JPF Home Page Forums Thread Like Summary - Update on site and donations!

Hi Folks,

We got enough donations to continue. Here are some comments.

1. If anyone understands SSL Certification for websites, please get back with me. Apparently after 25 years suddenly we have to start paying another $125 bucks a year (on top of the hosting and domain fees) to simply exist. All those stupid warnings were meaningless. It was just a shakedown for more money. The site is no more or less safe with the SSL certificate.

2. Always remember: You have given no personal info to this site. We do not track you or your info like nearly every other site online. Our cookies only track what pages you have viewed and remember you so you don't have to log in. We do not have access to anything about you or your use of this site. Your cookie only talks between you and the program that is this message board and unlike most sites, they are voluntary. Every site in the world, including the US Government, Facebook, Google and everything else can get hacked. In fact, those sites get hacked millions of times a day! In 25 years, we have never once been hacked. Why? Because we have nothing for the hackers to gain. No info is stored. Passwords can easily be reset by us even if they were stolen. The worst thing they can do is crash the board, but in most cases, the host site has a backup. You are never at a risk here that you aren't under everywhere else, and frankly, as long as you use a unique password on each site, even if they stole your password here it would be harmless to you.

3. We raised $515 dollars from 13 people. I am deeply appreciative of those who stepped up and there were even a couple of new people who chipped in. All the money we take in goes directly back into the site.

4. This has motivated me to re-engage here. I have long neglected the message board because like most of you, I am sick of the bickering. I am cleaning up the nonsense on the General board. I am also going to monitor it going forward more closely. It is my fault for this neglect so I will fix it. See the next comment.

5. No more political bickering outside a single official post. If you violate that rule, you will get a timeout. If you continue, the timeout will be longer until either it stops or I click the infinity ban. Outside of obvious bots, I have only banned a handful of people in 25 years. But if it must happen, it must happen. I have strong political views like most people, but this just isn't a productive place for that discussion. Few people are even rational in their views nor will they ever change their mind so it all just saps productivity. If most of the blowhards spent the same time doing something positive instead, a lot of the problems people bicker about would improve. If you see trolling etc. please send me a note and link to it. Let's clean this up!

I recently got a webcam and I plan to start using our Just Plain Folks Youtube channel again which I can then link here. I would love to relaunch a website (since we lost our original one when CDBaby shut down Hostbaby and they did not preserve our site as the promised). If anyone reading this has web knowledge and can offer advice, please send me a note.

I want to tie the message board back into our other social media accounts. I am looking for options to archive it as well as we have one of the only remaining histories of musicians in the dawn of the internet. Most boards have been deleted by corporations or shut down due to financial constraints. Our "history" is now in the hands of globalist corporations like Facebook. I'd like to preserve our community and the DIY music phenomenon that took place from the mid 90's until now. So I hope some of you remaining old timers will help out with a donation or even more importantly, some positive content to attract more folks to join us.


Brian

Well, since this post we have received $555 in donations. That is well over a third of what we needed to pay for next year. Thanks to those folks. Perhaps we are turning a corner.

Brian