A word about older Viperpits posts that are missing, or have dead links---Over the years, we have had a few site crashes- but we
rarely lose actual posts. Old posts often are still there, they are just hard to find through routine "searches"
FYI, searches should be run from the main "Home" page or the "Forum" index page. If you try to run a search while reading a specific topic or post, the search engine may only search the topic you are viewing. The search engine may not go back and run the search on ALL forum posts.
Examples of problems we have encountered:A few members that quit in anger, and spitefully delete their accounts.
When they deleted their accounts, all their photos & posts would magically disappear.
Because of this, forum posts are are now kept, even if they quit and delete their logon account.
A long time ago, many of the GIF / JPEG photo data files were inadvertently converted from binary format to ASCII format during a data backup. This conversion corrupted all the older image files. There were no intact backups at the time, and attempts to re-construct the corrupted image files were unsuccessful.
(We appreciated those with tech skills who attempted to fix this)
Members would often post photos by linking to their own photo sharing sites (like photobucket or coppermine). If members didn't continue paying their photo hosting fees, or if the photosharing site changed their terms of use, those links went dead.
That is why we always recommend attaching photos to your post and saving them here on our server. BTW, browsers load images quicker when they are located on the same server, rather than fetching them from an outside source. Some outside sites limit the number of downloads, or throttle download speeds when transferring files to other web hosting sites.
Finally, some posts include an URL address or you-tube, that doesn't work anymore. Older posts using "
http://www", rather than newer "
https://www" sometimes cause these problems. Our forum software does not always catch these and re-direct to new HTTPS format. If you click on a link and it doesn't appear to work, check if the referenced URL is formatted as
https://www
Still, there are many older Viperpits posts that do have dead links or won't load photos. Some missing photos require the original author to re-load their images, but if they are no longer active, this is unlikely to happen.
Let me know about specific posts that are a problem. This might help identify patterns of older posts that don't work now. We probably can't fix all of them... but we can try
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