CONTINUOUSWAVE

The new forum began five years ago on October 9, 2015. October 9, 2020 marks the end of five years of the new forum.

The forum has about 31,000 posts, an average of just under 17-posts per day. The forum has over 5,000 topics, an average of 2.75 new topics per day. The forum has about 5,200 registered users, about 2.85 new users per day.

The Old Forum ceased operation in September 2015, due to a catastrophic loss of the server hardware. Other than the forum, the rest of the website was back on line quite rapidly, and a complete backup of all content was used to restore the hundreds of pages of content outside the forum. All old forum content was also restored and preserved.

I decided at that time to change to a new forum software. The transition took me about two weeks to accomplish. Other than not having a forum available for about two weeks, the recovery from the loss of the server hardware was fairly rapid and accomplished with very minimal data loss.

The website has been on-line since the very early days of the internet and the http protocol, beginning in 1997 with just a few experimental pages I created in the new language of HTML. An archived version of the website from March 1997 is still available, thanks to the internet wayback machine. All the HTML was written by hand using a text editor, a method I still prefer in order to general very simple and very fast HTML encoding.

For the entire 23-years of operating the website, all content has been available to any visitor, without requiring registration or payment of any fee, and almost all the content has been preserved, archived, and is still on-line. The website uptime is about 23-years minus about two weeks or 99.83-percent.

Twenty-three years ago I was only 47-years-old, and I had a lot more energy and enthusiasm for learning new technologies. I had been on the internet for about a year, and an entirely new protocol had just come into prominence, the HTML language and the HTTPD server side code. I was able to install my own HTTPD server on a Sun Sparcstation-1 I had purchased in order to learn the Unix operating system and I was blessed with a high-speed 14.4-kbps dial up connection to the internet via a dedicated telephone line I had installed. Most internet participants had only dial-up access and often only at 9600-bps or slower. Today's world of global internet with connection speed of 1-gigabite-per-second to your home were unimaginable back then.

Jim, thank you for doing what you do.
The forum is of great value and entertainment to many.

Con

Thanks so much Jim. I really appreciate all of your hard work.

I forgot to mention benefits of the new forum compared to the old forum. Here are a few:

• ability to edit a post after submitting it to correct errors
• ability to upload files to be hosted by the website
• ability to include images as in-line elements in a post
• ability to engage in private messaging with other participants
• ability to easily search for new posts or unread posts

There is, however, one drawback to the new forum. The old forum created a static HTML page which was the perfect element for search engines to find and index. As a result, the OLD FORUM was extremely well indexed in the major search engines. The new forum does not create static HTML pages, but generates the HTML on-the-fly as a visitor asks to see a particular topic. This may reduce the visibility of some forum content to search engines. However, the forum's own built-in search engine--another improvement compared to the old forum software--provides very comprehensive searching of all content in the new forum.

The forum has been a wonderful resource for me since 1999 when we bought our first Boston Whaler, a Dauntless 16. Thanks to your forum I got the engine mounting height right and was able to select a propeller that was ideal for our use. Ten years later we moved up to a 190 Montauk and I was able to get the electronics "just right" by using your forum. Thank you for adding hugely to our enjoyment of boating.

Thanks Jim for all your hard work keeping the site running and ensuring the posts are clearly written.

JimH, I concur with the others about content and resources that benefit all of us who participate. I would like to add that I have a bunch of not so newfound friends that I otherwise would have never met without participating in this website. Think Biggie, Janice, Len and many other fellow Florida Whaler people that enjoy getting together for a restoration and or a party weekend( preferred). Not to forget the folks in Michigan that I met one fun night before Xmas and Martha and ConB who welcomed me into their home on a visit to Upper Michigan. This website and it's participants probably enjoy a much better ratio of close and or distant fellowship than most others with similar forum content. That is not an easy feat unless your passion is Harley Davidson motorcycles, then you can find a friend on every corner.

Congrats and thank you for your hard work and efforts jimh. — It’s been fantastic using this site, and I recommend it to others all the time. (I just warn them to use proper grammar and punctuation.)

It’s a great website with incredible information. I check it daily. The upgrade made it even better.

Thanks JimH, I have been a forum member, both old and new site and although social media has taken over I still enjoy the old http protocol!