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I have noticed that this very useful site Segaretro.org has been acting weird recently. Anyone know what's up with it? Thanks

They are updating the site. The message that appears when you try to access the site is an obvious indication of it.

"Insert your favorite construction GIF here."

Praying that the update doesn't turn into a regression, Sega Retro seemed perfect as is!

It is briefly mentioned in a topic on their forums, though that topic isn't in a public section so it's easy to miss, they're apparently upgrading to PHP7 or something like that.

Also, quoting Bock. The good old "if it's not broken then don't fix it" is one of my favourite sentences of all times, I'm not going on a tangent to rant about how much I hate websites which keep on redesigning themselves for no reason at all (e.g. Facebook and Youtube), let me just say how much I love smspower for having been its true self for more than a decade, please never change.

Back to Retro, it's not unlikely that there are going to be some broken things here and there considering how many custom extensions those wikis were using, but it looks like they're taking things to heart this time so everything should get ironed out eventually. There are reasons to be optimistic because they recently changed their forum software as well, and while I do still miss the old one and its custom features, they've been doing their best to make the new one as good as reasonably possible. That is, if you don't mind the enforced https nonsense and you can browse that website at all.

At some point we will have to move to a version of PHP that is incompatible with some of the software we are using. I'm still looking for a decent PHPBB2 replacement that isn't a horror... PmWiki is OK.

Why not doing it the other way around? If the phpbb2 forum (which is one of the things I like the most in general) does really use some deprecated functions or instructions, wouldn't it be possible to narrow them down and replace them (and only them) by hand? I have no idea of what changed between PHP versions, but code is code, if an instruction disappears, some other one(s) can probably take its place.

Funny fact is that I tried to access it yesterday. Saw that message about inserting gif. But I quickly went to another site.
Now while reading this thread I learned that I had the same issue and now can laugh at that insert gif message. Good to hear the sie is not lost.

If it wasn't expensive to host and a pain to install I would have said Discourse. Forums are a rare breed these days with the like of Reddit and social media.

But Discourse is a real horror of JavaScript and messing with your history and super slow too render due to the bizarre client side rendering that has overtaken the web... I wrote code to generate HTML from JS on the client in 2001 or so (which was pretty dumb) and somehow it's still slower now...

Anyway, enough with the thread hijacking. If there's a modern PHP forum which just sends semantic HTML to the browser based on a MySQL DB, let me know...

Wesker wrote

They are updating the site. The message that appears when you try to access the site is an obvious indication of it.

"Insert your favorite construction GIF here."

Yes I saw that line eventually, initially it did not show that, just some unhelpful HTML code (and now it just says 'Forbidden' or is just a blank page), but the reason I was worried was that my browser said the site was 'unsecure' and I was redirected to some spam pop-ups for some reason. I was worried it was hacked or something. Thanks everyone for enlightening me. I hope it comes back. That site is excellent

D wrote

Good to hear the site is not lost.

Phew. So happy to read this.

They have a ton of cover and manual scans for 8-bit Sega. They're my go-to resource when I want to quickly check a game or the review scores it had in the 80s or 90s.

:( we have all that stuff... Just need more contributors.

I would swear I've seen scans credited to SMSpower there... and maybe the other way around? On the whole SMSpower has an incredible amount of resources (as in: more), but I don't see it as a competition. I'm happy another Sega database didn't just vanish.

I agree with another poster above: it's nice SMSpower keeps being SMSpower. :)

Just checked and it's back!

Not sure what Tom was trying to say as there's a big difference between a redesign and an upgrade to phpv7. The php 7 version contains a number of deprecated commands and a rewrite of some code is unavoidable in some cases

Well, it's been years since the last time I did something with php, so I had no idea that 7 is so much different, don't mind what I say, I just hate updates in general.

Author	Message
Restart_Point Joined: 18 Sep 2019 Posts: 11	What happened to Segaretro.org? Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2019 7:41 pm
Restart_Point Joined: 18 Sep 2019 Posts: 11	I have noticed that this very useful site Segaretro.org has been acting weird recently. Anyone know what's up with it? Thanks

Wesker Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 158	Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2019 11:52 pm
Wesker Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 158	They are updating the site. The message that appears when you try to access the site is an obvious indication of it. "Insert your favorite construction GIF here."

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 8:34 am
	Praying that the update doesn't turn into a regression, Sega Retro seemed perfect as is!

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:21 am
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	It is briefly mentioned in a topic on their forums, though that topic isn't in a public section so it's easy to miss, they're apparently upgrading to PHP7 or something like that. Also, quoting Bock. The good old "if it's not broken then don't fix it" is one of my favourite sentences of all times, I'm not going on a tangent to rant about how much I hate websites which keep on redesigning themselves for no reason at all (e.g. Facebook and Youtube), let me just say how much I love smspower for having been its true self for more than a decade, please never change. Back to Retro, it's not unlikely that there are going to be some broken things here and there considering how many custom extensions those wikis were using, but it looks like they're taking things to heart this time so everything should get ironed out eventually. There are reasons to be optimistic because they recently changed their forum software as well, and while I do still miss the old one and its custom features, they've been doing their best to make the new one as good as reasonably possible. That is, if you don't mind the enforced https nonsense and you can browse that website at all.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:50 am
	At some point we will have to move to a version of PHP that is incompatible with some of the software we are using. I'm still looking for a decent PHPBB2 replacement that isn't a horror... PmWiki is OK.

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 11:22 am
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Why not doing it the other way around? If the phpbb2 forum (which is one of the things I like the most in general) does really use some deprecated functions or instructions, wouldn't it be possible to narrow them down and replace them (and only them) by hand? I have no idea of what changed between PHP versions, but code is code, if an instruction disappears, some other one(s) can probably take its place.

D Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 252 Location: Almere, The Netherlands	Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 11:24 am
	Funny fact is that I tried to access it yesterday. Saw that message about inserting gif. But I quickly went to another site. Now while reading this thread I learned that I had the same issue and now can laugh at that insert gif message. Good to hear the sie is not lost.

thatawesomeguy Joined: 25 Jul 2007 Posts: 731 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 11:48 am
	If it wasn't expensive to host and a pain to install I would have said Discourse. Forums are a rare breed these days with the like of Reddit and social media.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 2:03 pm
	But Discourse is a real horror of JavaScript and messing with your history and super slow too render due to the bizarre client side rendering that has overtaken the web... I wrote code to generate HTML from JS on the client in 2001 or so (which was pretty dumb) and somehow it's still slower now... Anyway, enough with the thread hijacking. If there's a modern PHP forum which just sends semantic HTML to the browser based on a MySQL DB, let me know...

Restart_Point Joined: 18 Sep 2019 Posts: 11	Posted: Sat Sep 21, 2019 11:53 pm
Restart_Point Joined: 18 Sep 2019 Posts: 11	Wesker wrote They are updating the site. The message that appears when you try to access the site is an obvious indication of it. "Insert your favorite construction GIF here." Yes I saw that line eventually, initially it did not show that, just some unhelpful HTML code (and now it just says 'Forbidden' or is just a blank page), but the reason I was worried was that my browser said the site was 'unsecure' and I was redirected to some spam pop-ups for some reason. I was worried it was hacked or something. Thanks everyone for enlightening me. I hope it comes back. That site is excellent

Jair Joined: 15 Jan 2018 Posts: 70 Location: Tokyo	Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 2:55 pm
Jair Joined: 15 Jan 2018 Posts: 70 Location: Tokyo	D wrote Good to hear the site is not lost. Phew. So happy to read this. They have a ton of cover and manual scans for 8-bit Sega. They're my go-to resource when I want to quickly check a game or the review scores it had in the 80s or 90s.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 3:06 pm
	:( we have all that stuff... Just need more contributors.

Jair Joined: 15 Jan 2018 Posts: 70 Location: Tokyo	Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 3:53 pm
Jair Joined: 15 Jan 2018 Posts: 70 Location: Tokyo	I would swear I've seen scans credited to SMSpower there... and maybe the other way around? On the whole SMSpower has an incredible amount of resources (as in: more), but I don't see it as a competition. I'm happy another Sega database didn't just vanish. I agree with another poster above: it's nice SMSpower keeps being SMSpower. :)

propoly Joined: 01 Oct 2019 Posts: 1 Location: Huthwaite	Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2019 7:14 pm
propoly Joined: 01 Oct 2019 Posts: 1 Location: Huthwaite	Just checked and it's back! Not sure what Tom was trying to say as there's a big difference between a redesign and an upgrade to phpv7. The php 7 version contains a number of deprecated commands and a rewrite of some code is unavoidable in some cases

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2019 12:59 am
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Well, it's been years since the last time I did something with php, so I had no idea that 7 is so much different, don't mind what I say, I just hate updates in general.

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