2023 - Scholars is Back Online

[James]

Greetings old friends,

A rather long time has passed since Scholars of Shen Zhou (and Kongming’s Archives and SimRTK) went offline. In 2020 a bit of a re-appearance was managed, but then another challenge knocked us back offline. Specifically, web hosts dropped support for the version of PHP all of these websites were built upon, meaning some upgrades and code rewrites were needed to come back online.

Which could have been done, given enough time, but I wasn’t doing so well. So more time passed.

Some work is going to be required, but I wanted to get these websites back online, and in recent history I have started devoting more time and energy to this effort. Right now SoSZ seems a bit naked, in the default phpBB theme, but that, too, can be refreshed with some time. Needless to say, a fair amount has changed since the custom scholars theme was written, and it, too, needs a rewrite.

I don’t know how many of you, my old friends, are still floating around, or how many of you still think about and miss this community. I know some of you do. But even if the traditional internet forum is a bit of an oddity these days, and it may not draw much attention from the broader community, I do, in the least, want all the knowledge shared here to remain available; for this to remain a place where we can chat and stay in touch, and where all of the personal history anyone has shared, here, to be available again. Maybe the “time for a traditional internet forum” hasn’t truly passed—social media never felt quite like the right answer, if only to me.

Please check in. Say hi.

Let me know if things are busted. Some things probably are.

Hi, again. It has been a while.

James

(Edit: Simulated RTK forums should now be back online as well. I’m told they are! Everything should be set up online for people to be able to access it, but amusingly enough, I am still unable to myself. It should be waiting on domain name changes to propagate across hosts and the world right now. If you get the error, it probably hasn’t propagated yet.)

[XuSheng]

No way, I happened to randomly check this after a year or so and it just came back. What a coincidence.

Hey James, I was more a lurker than anything else, but I have so many memories and knowledge from this place. So glad that it's back online.

I hope everyone is doing well.

[Kong Wen]

I still visit here every day.

[James]

Hey James, I was more a lurker than anything else, but I have so many memories and knowledge from this place. So glad that it's back online.

My pleasure! I suspect more than a few people were lurking back in the day. Makes me smile that you were just randomly checking on it. I’m with you on the memories. It’s funny how many of them are coming back to me now.

It will stay online this time.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Me too…

[James]

I still visit here every day.

Ah, Mr. Kong!

At least that allowed for the possibility of surprise. For a long time I opened up a collection of tabs whenever I sat down at the computer, and they included KMA, SoSZ, and SimRTK. It was a bit of a bummer seeing those error messages over and over again. Maybe something in my mind thought it would be good to keep it about as “to do,” but even when I stopped opening tabs, this never stopped nagging at my mind as something I wanted to do.

[Daolun]

JAMES. My man. Thank you for the hard work in restoring this beautiful gem. Happy to see it back.

[Aaron.K]

Very glad to see the forum is back. Glad to hear you are doing well now James. Missed this place.

[Xiahou Mao]

Hi! I'm alive too. Still pretty and/or cute.

I'm spreading the word as well, so you might have Elysia attacking you soon, as she is wont to do.

[ky9ersfan]

Glad to see the site back up and running, and I am also glad to see everyone is okay.

[Bei Tianmeng]

While I never actually spent time posting in this area, as SimRTK is what drew my attention, I am quite happy to see this come back online. Talk about a surprise getting that email today saying as much. So much time spent in these communities that I'm glad it wasn't going to be gone forever! Thank you for this and happy new year to all.