits itself.
what error are you getting that is overflowing you?

aaron
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: TheRan on May 14, 2026, 02:34:36 AM
Yeah it's been a bit shit the last few days, getting various errors upon refreshing.
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: ESokoloff on May 14, 2026, 09:29:39 AM
I sent multiple personal messages not knowing whether or not they actually took/sent. 
Made me look rather silly :P
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Grauteufel on May 15, 2026, 08:43:54 AM
Not to repeat what has already been said, but doing so anyhow....


Happy to kick in a few $$$ to keep things running
Title: Re: Forum Errors
Post by: Richard230 on May 16, 2026, 07:26:04 PM
I am getting my choice of excuses for not connecting. Either the forum has "insufficient storage" or "too many requests".  ::)