So whats been going on?
Well, a month ago we began work towards celebrating 10 years of RPGGamer.org. We had a few updates to the structure of the site planned, and a few other things ongoing.
But . . .
As we renewed the sites hosting as we do every year, the site got moved to a shiny new server the hosting company had set up. The shiny new server however wasn't configured properly, and RPGGamer.org became the target of near daily attacks from hackers.
Files got deleted (the entire images directory got deleted at one point), files got modified stopping parts of the site from working, lots of spam emails were sent out from the server in our name, and countless phishing websites became hosted in subdirectories of the site.
Because of this, and because the hosting company took some time to solve the vulnerabilities in their server, it became a daily battle to keep the site up and running (including deleting the entire site several times and restoring from backups to make sure no malignant code had been embedded in the site). Sadly, some sacrifices had to be made, the forum is now dead (but since it had been locked for more than a year because of spammers, I don't think it's any big loss).
Anyway. It seems to be all over now (fingers crossed), and we can start to get on with things rather than wasting our time undoing the harm that was being inflicted upon the site.
But, we've missed our tenth anniversary. On the 2nd of July 2002, the first version of RPGGamer.org was uploaded and submitted to the search engines, and within 2 days had started receiving visitors.
Since then, we've had a dedicated artist (Bob the Dinosaur) doing stuff for the site (until he joined the marines (more from Bob in the days to come)), we've had a long break (I blame the birth of my son, and the start of a new job), we've brought aboard our wonderful co-administrator (Hellstormer), we've saved stats from some other now long gone Star Wars D/6 websites, and had many thousands of submissions from many, many talented individuals.
So, my apologies for missing the anniversary, my apologies for not having more things ready, and my apologies for the disruption of the last few weeks. Instead of a 10th anniversary celebration day, it's going to end up being more staggered, as the planned changes get made one by one. The site will continue to be updated (especially in the coming days), the site will be added to and will grow, we aren't going anywhere, and intend to be around for a long time to come.
And finally, I'd like to thank everyone who has been in touch over the past 10 years, especially everyone who has contributed to the site, from those who have become a major part of the site like Hellstormer and Bob the Dinosaur, right through to anyone who has sent in even a single idea. Many, many thanks, you make RPGGamer everything that it is (so if it's a mess, you've only got yourselves to blame).
FreddyB
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