Important Announcement About The Website

[Lamron]

I've been having trouble with the website hosting service (HostFor2Bucks.com) for the past year. FTP transfers don't work at all anymore and they ignore all service tickets and E-Mails. Everywhere I look searching for a solution I see the same complaint from lots of other website owners. HF2B ignores all attempts to contact them. There doesn't appear to be any employees at this company anymore, just automated hosting and billing programs.

My current hosting service expires 6-6-19, and I'm not going to pay them again. I need a working FTP service because I use the hosting space for storage for personal backups. I also sometimes want to do unusual things that need special authorization, like the Text Alert System I set up so players could invite others to the server (even though it hasn't been used in a long time). I need a company that I can actually communicate with. I've signed up for new hosting with Hostinger.com, but there is a problem. My domain name (LamronsPlayground.com) is locked by HostFor2Bucks.com and can't be transferred without an authorization code from them. I'm in contact with the registrar (Softlayer.com) about this problem. The "registrar" is the company that officially registers a domain name to an owner, so it can't be used by anyone else in the world. They're telling me that there is no way to force a hosting company to release a domain, but they have non-publicly-available ways to contact the company. Hopefully, they can get a release so I can get transferred to the new provider.

So where does that leave us? First, I am committed to keeping the domain name. Second, I want to keep the website running, even if only the Homepage is up for public viewing, because its useful to me in other ways to have private on-line storage. Of course, the other main function is to keep the COD4 server running by providing the files for maps/mods.

There probably will be some disruption to the Homepage during the next month, so make sure you bookmark/favorite the FORUMS separately from the website. The forums are hosted completely independently through ProBoards, so it will be accessible even if the Homepage is not.

Hopefully, I can manage to get the domain unlocked and transferred to the new host. Then I'll have to rebuild the website, but I have everything backed up, so that's pretty straightforward and won't take long.

Worst case scenario: If they continue to ignore all communication, the hosting will expire 6-6-19 and the website will be taken down. After that, the domain name is held for 45 days to allow the company to reclaim it (which they won't, because I'm not paying them). After the 45 days, the domain name is available and fair game for anyone who wants to grab it. Assuming I get it immediately, it will be back under my control again and I can get set up with the new hosting company.

[Lamron]

Future Plans: Website and Game Server


The new hosting company will give me greater storage and bandwidth than I previously had. Which means I could offer other services to LPmembers if desired. Some possibilities would be file storage, custom link pages (so they would be accessible anywhere away from your home computer), hosting widgets that monitor other info sources, or private E-Mail addresses that would not have ads or be scanned by Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. If anyone has any interest in these services or other useful ideas, please comment here or let me know.



The COD4 server has been running for the last year without anyone entering it, as far as I know. Personally, I've been playing COD WWII for all this time, but its an almost dead game and its hard to find anyone to play with. With the lack of private servers and no way to admin bad player behavior, people have lost interest in it. Without the ability to mod, problems don't get fixed and new content is rare, or cost money.

Is there any interest in attempting to revive COD4 again? I leave the server running because it doesn't cost me any money or effort, but I'd like to get some usage out of it again. Or is there some other game that has dedicated servers and mod capability that you would be interested in playing here? The industry has moved away from that model because they want you to buy the newest game each year, but I still think there's a bunch of people out there that would appreciate playing on a well-managed server with proactive admin handling the troublemakers and immediate fixing of bugs as they are found. Let me know what your thoughts are on what I should do with the server.

[Death's Shadow]

The last time I hosted I used Bluefang always had good luck with them. I would love to keep playing cod4 or any other game that you can host Lam. Prob is there is never anyone on. I am just a guilty as everyone else.. Had a lot on my plate this last year. If you do get something going let me know. I will be there with bells on. Hard to find any games where we get to mod and admin a server. Hate it. I much prefer the good old days of gaming.

[RedRock]

I'll give a response after I have time to think on it and type it out. Meanwhile, I've read this, and I thank you for the long-standing relationship and website and gaming.
RedRock

[Lamron]

The registrar says they can't get in contact with the hosting company that owns the domain name either, and they have no way to force the release.

My choices are: let the name expire on 6-6-19 and wait 45 days for it to be publicly available, and then buy it. Or, I can buy a different name and start new service immediately.

[RedRock]

Let it expire and wait to get it back, if you still want it. Meanwhile, just start with a similar new name. Email us few faithful, or the entire LP membership roster, with the new name (new IP), and if you want to change back in 45 days, you can do the same.
So, how about LamronsWorld instead of LamronsPlayground ? Sort of like Disney was DisneyLand in CA, but the bigger and better version in FL is DisneyWorld. A search for Lamron should still find it. Honestly, I have often worried about my employer seeing that I have been going to a site with "playground" in it. World just sounds more serious.
Or, THElamronsplayground, or LamronsplaygroundNOW or New or 2, etc., or LamronsUniverse or TheLamronVerse, etc.

How much are we talking about, $, anyway, for a new name? You always could have two domains, with one directing to the other, if you want.
Am I understanding it right?

As to the game server. Sigh. You've been a terrific modder, and very fair to your members, giving us admin rights and tools, and the weapons and skins and effects and maps are great. COD4 is not the problem, at least for me, nor that it's now a quite old old game. I was playing COD:UO (COD1.5, in essence) regularly and almost exclusively up until just 2 years ago, because I was in a clan of great guys who played regularly and fairly, and it too had a good admin group and gave me admin abilities, too. But that game just got too old, and then my Mac OS became so new it no loner ran the old game, and on Windows it didn't run as well, so I tried COD4, also an aging game by now, and it ran just fine on Mac (except for some punkbuster issues when PB is on)and on Windows through my Mac, and I found another group to play with that played team maps, so that's what I've been doing. For me, it's the team and the teamspeak/ventrillo experience, especially FreezeTag mod. I just can't stomach FFA. I don't have the reflexes or focus to click and click and click and run and run and run nonstop for 10, 20, 30 minutes or more nonstop with spawn die spawn die spawn die spawn kill spawn die spawn die....etc. I'm an old fart that likes to think and plan and be tricksy, and help out my teammates with info/intel and warnings and backup and healings/thawings. I like to sneak and snipe and tattletell. As long as the LP sever is just FFA, it's tedious for me. I only went in when it was some cool people there to visit with--Lost Child, Lamron, and a few others. I know Lamron you prefer FFA and said you'd freely play some team games IF WE GOT ENOUGH people into the server regularly. But I just don't see that changing. So, keep the game server if you want, but I don't personally think that will change what I'm doing. I'm planning to get a new Mac soon, with more VRAM (I have 1 Gb, need a min. of 2 Gb) in order to try a few newer games anyway, so I see me looking forward, not backward, away from COD4 and not back to COD:UO or 2 or MOH: BT or SH. I know I'm repeating myself, but that's just what I'm thinking. As always, the LP home page is my startup/home page, because it has so much on it I use regularly, so I hope to continue that, and I'll continue to donate some $ annually to help, as long as I'm doing that. Thanks for it all, Lamron!

[Lamron]

Is there any interest in other services I could provide on the hosting space, such as file storage or E-Mail?

[RedRock]

I don't know how much I'd use it, but it would be nice to have a confidential email address to use for some activities (lawful, of course). For example, for signing online petitions, or for setting up new social media accounts that require an existing email. I'm sure that if I think about it and monitor my emails over the next week or two, I'll notice examples of when I wish google and AOL weren't involved in my email handing.

I'm having trouble understanding your "custom link pages (so they would be accessible anywhere away from your home computer)" mention. Can you further explain or list and example?

File storage might be nice, if it's easy to do. Apple's iCloud is confusing, and Box and other online storage thing-ies are hard to use and require a bunch of extra steps and extra passwords. How would such a storage site be used in place of Box, etc., so that we could direct others to go to here to see a public file or download a file (with or without a password provided by us)? In general, of course. I know you can't do specifics in advance of such a setup.

[Lamron]

Custom link pages:

Two ways to do this:

The easy way: Go to the Favorites/Bookmarks manager in your browser and find the Export menu. There should be an option named "Export to HTML" or similar. It should ask you for a location. If you click on the file created, your browser should automatically open and show a simple page full of links for all of your Fav/Book items. Clicking on any of them will open a new page for that site. This file could be uploaded to the web storage space so from any computer you could type in one address and see all the Favorites from your home computer browser. This could be useful if you're frequently using other people's computers away from home, but want access to your saved sites without installing or downloading anything onto their computer.

The custom way: Same as above, but open the file with a text editor instead. Pick out only the sites you want and delete the rest. Now you have a custom link page that has only what you want, instead of your entire list.

For anyone using Windows, I can provide a program to automate this process by automatically creating and uploading the file daily.


=========================================================================================================

File storage:

I'm experimenting with file management software now, learning how it works and figuring out which one I want to use. Basically, you would be assigned a private folder in the storage space. There would be two ways to access it. First would be with the FTP client of your choice. This would give you full control of uploading/downloading/deleting/editing/etc. with no restrictions on activity or file sizes. The second would be through the browser. This way would require no software, making it easily accessible from any computer, but may have some reduction in features or maximum file upload size. Basically, its a browser based file explorer for remote files. Here is a link to a live demo of one of the file managers I'm considering, so you can get an idea of how it works: www.file-gator.com/gator/m/?cd=

BOTH methods, FTP client and website, would be available at all times. You could use either method to access your files. There would also be a way to create a direct link to a file so you could share it with anyone you wanted. I would probably also create a public folder that would be accessible by anyone, in case you had something you wanted to make freely available.

[Major_A]

interesting

[Lamron]

UPDATE:

The Home Page is now available through this temporary link to the new storage host:

u229666122.hostingerapp.com

There may be a few things that don't work correctly that I won't be able to fix until I actually have the domain name and proper DNS redirecting.

Make sure you Favorite / Bookmark this temporary link. The current hosting will end on July 6th, 2019 and www.LamronsPlayground.com will be gone.

I have decided to let the domain registration lapse and wait the 45 days for it to be available again. In the future, ownership of the name and hosting of storage will be separate services, so we will never have this problem again.

Also, I will be offering online storage space for your files. I'm working on making some modifications to the software that runs it. Details will come later.

When the new site is up, it will have a security certificate, so the address will convert to HTTPS, and all communication between your browser and the website will be encrypted.

[Death's Shadow]

sweet.. thanks for all the hard work

[Lamron]

Well, after 15 years the website is gone. Hopefully, everyone saved the temporary address or the forum address. It will be back up again as soon as possible. Still looking for ideas for the future.

[RedRock]

Jun 7, 2019 22:48:49 GMT -5 Lamron said:

Well, after 15 years the website is gone. Hopefully, everyone saved the temporary address or the forum address. It will be back up again as soon as possible. Still looking for ideas for the future.

Thank you for that, the 15 yrs of work and sweat and innovation, and thank you for letting me be part of it!

[Lamron]

Here's another example of why I'm not using HostFor2Bucks anymore. Today, 6-9-19, they sent me an invoice for the renewal with a due date of 6-7-19.