Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Discussion and topics that don't fit elsewhere.
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rbc
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Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by rbc »

I was poking around on archive.org this afternoon. Back in 2013, rockman-gearup.com had over 800 users. At 40 users, we're pretty far from there. It looks like I have some work ahead to get back to that kind of number.
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Guitarvamp
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Re: Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by Guitarvamp »

I think you're missing some critical data. Just because there were 800 members does not mean that anyone logged in. How about the number of people that logged in more than once or twice? How about the regular members that logged in on a consistant basis, and then posted by contributing to the conversation? THAT number is about the same, I'd say. It's about the quality of content, not the number of Facebook 'likes' or Youtube hits. ;)

You also have to remember that we are talking about a 30 year old product that is no longer made, no longer in business, and no longer supported. Even back in the heyday, it wasn't a terribly popular product. I think it was a bit of a "fashion" product of the 80s. Everyone had one, everyone used it, but it was also the popular trendy sound of the day. It had it's time in the spotlight, and it came and went. Those that saw the usefulness and potential, are here on this board now. We are the faithful followers, and the carriers of the Rockman torch.
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iZheil9152
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Re: Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by iZheil9152 »

Speaking of the former site.
A few months ago I cleared out the trash on my computer to later find I had deleted an important file. So I got one of those hard drive recovery apps for my computer. It preformed a full scan of my hard drive and gave me every file my computer has created. Among those were some browser screenshots (for gov tracking?) and since I was really getting into rock an at that point, a lot of the screenshots are from the old gear up forum. If anyone is interested in seeing some of the old site, I'll post the screenshots on here.
Dale
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Re: Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by Dale »

There were quite a few very good threads and information on the old board, if you could repost any that would be great!
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iZheil9152
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Re: Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by iZheil9152 »

I'll go through my old pictures and find them. Just remember, these are screenshots my browser took. They aren't going to be full forum topics.
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rbc
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Re: Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by rbc »

I'll do some more looking around on archive.org and see what I can bring over. 23 June 2012 seems to be the last snapshot with data:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120623002 ... /index.php
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iZheil9152
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Re: Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by iZheil9152 »

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing
Here are some pictures of the gearup site. Some are attachments from some of the members (the a12-50 circuit, Tom's pedalboard/rack). These are just a FEW of the gearup snapshots I have. There is also 1 iPad screenshot from RC.com. I could not recover any snapshots from RC though.

Ill try and look for more pictures and present them in a better way than google drive soon


The only problem with that wayback link is it signs you in under the bot Alexa who is not authorized to read the forums and you cannot log out. Even when I do log out it logs me back in or returns an SQL error
RockmanCentralBob
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Re: Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by RockmanCentralBob »

Well, you got probably the most important picture from RockmanCentral.com.... the 6 band EQ settings.
Slap that in front of a Marshall Plexi and you've got the early Boston tone.

I started finding RockmanCentral pictures on other sites (including ones I was banned from) after I shut it down... and some guys were even talking about literally STEALING the site content to host on their own.
So yeah, that REALLY pissed me off!!!
So I demanded that the Wayback Machine, Google and Yahoo! to remove all my content from their cache's under threat of lawsuit.
It took a little while, especially from Google, but finally they complied.

After a while I made peace with some of the guys that I thought had kinda burned me, and brought it back online.
But THIS time I made sure that I blocked all the robots from "scraping" the site, and only allowed them to hit the main page.

The interesting thing is the whole time it was up, I was paying the hosting fees of $12.95 per month, EVERY month, plus the annual domain name fees.
In all that time, I think I got all of maybe $25 in donations.

You probably won't believe this, and might find it a bit ridiculous, but when Obama was elected, I decided that I was probably going to need every penny I had.
Honestly, I finally just got tired of paying for it all, and since Jark opened his site, which I thought had WAAAY more info on it anyway, I pulled the plug and she went dark that night.
You'll maybe be relieved to know that the whole site was archived before I shut it down and exists in it's entirety safely on multiple drives.
So maybe if the country pulls it's head out of it's ass and Obama steps off of Marine One for the last time, I'll bring her back online.
But given the field of candidates on the left AND the right, I have a feeling we are ALL going to need to save every penny we have no matter who wins in 2016.

Till then, I'm happy to answer nearly any question I can, unless it deals with proprietary info that doesn't belong to me (ie- schematics) or deals with the Hyperspace Pedal.
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rbc
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Re: Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by rbc »

$12.95 a month for hosting is a bit less than what I put up, but it does add up over time. The present iteration of rockman-gearup.com runs around $500 a year, though I use the two servers for other, even smaller things. I have thought of doing some fund raising, but I still think it's too early for that. The ads don't help that much. The entire revenue from advertising in 2014 was $6.08. I've been thinking about dropping the ads all together, though they have the advantage of not depending entirely on the board membership. If I go the no-ads fundraising route, it will start sounding like public radio around here, with periodic fund raising campaigns. I don't know, I'm kind of on the fence about the idea. It's important to point out that the economics of the web site aren't the most important factor.
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iZheil9152
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Re: Former glory of rockman-gearup.com

Post by iZheil9152 »

RockmanCentralBob wrote:I started finding RockmanCentral pictures on other sites (including ones I was banned from) after I shut it down... and some guys were even talking about literally STEALING the site content to host on their own.
So yeah, that REALLY pissed me off!!!
Yeah, I heard about that. If you ever decide to open it again, (which I hope you do) I know several tricks to disable copy/paste, highlight, view source, saving, etc... if you're interested.
RockmanCentralBob wrote:So I demanded that the Wayback Machine, Google and Yahoo! to remove all my content from their cache's under threat of lawsuit.
It took a little while, especially from Google, but finally they complied.
Is this before putting robots.txt in a website's directory was a thing? I don't know how long you ran RC in the past...
RockmanCentralBob wrote:Jark opened his site, which I thought had WAAAY more info on it anyway, I pulled the plug and she went dark that night.
True, but I believe you had more information from sources in SR&D and Boston
RockmanCentralBob wrote:You'll maybe be relieved to know that the whole site was archived before I shut it down and exists in it's entirety safely on multiple drives.
So maybe if the country pulls it's head out of it's ass and Obama steps off of Marine One for the last time, I'll bring her back online.
:D :D
RockmanCentralBob wrote:Till then, I'm happy to answer nearly any question I can
Is Caveman Golf, RockmanCentral_Cb, and hyperspace all the same person: Your partner in writing Rockman Central?
I was going through some of the screenshots and came across those names