Gerard

I don't

Wow, there seems to be a TON of confusion in this topic. HFS is a neat little web server, it serves up pages and files in a nice easy way. Apache is a very powerful web server, it serves up HTML files. You then need PHP to turn PHP files into HTML pages for Apache to serve up. IIS does the same thing, serving up HTML files, and ASP.net converts ASP files to HTML when serving up. Apache is huge and confusing. You seem to be a bit of a computerist, so I'd recommend learning it, but it is really tricky. You can run it on Windows, but I've not tried that in a long time. If you just want a few files from your PC to be on the web, stick with HFS. If you want to run a website, get Apache, MySQL and PHP. I'd recommend doing that on Linux, but they can run on Windows too. A DNS server simply tells the user the IP address for the domain you request. It can NOT tell you the port number to use. So you could use it to say www.domain.com is at IP 1.2.3.4 whereas blog.domain.com is at 5.6.7.8 - you can't use it to say blog.domain.com should be at 1.2.3.4:8080. DNS servers can not show/fetch pages or redirect users or anything - it just tells them an IP. What you need is a reverse proxy server. This is where one proxy server (on your network) can request pages from other servers, but serve them to the user as if it came from the proxy (on the same ip/port). So you would have both domains pointing to your IP, and forwarding port 80 to the main web server, which you will use as your proxy. No need for a second port forward to the other server. The web server on your proxy (such as apache) then decides what to send to the user: either a page from somewhere on that server, or a page from another server. Of course the proxy server would need to be turned on for any of it to work. Apache can do this, using the mod_proxy module, but I don't think HFS can. You would need to use some additional reverse proxy server software, such as squid. (This is sort-of similar to web proxies which request other pages then send it back to you, but it works differently, and it's completely transparent to the user) The way big companies with a big website do this is that all their domains point to a group of DNS servers. They then send the user to different groups of dedicated squid proxy servers. They then pull the information from separate web servers (which get their information from separate database servers) and return it to the user. Files and images are sent from separate web servers. You're doing a very condensed version of this all on one/two servers.

We scrapped the groups idea, and replaced it with staff-appointed Gurus. These people will be selected for being helpful and knowledgeable, not through application or self-selection. No hot-shots, dicks, spammers or power-hungry crazies.

That is simply not possible. Aiming to get that to work would just be another big fail for this forum, and we can't afford that. Instead of aiming for a super-awesome gaming experience, we should make a decent forum experience that we KNOW we can maintain and manage easily, and that we know can help this site grow back and become better than ever. We're trying to figure this out, but it's not going to be MTA-centric, as epic as that may be.

You went two weeks then started again? I've seen fat people make new years resolutions that last longer than that. Not trying to be a dick, but addictions dont feel like addictions until you stop. The sign of it being an addiction is that you start again. There's NO good reason to keep doing it, so just stop, whilst you still can. If it's not an addiction now, it will become one.

Really, you reckon it's that easy? Why doesn't everyone do that then? If it's so easy, why not stop now?

It's not just the fact that the drugs you're taking now are harmful in the quantities you're having them. If you keep taking them for 20 years, of course it's going to have an overall effect on your brain, and it isn't going to make you happier or smarter. It's going to make you psychotic and paranoid. Or if you get bored of weed and move up to more harmful drugs, there's a good chance every single time that you won't wake up again. The reason that is most personal to me is that drugs are an expensive habit. So many people that I meet every single day are completely dependent on drugs. It's not a choice, they need their fix to survive. Of course nobody is going to employ a drug addict, so you won't ever get a job. Even if you did, you'd be off your face all the time so there's no point going. So they get involved in crime, gangs, prostitution etc etc etc just to feed their addiction. There's pretty much no way back from that, and the rest of your life will be spent stealing money to pay for your drugs. Every single day. Until you die. This is why I made the choice never to do drugs. Call me boring, but I'd rather miss out on a couple of hours of fun in return for actually having a life afterwards. For those that don't know, I'm a police officer, so I see this shit every day I'm out.

I have implemented the award/badge system - we've called it our 'Honours' system. All users who have been here for 5+ years, have 1000+ posts, or are staff will receive an award very soon. So long as you have posted in the last 30 days, otherwise the award disappears. These awards will be added and removed overnight. The old forum bosses have become "GTA Gurus" (which are the 'experts' I mentioned above). These users are the go-to people for any GTA-related questions. They have no special powers, but users will now recognise that they know what they're talking about. Gurus will be picked by staff, and we'll start this process off soon. You can see all Honours here. (By "Staff" I mean admins, super mods, section mods and site admins ONLY. No other users are staff. )

Okay, so we're saying there 4 special things members can do: Apply to join a gang, to get a badge and a private forum, participate in inter-gang competitions Join an cleanup group, to help work to clean up a specific section Apply to become a staff-approved TGTAP Expert, with a badge Be appointed as a staff member, to keep the forum running smoothly These are NOT staff positions (apart from the last one), and do not have moderator abilities. Experts wasn't mentioned in this topic, but it's something we've been considering doing too. What privileges, rights etc do you think these should have? Would a private social form & inter-gang competitions be enough reason to join a gang and keep people coming back?

After thinking about this more, I like the idea of users being recognised for expertise and effort, but I do not think that gangs (in this sense) should take over parts of the forum. I think that would be wrong. So I think that we should have a separate system where users work hard in certain areas (ie modding) and are become an official 'expert' for that area. Whether we go on voting, karma (+/- post ratings) or a staff decision, we can work out that detail. I think it might be a good idea to have teams who like the same sort of thing, groups that anyone can join. For example, there might be a modding team who work together to make the modding section awesome. They would run that section together by answering questions, maintaining lists of useful topics, starting discussions etc. I think gangs should be completely separate to this. Gangs are selective, social and competitive clubs. These expert groups are productive, and anyone can join. Given all that, what would you like gangs to be, do and have? I like Ivan's suggestion of more backstory. I always liked the ranks and stuff. I think gangs should be able to make a proper organisation with its own history, structure, criteria etc. Question is, what should they do with all that? Would a subforum on its own be enough? What more could they do?

One of the problems with gangs was that 1 or 2 "good" gangs picked up all the best members, because all the "good" members wanted to join them, not the others. How do we make it more balanced? Could we have a maximum of say 8 people in a gang? That way there will be a wider variety of gangs, and members will have to remain active to keep their position (rather than wasting a slot for their gang). Multiple gangs can team up too. I like the idea of groups of users specialising in certain subforums (like Forum Bosses) but I'm not sure that should be a gang. The idea of gangs is that they compete against each other, but the content of the forums should not be the battleground. We would end up with users spamming in a forum to get the most posts (to take it over), or even spamming in another gang's form to ruin it. I was considering using the rating/karma buttons, but that's too easy for gangs to abuse. Fully-integrated multiplayer gang wars is not possible, to be blunt.

Background & History Since this forum opened in 2004, gang have been a central feature of TGTAP. The gang system was initally supposed to be a large on-forum text-based RPG system, where users could team up, buy weapons and attack other users. An early beta version of part of this functionality was operational for a while but it was never finished. This ceased to exist when the forum software was upgraded, and was never fully remade. Efforts were made to integrate the forum gangs into Multi Theft Auto - an unofficial third-party multiplayer addon for GTA San Andreas. Whilst this forum did run an MTA server for a while, it was never integrated with the forum gangs and there was nothing special about that server. The gang system then simply became a series of private sub-forums, and users could join gangs to gain access to those communities. This persisted for several years, although when TGTAP became less active, most regular users posted only in those private sub forums, which only a handful of users could see, so they were closed last year to help keep the forum as a whole alive. Rebuilding the Gang System It is clear that people miss the gangs, and would like them to return. I think they were great, but I don't think the models we had before worked. So - which of these ideas would you like to see us do? Private forums for gang members - Quite simple: members of a gang can chat to each other in private Inter-gang competitions on the forums - Challenges and competitions such as making videos, writing stories, telling jokes, hottest members etc - but where gangs compete against each other Multiplayer GTA gaming - Running a free-for-all multiplayer server Fully-integrated multiplayer GTA gang wars - Holding gang wars, integrated with forum gangs, but this requires a lot of people to be online at the same time, and it might exclude people who don't own that game. This would take a lot of time and development, and we can't even guarantee that it's possible at this stage. Please tick ALL that you agree with - but please consider the time/effort that it would take to implement. If you have any other suggestions or comments - please add them below!

Chris never finished building the gang system, so on-forum gang wars never really happened. When we upgraded to IPB 3, the modifications had to be completely discarded. The MTA servers were fun for a while, but nobody finished the coding required to link it into the forum or do any gang-related games, so it was just a plain old MTA server. A few months ago, the gang forums were closed off and gangs ceased to exist. Only a handful of people bothered with gangs, and members were being active in the gang forums instead of the public ones, making us look even more inactive. I think gangs were good, but they need to be done properly. We're going to have a rethink (based on this topic) about how we move forward, and I think gangs will be making a partial comeback. But I don't think that a MMORPG-type system will exist (ie: gang wars), nor MTA integration, not for a while.

I think we'll see an announcement in the Summer. Looking at the job adverts at Rockstar North over the past few months, they haven't even started a lot of the work yet. Release probably March 2012 or even October 2012 if they haven't started yet (but that's unlikely).

Thanks for everyone's comments. Keep them coming. I'm hoping that we all pull together (at the same time) and make a decent effort to get this place moving again. It's no use one or two people being active for a few weeks, getting bored, then two other people coming back. A big reboot is definitely the order of the day. However, I would like a handful of people to help with this rebooting. Planning how we do everything, and perhaps becoming staff. Nothing is out of the question right now.

Alternatively, you can click the "Save All Information" button at the bottom of the dxdiag program. That will save a text file. Just open it up, copy its contents, and paste it here. That way, we can see exactly what graphics hardware you have.

Well GTW is full of detailed, in-depth content, useful information on just about every subject, lists etc. But the community is quite silent, people just get on with it, add/edit content, and don't hang around to chat. Often, new information can take quite a while to get on, as nobody is dedicated to make sure it is up-to-date. TGTAP had the community and the frequently-updated news, and it also has the downloads. It's very light on the information and content side. So a merger would take the best of both. Users on GTW would be invited to discuss things on TGTAP - every page could have a link to the relevant subforum or topics. Visitors to TGTAP could read the detailed content from the wiki rather than half a page of copied-and-pasted content. Sound okay to you? The technical details are yet to be worked out, but it wouldn't be a full merger like renaming it to TGTAP Wiki or GTW Forums.

What are your favourite games of 2010? Which do you think is the best overall? I won't do this as a poll as there are thousands of options! My favourite games of 2010 are: -Fallout New Vegas -Civilisation V -Just Cause 2 Others that you might like (but aren't my favourites) could be: -Red Dead Redemption -COD: Black Ops -Battlefield: Bad Company 2 -Alan Wake -Mass Effect 2 -God of War III -Splinter Cell: Conviction -Crackdown 2 -Bioshock 2 There are also tons of DLC and many expansions, such as Red Dead's Undead Nightmare.

I will slap Chris again. Because it takes quite a bit of time an effort to check and test every mod, and because we get dozens of these, he only does it every couple of weeks.

I was meaning let's get the community going, we can't rely on GTA to bring/keep people here. Lots of people, lots of discussion and chat and games and GTA info and help and mods and stuff.

Making GTA the focus again - That's a good point. I think GTA was pushed down because those forums were really inactive, and people wanted the discussion and community side more. People wanting the GTA stuff could find it easily if they wanted either way. Let's not forget that there isn't much GTA stuff happening right now, so making it GTA-only is just as much of a death sentence. Then again, I agree we should go back to what we're good at, and I think we can do this. The "Facebook crap" is all optional, and surely doesn't interrupt or disrupt your experience. Of course downgrading would be stupid, but we can simplify the layout and stuff though. I don't think an MTA server (or other ingame gang system) is going to work. It relies on everyone being in the same place at the time time, which just can't happen on an international forum of this size. Yeah we can definitely run one, but it just couldn't be the focal point of the community here. I like the idea of getting regular users to submit news (or join a news-posting team). As the Wiki founder, of course I believe in crowdsourcing and letting the users run the show here. I'll be working with Chris to see how much user-driven content we can get up here, and a merge with Grand Theft Wiki would definitely achieve that, and it would keep the whole site up-to-date. Yes GTA V is probably 9-15 months away, but we want to be ready with a great community for the run-up to that. With GTA IV, Chris waited until it was released then expected all the new visitors to magically make the community good again, and that didn't really happen. We need to be ready beforehand, and bring in the users as soon as they arrive.

What in particular? Chris & Co can't really force the old members to come back. What do you think would help?