Pinball Nirvana is NOT going to shut down...

[JonPurpleHaze]

Well, it's a sad day that I have to announce this but now it's unavoidable.

I no longer have the time to devote to the site and the php version that the site runs on is going to be removed from the hosting company's servers very soon. I believe the End Of Life date is January 19th, I've previously tested upgraded versions of the php and everything breaks, we were also forced to upgrade the php back in October of 2014 and the only reason it's been running since then is because php error reports were turned off back then.

I think February would have marked the 13th year of me being involved with the site and it's been a labor of love but everything must end sooner or later. For those wondering about IRPinball which is also hosted by me, the hosting was paid up for 2 years (for PN and IRP) last year, so it will continue to run until the hosting expires in January 2017.

My sincere Thanks to everyone that made the site successful!
Jon
(edit: added a NOT into the thread title, see the thread contents about this change!)

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

thanks for everything you've done, JPH. 13 years is soitenly an eternity on the internet!

with this place shutting down, it's definitely the end of an era. so much history is preserved in the posts and threads here that it's a shame to think that it's all going to get lost. then again, if a tree falls in the woods...

i don't know where the 'hip' VP place is these days, but my time in VP has long since passed, anyway. i have bill and steve on facebook. if any of the other VP long-timers want to connect there, let me know.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Well, that's just downright heartbreaking. Jon, we owe you one of those debts that can't ever be repaid. You made a fantastic place for a bunch of goofy people to hang out at. You were a marvelous host. But just because you told us in advance doesn't mean we won't send Nic hunting for you online in a couple years!

There were and will be plenty of other pinball community sites, but Pinball Nirvana was the only one that was truly the People's Pinball Site, even if they just stopped by to bitch about what was going on at another pinball site (guilty as charged). You and Pinball Nirvana were here for everyone, no matter race, color, creed or sanity.


You know what, Bill? I don't think I would like to know more

 

[Coil_Smoke]

The 7 words George Carlin spoke of come to mind ...

 

[Coil_Smoke]

The 7 words George Carlin spoke of come to mind ...

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

twice is a bad omen... agree / disagree?

 

[StevOz]

Thanks John, 13 years hosting any site is an incredible achievement and certainly a record for a virtual pinball site.

"so long and thanks for all the fish!"

 

[pinballdaveh]

THANK YOU John for such a great site. its been fun taking on repair challenges. hopefully my experiences has helped many forum members with their repairs. thanks for allowing me to post my manly man episodes. that other site shot my first one down in 1 day. whats up with this server company anyway. should i send my cousin tony to make them an offer they couldn't refuse? losing this site is like a part of me is being ripped out of me. parting is such sweet sorrow.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Boy, that's the worst part about PN's demise... the "repair" section was really starting to pick up some traffic, thanks to Coily, Daveh and our other fine experts. You guys deserve a lot of credit for the help you've given.

 

[bha19]

Great site so I am sorry to hear it is going down. Thanks JPH!

 

[Liteuser.]

Thank you JPH for letting us know about the closing. I have had a lot of fun here at Pinball Nirvana over the years. Thanks again!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

THANK YOU John for such a great site. its been fun taking on repair challenges. hopefully my experiences has helped many forum members with their repairs. thanks for allowing me to post my manly man episodes. that other site shot my first one down in 1 day. whats up with this server company anyway. should i send my cousin tony to make them an offer they couldn't refuse? losing this site is like a part of me is being ripped out of me. parting is such sweet sorrow.

pinballdaveh, one thing i was always kind of curious about is whether you took it upon yourself or whether you had an arrangement with jon to field the tech Q's here? before you, there was another guy from texas who had that role, and it almost seemed like the baton got traded off smoothly betweenst you.

there's also the mystery of how this site could be so quiet in general except for the steady stream of owners reporting problems with their machines. i don't think we ever cleared up that mystery, did we...?

...

if only there was a little more time before the cutoff, it would be kind of fun to put together a 'best of / worst of' list of PBN escapades.

of course, most of the main players don't show up here anymore (like pacdude, bob, phoenixx, shockman, shiva, tilt, etc), so for newer folks, our squabblings, hilarity and various atom bombs dropped would all be kind of irrelevant. i guess.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

I never got my North Korean flag! As of January 19th, you're fired, Steve!



JPH, who do we talk to about converting our credits into dollars? I'm gonna be rich!

 

[pinballdaveh]

three years ago i found this site out of pure luck. i have never known or talked to or having any arrangement with anybody about this site before or after joining. some people on this site post their repair problems on that other site also. its kinda fun to get people their answers before the experts on that other site. i dont know about this guy from texas or how smart he is or how many problems he has solved. i feel that i have shared all of my pinball knowledge to help people get their machines repaired to be playable in the 3 years ive been here. im not a smart computer pc person , but i admire the people that are , and thank them for sharing their time also. ive been proud to be an active member of this site and will be sad when it shuts down.

 

[StevOz]

Well Ruby I never got that pay rise either, I tell ya, pay and conditions around these parts are only slightly better then those in North Korea! :)

 

[GSGregg]

JPH, who do we talk to about converting our credits into dollars? I'm gonna be rich!

Such a large arcade.....so little time.....

No more burying one's head in topics from the early days to find out who did what to whom as the dot-com VPF was raling.....

Thanks for everything, Jon! Be well.

Gregg

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Hey, best of luck, if I don't see you around, Gregg! That first Peter F. Hamilton book was a fine thing. I've got The Dreaming Void on my Ipod but, golly, that means starting three long books!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

three years ago i found this site out of pure luck. i have never known or talked to or having any arrangement with anybody about this site before or after joining. some people on this site post their repair problems on that other site also. its kinda fun to get people their answers before the experts on that other site. i dont know about this guy from texas or how smart he is or how many problems he has solved. i feel that i have shared all of my pinball knowledge to help people get their machines repaired to be playable in the 3 years ive been here. im not a smart computer pc person , but i admire the people that are , and thank them for sharing their time also. ive been proud to be an active member of this site and will be sad when it shuts down.

this is the very thing that makes me feel warm and flummoxy about the VP scene.

if i was a rich man (and a big dummy!), me shell out money money money to make problem go away!

shiva... what about shiva? that dude is super-smart with PHP and stuff, and has the additional valued quality of being resentful towards the VP scene.

 

[Sonora70]

I'm really disappointed and hate to see the forum go away. This forum gave me the courage to buy my first fixer and the help I have received from this site has been amazing. I find myself reading through different post even about pins I do not own, learning from others on this site has taken the place of watch TV every night. It's a shame to see such a vast amount information be lost. I wish I could catalog it somehow for research. Thanks again for the site and the help!

 

[GSGregg]

Hey, best of luck, if I don't see you around, Gregg! That first Peter F. Hamilton book was a fine thing. I've got The Dreaming Void on my Ipod but, golly, that means starting three long books!

Haha! Only three? I just looked up Wikipedia's article on The Void, and found that the Nightsdawn Trilogy had a head start; a seven-short-story collection headed by A Second Chance At Eden. If there were an Asimov Award for Prolificitycation, Peter H. would win it!

And I thought I was doing well, after my dropoff in reading, to finish a 250-page job called Surf Beat: rock'n'roll's forgotten revolution, by Kent Crowley. I found it on the Resources page of International Musician (the AFM monthly mag) July 2013 issue, and bought two, giving one to a guitar-and-harmonica-playing friend for Xmas, who says he read it in one sitting(!!!); it took ME two years
____________________________
Let's see.....The Rogue rescued Yogiholzer's Gallery a while back; hey, Itchigo! Got any room for some archives?

 

[sleepy]

Thanks for everything Jon. Before it vanishes, can we at least make sure to get a snapshot uploaded to the Internet Wayback Machine?

www.archive.org

Be well all. :)

Yahoo! offers hosting for $9/Mo. I wonder...

Make sure to save your List of Arcade Favorites! Some of those Flash games can be found at the AARP site! But not me!

 

[Itchigo]

Jon, thanks for everything. I first got my start at IRP, then here. It's really the end of an era IMO.

You guys are more than welcome at my place, I'll setup whatever you like. I've had an arcade for some time already.

What's going to happen to all the files?

shiva... what about shiva? that dude is super-smart with PHP and stuff, and has the additional valued quality of being resentful towards the VP scene.

I asked Shiva and AJ about working with me at Rogue. They just want to fade away.

Let's see.....The Rogue rescued Yogiholzer's Gallery a while back; hey, Itchigo! Got any room for some archives?

Sure do! Think I have like 70gb left of my 100.

 

[sleepy]

Hey Jon! How large is this entire site, all files, in total GBs? Is money an issue?
Will you be saving a full backup? How much disk space is needed to do that?

I checked the Internet Wayback Machine. They have the Flash games stored. But not the forum posts. At least not the ones that I checked.

 

[Itchigo]

Assuming Jon would allow this (and it's totally his decision), what would be the best way to repopulate things? Make a PN archive section? Or just mix things in with current categories?

 

[sleepy]

Given that "How Did You Like That Movie..." thread and how it just keeps on going, an archive would kill it. We would have to start the threads all over again! So I'd prefer a mix-in, I think. But that's a ton of work for you. I hope not.

Jon was saying that the current vbulletin ver.3.8.1 is at end-of-life, so anything based on that software might need conversion and debugging.