pothos.org

The transfer to Alexias is now complete.

I wish you all well and will be contactable if there is anything Alexias needs advice on.

Good luck

Thomas

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I have been pinged by my hosts for using too many resources and also hosting too many domains on www in breach of their T&C.

The closure of pothos.org has been coming as you are aware. When I started it I was 3 years from meeting my wife and now have three adult chidren. Wikipedia did not exist, nor did social media. I am retiring in May!

For those of you who care, you can still find that early site on the web archive. https://web.archive.org/web/19970415141 ... /index.htm. It was a whimscal attempt to make a web site based on nothing but the fact I was reading a biography of Alexander becuase my parents were so amazed I had never heard of him.

However...I do not give it the time to maintain the phpbb software (it is behind again) and gets crawled by malicious bots (or maybe AI crawlers?)

The archiving of this site will take the following steps:

1. making the site only available to registered users (this is already done).
2. stopping the registration of new users
3. putting the site on to the domain forum.pothos.org - this needs to happen very quickly - within the week.
4. *making the site inaccessible behind a username/password whilst I work out how to convert it to static HTML - I will share by DM the username and password to any member who asks for it before this happens and will keep you appraised of the timeline on this thread.
5. convert to static HTML and make an entry page that explains what is going on.

On top of this, I have to reserve the right to disable the board at short notice - it is the main cause of my massive resource over-use. Making it less accessible will hopefully be enough.

Sorry to see it go, but I remember when it started! I was a new grad student at Penn State studying Alexander with Gene Borza. I am now a tenured professor in spitting distance of retiring.

I toast this as the first and longest-running site about Alexander the Great on the web. Thanks for taking it on all those years ago, Thomas. It's been a good ride. (And yeah, it's weird to have grown-ass children who might be making little humans at some point in the not-so-distant future.)

Thomas and I are discussing the process of transferring the site to me. I will freeze the boards so you won't be able to post anything until it is completed.

Many thanks to Thomas for hosting the site for so long.

I have updated the site to the latest version of phpBB3 and am working with Alexias on moving the forum.

To not lose anything I will need to disable posting - the only easy way to do this means you would not be able to read this message so I won't do it for now. But when that appears you'll know we are working on it.

Jeanne Reames wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 6:56 am Sorry to see it go, but I remember when it started! I was a new grad student at Penn State studying Alexander with Gene Borza. I am now a tenured professor in spitting distance of retiring.

I toast this as the first and longest-running site about Alexander the Great on the web. Thanks for taking it on all those years ago, Thomas. It's been a good ride. (And yeah, it's weird to have grown-ass children who might be making little humans at some point in the not-so-distant future.)

We first met on Bulletin Boards! I asked a question - I think it was around which religion came before Islam (or Christianity??) in the context of Alexander wanting to be a God. Or something. I remember you sent a dream catcher to me for my firstborn (now 24) which proudly hung in her room until one of her sisters dismantled it one day

Alexias and I are working together on a plan. The site will stay on www.pothos.org but it will take a little while to move.

The forum will likely be locked on Thursday and we will attempt the move.

Hi all,

Thank you for your patience while we deal with this issue on the website.

The initial problem was that spam bots were causing too many hits on the site and exceeding Thomas's allowed bandwidth usage. In order to preserve the site in its current state, and to ensure that it continues to be available to anyone who wishes to study Alexander, the simplest solution is to transfer the site to another host where, hopefully, the number of hits will not be a problem.

This is obviously a bit tricky and due to making sure we have sufficient time to do the work, it may be the weekend before we can get it transferred. The site will remain locked until the transfer is complete to minimise traffic on the site.

Thomas currently owns pothos but as he is not regularly involved with the site, henceforth we are going to share ownership of the site. This will enable me, at some point, to update the out-of-date front pages of the site, and not have to rely on Thomas to update the forum software. I wish to express my thanks to Thomas for allowing this, and not just deleting the site!

If you have any queries, you can contact me at pothos@writeme.com.

Thank you all again.

Alexias

Bandwidth was no problem.

It was processor time and database time they were worried about.

One bot was causing 96% of the load Check out this image where the tiny green line is the allowed use.

I've re-enabled all the forums as read-only to guests and we'll see how that affects usage.

The 'Comments, help, suggestions' board isn't showing up unless you log in.

Alexias wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2024 9:19 pm The 'Comments, help, suggestions' board isn't showing up unless you log in.

I was doing it on my phone - missed that. Now fixed.

The move should happen tomorrow. Watch this space.

The server has now moved over to Alexias' full control.

Have a great day!

Thank you very much, Thomas, for all your hard work. I am most grateful.

HI everyone,

The forum is now open but if you have any issues with permissions not being restored, please let me know by PM. Thanks

Alexias

Thanks to Thomas & Alexias for creating, maintaining and keeping pothos.org alive & well for all of us!

chris