News Item - January 01, 2000 09:04 PM
We're live! Hopefully the server overhead will be sufficient to handle our traffic levels. It just keeps growing... I never imagined it would be this way after a year and a half. Over 2 million hits, and an average of 830 individuals checking in daily. The largest Z Club in the States is around 600 members. We might have more territory, but our active membership is still larger, the overall size of the TwinTurbo.NET community is well over 5,000 members.
OK, OK, enough with the feel good, here's the pay-off as it were. Greg & I could have been content with the forum the way it was, but with a couple additional tweaks to make life easier on us. We decided to raise the bar for the membership, offering an even better site for the Z32 community. We've had features sitting in the background of the old forum waiting for the chance to be set 'live'. Once the pile got large and we felt the old tricked-out freeware had exceeded it's usefullness in our hands, to go further and add these features, we needed a fresh approach. The V2K software is still pretty raw, there's a lot of performance tweaking to be done. The platform and theories behind it's creation will allow Greg & I to really propel TwinTurbo.NET to the next level. Things might be bumpy at first, like it was when we first started 400,000 messages ago. Be patient with us, we refuse to issue a substandard forum. This might mean scrapping everything we've got built here now. I'm ready to make that sacrifice if need be, but I'm sure it won't come to that. Greg & I have worked too long and argued way too much over this thing for it to fail.
We could only program so far. Our Beta Test Team beat it around quite a bit and offered many opinions on the functionality and overall feel of the new site. I want to thank them for taking time to help us with the new forum, they will benefit the most. I also want to thank Greg for putting up with me when I would insist on things working the way I wanted them, even when it went against everything he was programming. More often then not, I would ask for a change and he'd already have it done, or be working on it. A better programming partner and teacher I couldn't ask for. Thanks G for making all this possible! I'd still be fumbling around with the For Sale forum trying to make it work on the old forum, now I can actually understand the old software. I won't comment on the new stuff, it's on a totally other level. :-)
Wish us luck!
Written by Dallas DamonZ
News Item - December 31, 1999 03:02 PM
The time has come! Hope everyone is having a pleasant 1-1 or 12-31 depending on when you read this. Happy New Millenium!! How does it relate to tt.NET? V2K forum software launches tomorrow. We'll be kicking offline at 11:30pm cst tonight and the server will start indexing the remaining messages into the database. I backed up all the current messages, the total size was 2.4G of disk space. Not surprising, as we're passed 450,000 messages now. We should be back tomorrow evening sometime with the new forum software. As always, stay tuned!
News Item - December 28, 1999 05:51 PM
Yeah! 2 Million hits!! We nailed this one in the last 7 months, the first one took a year to attain. Thanks for all the support since we've opened! Now... drumroll please! The winner is:
PriZe package: 1 Z hat & shirt from RT, 1 1/24th scale model TT from JeNN, 1 SGP T-shirt from SGP Racing & 1 Z Commercial CDROM from TTZD.com ALSO late entry to the priZe pile... the new Austin Powers movie on DVD courtesy of Jack B. (thanks Jack!)... Justin, shoot your address to me, we'll get stuff mailed directly to you!
Dallas DamonZ, Greg (Dallas) & Steve Simmons - the TwinTurbo.NET Admins
News Item - December 28, 1999 03:19 PM
SGP Racing has thrown in a SGP T-shirt to the priZe package! Thanks to SGP, JeNN & RT (insert today's subtitle here) for the 2M goodies. More details below & lower.
News Item - December 28, 1999 02:52 PM
JeNN just added a Tamiya 1/24th scale model Z32TT to the prize list! Thanks to JeNN and RT for making 2M a contest today!! ;-) More details below.
News Item - December 28, 1999 02:16 PM
Notice something different about the site's counter? Yep, here we go again! 2 Million hits should roll sometime tonight. We're tracking the hits to see who the 2 millionth visitor really is. Prizes??? Prizes???? RT is throwing in one of his cool black Z logo hats. The logo is in white, same one used on shirts he did a month ago. I'll throw in one of those fabled CDROMs with all the Z commercials on it. Fabled you ask? Well... Mike B. STILL hasn't gotten his stuff from the 300Z.com re-launch contest. Sorry Mike! :-((( I get working on it & then get sidetracked with work or V2K here. Anyway, if I sit down and burn about 2 more tries, everything should be totally revised and ready to roll! So... 2 million scores a Z hat and a CDROM of all the Z commercials I could find (33+). If you don't have a valid e-mail account in your profile... tough luck! That's the only way I have of contacting you. The next hit with a valid account wins the goods.
News Item - December 13, 1999 12:14 PM
A long time since I've updated the NEWS page, so I'll do my best to play catch-up. First off... Y2K is days away. Greg & I are confident everything is a go for making the jump to 2000 with the current software. The 2K forum software (It used to be V3.0) should be ready to go at the beginning of the year. We had a spurt of 2 weeks where we were able to get some major work done on it. We're very close now, just adding the finishing touches & doing some polishing.
I've got a freeze on the ancillary pages (FAQ, RIDES, etc.) to keep from having to balance stuff between the current forum and the new forum. So I've got a pile of RIDES images to clean up & the FAQ pages are standing still for now.
Behavior on the forum... NZR is Not Z Related, meaning I or one of the other admins or moderators will probably delete it the next time we are in the admin tool set. Don't whine about it getting removed, because it wasn't supposed to be posted on a Z discussion forum anyway... Deal with it. Also, we've had a couple people posting pics/links to some objectionable items. These will be removed too. Please think before posting. This isn't a locker room, it's not just guys reading this... There are Z loving ladies out there reading their way through the forum too. For example: if you're a guy, would you like it if one of them posted a pic w/ a guy wrenching on a Z with his.. uh.. 'equipment' exposed? No, you wouldn't. I know I don't want to see anything like that, which is what they are being exposed to. Yech! No double standard here. They will be removed, it's not what we're here for. Polling Qs are getting shot down by the membership, thank you for that. E-mail is still overrated. I use e-mail all the time, you should too.
Really nothing else to say right now. Enjoy the Ride!
News Item - September 24, 1999 03:06 PM
Office bandwidth needs might cause me to stop down TwinTurbo.NET on Monday. Not sure how that is going to pan out quite yet. I was running the new box today at a rate of 890kbps, not sure what TwinTurbo.NET actually consumes in peak afternoon time. I have the ability to limit bandwidth for just the site, so I might trim it back significantly (wide open right now) to facilitate the office's needs. But I know how the site reacts to having the pipe squeazed, so... we'll have to see. Kinda cool to shoot a high res MPEG2 movie to California & back. No satelite crap or counter to counter delivery. It's a little soft looking, but for approvals, it might make life a LOT easier around here. Especially when it means we'll need a faster internet connection. Ah, the convergence of post production/broadcast and internet. :-)
News Item - September 15, 1999 07:01 AM
We have a winner! Congrats to Mike B. for being the 300th through the link to 300z.com. He scores the KATO model & a pre-release CDROM of every Z commercial I could find, 240Z-Z32!
Here's the rundown:
#290 09/14/99-22:37:50-SeedyRom #291 09/14/99-22:37:51-J.R. (phx) #292 09/14/99-22:37:52-J.R. (phx) #293 09/14/99-22:37:52-J.R. (phx) #294 09/14/99-22:37:52-SleeZ #295 09/14/99-22:37:52-wesman #296 09/14/99-22:37:52-GTR(Houston) #297 09/14/99-22:37:55-Mike B (Houston) #298 09/14/99-22:37:55-SeedyRom #299 09/14/99-22:37:55-Jeff B (San Antonio) #300 09/14/99-22:37:55-Mike B (Houston) #301 09/14/99-22:37:55-J.R. (phx) #302 09/14/99-22:37:56-J.R. (phx) #303 09/14/99-22:37:59-beanz(Dallas) #304 09/14/99-22:37:59-RichZ #305 09/14/99-22:37:59-Zuper
Also, please read the instructions on the intro page, that's what this is all about. Don't just barge into the forum & then not have any idea of what all the number people are posting mean... :-\
Thanks
News Item - September 13, 1999 01:14 PM
OK, lets review the rules for posting on the forum...
1. PLEASE do a [ Search ] and check the [ FAQ ] before [ Posting a New Message ]. With 335,000+ messages in the archives, someone has probably already touched on whatever you have a question about. If, after doing these steps, you still have a question, then get specific and let's get the answers/opinions you're after.
2. This is a new one, DO NOT post a poll question eliciting a response from each and every one of the over 4000 members. Like 'what do you do for a living' or 'how old are you'. I'm sure you're not going to need to know EVERYONE'S whatever. If you want to know a couple people's info, then hit them up through e-mail. Because we all know e-mail is way over-rated around here. The full blown poll Qs will get nuked as soon as I see them. Nothing but a waste of bandwidth. If you had done step 1 above, you'd find a couple threads with over 150 posts each on those two topics in particular.
3. Non Z Related stuff can go at any time. In general if it's at least a question about another car (we happen to spend a lot of time discussing other cars) I'll let it ride for a bit. if it's not, it goes whenever I'm in the admin tool set.
4. I'm guilty of this one on occasion, but it's getting worse and worse for the general membership: Using the forum for chat. Once again, e-mail is way over-rated. If the other party doesn't have e-mail listed.. tell them to mail you. Or, just drop the whole conversation. Nothing makes me happier then seeing a couple of members banter & the 3rd line is 'check your e-mail'. Ah, joy! These will fall in line with the NZR stuff. When I'm in the admin tool set, they'll disappear too.
Overall this is to slow the forum's roll-over down some. Please make a conscious effort to follow through on these procedures.
V3.0 Beta forum software tests have been going VERY well. I'm porting a sample of it over to the live forum to do severe load testing to see if the speed will live through the afternoon rush. Hopefully we can run on it sometime next week to see how well it works.
