What ever happened to autopia?

Barry Theal

Barry Theal

New member
I write this from my iPhone so bare with me. Autopia was a place I use to come and visit a lot. It had a spot in my life everyday. I have met so many outstanding people on here and now it's over? I always tried to contribute anyway possible as well as learn from others. Since new ownership I feel this place will never be the same. For me as I post on other forums it doesn't feel the same, but now this place has been hit with viruses, format change and quite frankly I feel I'm not the only one who feels this way. While I enjoyed autopia alot. I think truthfully I problem won't return. It's just not the same place at all. Farewell autopians!



Barry Theal
 
Barry Theal- Hey, hope you reconsider. Yeah, this seems like a tough patch of problems, but I'm not ready to kiss it off just yet.
 
Barry and to anyone considering leaving this forum:

DON'T!!

Once an Autopian, always an Autopian & I won't abandon ship just because some hack decided to virus us up because of it. You can try going on other forums, but there will never be another forum like Autopia. This is the venue that all others try to mimmic and forum history has taken place here and will continue to get even better. You won't find another place that allows for a truely organic conversation coupled by non-agenda that both pros, manufacturers, industry reps as well as a vast assortment of newbies searching for unadulterated discussions. I recommend that everyone be patient while the admin gets this problem corrected and back to normal. Once it has, I suggest spreading the word like many already have but in a more positive form. Just because there's been a few set backs since the new owners took control doesn't make this place any different. I know for a fact that the transition to new ownership/control was less than desirable to say the least. Once this problem is solved, it will be even better than it ever has and will continue to flourish as the leader it will always be.
 
Am I the only one whose "New Posts" are unreadable? It's like the letters are overlapped with other letters.



Mike
 
MSOsr said:
Am I the only one whose "New Posts" are unreadable? It's like the letters are overlapped with other letters.



Mike
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No, you're not the only one...it's happening to me too.



David Fermani said:
Barry and to anyone considering leaving this forum:

DON'T!!

Once an Autopian, always an Autopian & I won't abandon ship just because some hack decided to virus us up...
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Good post David, glad you're sticking around.
 
yeah this site sucks big time now, it's slow, it's got a ton of bugs.



so what's an alternative detailing forum to look at?
 
its the people that make the place, not the forum or the current ownership. It really does feel like someone is running the forum half hearted though. Take a break but don't write the place off just yet.
 
Accumulator said:
Good post David, glad you're sticking around.
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No worries here. Patiently waiting for the forum to stabilize from this attack. Once people can be assured that it's safe here then I think the rebound will start to proceed like gangbusters.



DHCrocks said:
yeah this site sucks big time now, it's slow, it's got a ton of bugs.



so what's an alternative detailing forum to look at?
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I suggest waiting it out and searching through the archieves. Plently of good info to digest.



yakky said:
its the people that make the place, not the forum or the current ownership. It really does feel like someone is running the forum half hearted though. Take a break but don't write the place off just yet.
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Exactly. This place is still is the greatest place to secure information. Unless the owners pull the plug for good, I won't stop participating.
 
Reading through new posts was a good way to relax at the end of the day. But the delays to get this fixed is driving members away. 2 members and 75 guests when I wrote this.



Do we have to take up a collection plate to bring in some experts and get it done?
 
salty said:
Reading through new posts was a good way to relax at the end of the day. But the delays to get this fixed is driving members away. 2 members and 75 guests when I wrote this.



Do we have to take up a collection plate to bring in some experts and get it done?
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Well as you all know there are some loosers that get satisfaction by doing criminal acts!

Some like to ruin our walls by spraying graffiti.....

We are getting to the bottom of it.

It's not fun...
 
Whenever I needed a very specific information on detailing, I googled it up and autopia always has the most relevant results... Today I googled 3M imperial hand glaze and natty's blue...And there I have it on autopia...No other site has the information from mere googling..I guess this is because it's been around a lot longer than any other forum...Speaking from a newbie perspective who constantly find the need to get information autopia is like the detailing meriam-webster to me.. It's much more valuable to newbies than the pros.. Hopefully the admin and people running the site take this problem seriously..The way these people handle this problem to me *sorry to say* looks like they don't know or care how much value autopia actually has...If they never heard a member beg then here it's..please..please..please fix the problem immediately..thank you.



PS: Whatever it counts...don't leave yet Barry T..
 
Out of curiosity, rather than searching your DB for those injection points (it seems that post by 'admin' is gone now) why not just roll the DB back to pre-hack condition (like the Monday before it happened).



Sure ya'd lose some posts, but nothing major.



Woulda saved a ton of time.
 
HI Sulla,

thanks for your confidence in Autopia.org. We are taking this seriously and we had army of experts literally around the world. In the begining they all said "Oh..just do this and that it will be ok..." None of them worked and they all got surprised. If you ever visit vBulletin own forum site you will see that there are many other high profile sites has been hacked. Our experts (including the creators of vBulletin people) has not see anything like this before.

FINALLY WE GOT RID OF IT YESTERDAY. THE BEAST IS DEAD......So we are taking this seriously. It is not just restoring the site we also had to find how it happened.
 
I keep trying to hang on here but it's just sooo painful to visit a site that has pretty much halted itself for a long period of time. It's not as if it's been a week etc. It started just before the "official word" that the site had been sold, then the transition, then the site update, then the fixes, then the hack..



It's easy to make up excuses and blame this and that but at the end of the day.. Autopia presale was a solid community with some politics but a well visited, well representated community. Today, it's going on reputation alone. I can't imagine why anyone "new" would come here. Its simply a library of great information but nothing new for some time.



What also makes it that much more troubling is that the new owners don't appear to be listening to the community at all. The old Autopia seemed to be a bottom up management, listening the users and building up on that. Now it's a top down style where.. we'll do this and we're sure the majority of you will like it.. if not, you will eventually..
 
tunch123 said:
HI Sulla,

thanks for your confidence in Autopia.org. We are taking this seriously and we had army of experts literally around the world. In the begining they all said "Oh..just do this and that it will be ok..." None of them worked and they all got surprised. If you ever visit vBulletin own forum site you will see that there are many other high profile sites has been hacked. Our experts (including the creators of vBulletin people) has not see anything like this before.

FINALLY WE GOT RID OF IT YESTERDAY. THE BEAST IS DEAD......So we are taking this seriously. It is not just restoring the site we also had to find how it happened.
Click to expand...



Sorry for being blunt and if not overdue thank you...it's been days www.autopia.org results in error.... Im glad to hear from you..



Today I googled about red carlack (high tech vip) which's an extremely unexposed product maybe they only release it in asia...And guess what...googling yields only one thread in autopia that's actually relevant to what I'm searching for...



http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...ack+high+tech+vip&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
 
As was pointed out at another forum, maybe you guys (3D/Autopia) ought to send out an announcement and an apology via a new thread or an Email to registered members relating to this fiasco. I think it would be in your best interest to let everyone know instead of leaving everyone out there in the dark.
 
tunch123 said:
HI Sulla,

thanks for your confidence in Autopia.org. We are taking this seriously and we had army of experts literally around the world. In the begining they all said "Oh..just do this and that it will be ok..." None of them worked and they all got surprised. If you ever visit vBulletin own forum site you will see that there are many other high profile sites has been hacked. Our experts (including the creators of vBulletin people) has not see anything like this before.

FINALLY WE GOT RID OF IT YESTERDAY. THE BEAST IS DEAD......So we are taking this seriously. It is not just restoring the site we also had to find how it happened.
Click to expand...



Tunch, thanks for your hard work. I'm sure these things are a pain to deal with. I think a lot of the contributors here would appreciate some better communication as to what is going on. For about a week people have been getting all sorts of errors when trying to access the site. A simple re-direct with a page stating what is going on, how your team is working to resolve the issue and an ETA estimate would be great. We're all patient and love this site, but when you keep seeing an error page, you start to question the site owners capabilities.
 
yakky said:
Tunch, thanks for your hard work. I'm sure these things are a pain to deal with. I think a lot of the contributors here would appreciate some better communication as to what is going on. For about a week people have been getting all sorts of errors when trying to access the site. A simple re-direct with a page stating what is going on, how your team is working to resolve the issue and an ETA estimate would be great. We're all patient and love this site, but when you keep seeing an error page, you start to question the site owners capabilities.
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+1, extremely well put
 
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