11/02/2026: We're back! The website and message board undergone a server change and software upgrade.

We went from a VPS to a Shared Business Host server. The old VPS server was ancient with old hardware, operating system and supporting software. That prevented the message board software from being upgraded to the latest version for a long time.

The new shared business server comes with the latest in hardware / operating system and software. That allowed an upgrade of the message board software to the latest version. It is shared server, which can mean some performance limitations, but since message board activity has fallen off dramatically over the years, I don't think we will notice a difference.

Another benefit of the new shared business host server is it is about a quarter of the cost of the VPS. The VPS was costing north of $800 yearly. The new shared business host is a little over $200/year. And honestly that was a huge reason for finally making the change. This should be able to keep us going for some time into the future.


Please report any quirks or bugs you come across here in this post

Thanks... and sorry the board / website was down for so long. There were a lot of issues that needed to be addressed after performing the swap / upgrades.

PaulC

Thank you for the update, Paul!

Honestly, I was afraid that the board was far along the path to extinction and that we would see no improvement. To see the site alive again is wonderfully good news. Just one request for now: please consider lengthening the window for editing posts. I think a few days would work well if you'd be open to the idea.

Also, how does image posting/sharing work now?

Many thanks,
MAP

Thank You Paul!!

Thanks Paul!!!

Thank you Paul!! For all that you do...

Super glad to see the board up and running again.

Thanks Paul, I was lost for a few days.

Paul, keeping the forum alive for me and several others is a godsend. Having been able to sit at my PC for 25 years and be part of this forum has been priceless.
Thank you
Bob

What he said ^10!

UGH... Sorry for the site crash this afternoon / evening. I'm continuing to move stuff over from the old server to the new server, cleaning up stuff and unfortunately I caused a database linking issue. Figured it out and it should be back fully now.

PaulC

Any chance the old album could be brought back? Thx again! - MAP

The short answer is no. The old software (PhotoPost) that integrated the photo database into the message board doesn't exist / isn't supported any longer. The integration broke long ago with no-one in the message board development community working a solution. This new message board software we're currently running was completely revamped code wise in the background... so there's very little chance of working an integrated solution with the old software without someone doing the extensive work to develop something. I've looked for alternatives that integrate into message boards, but as you would imagine, there aren't a lot of software companies out there developing software for the message board environment.

That being said, the old PhotoPost database still exists in the background should a solution be found and can be ported over. And while I'm thinking about it... if there are images there that anyone needs recovered, I can take care of that... just PM me.

I'm toying with the idea to revamp the "SShow & SShine" forum, which is our gallery forum to more of a photo album / repository rather than just showing off cars. Still thinking about if and how to mold that. One advantage to going from the old VPS to the Shared Business Host is we no longer have a limit on disk space. We had used up about 75% of our old disk space, which was 75GB. So I think we may be able to increase the number of images and the individual file sizes in the gallery. As far as I'm aware, each image within the gallery forum is reachable using the standard IMG and /IMG tags. But the linking is something you'd have to do manually. In the past, the PhotoPost Album add-on provided a feature to auto-generate the image tags to insert into a post.

More to think about on this one.

PC

Paul
Thank you for all you do to keep this board alive I was starting to think it was gone but here you saved it, This board is like an old friend for so many years

Ok I'm working on a solution for the Photo Album. The more I thought about it, the more I didn't want to change the SShow & SShine forum. I want to keep that to show off cars as it was originally intended. I have made changes to that gallery forum, increasing the number of images per post from 4 to 6; and increasing the individual image size limit from 200Kb to 3.5Mb (which is a good figure for typical cellphone camera images). Note: There currently is an issue uploading large image sizes causing a fatal error. I've reached out to the message board developer / community for help resolving.

So the solution for the Photo Album will be a NEW gallery forum titled 'Member Photo Album / Gallery'. This forum will have a maximum number of images per post set to 12 with (hopefully) an individual image size limit set to 3.5Mb one the fatal error issue is resolved. I will also remove the limitations on edit and delete time for this forum, and remove the limitation on images of for-sale items. The forum has been created and tested, but I'm keeping it hidden until I get answers to the fatal error issue. I may have to back off on the image size limit.

I'll make a separate announcement post here in MonteCarloSS.com News forum when the new forum is activated.

PC

The new Member Album / Gallery is up with some expanded features

Max 20 images per gallery (you can create multiple galleries)
Max upload image size 4.5 Mb (images are resized after upload)
No time limit on editing or deleting a gallery
No limit on For Sale items
Keep it 3rd/4th Gen Monte / SS / Project related if possible.

The SShow & SShine virtual car show gallery forum still exists with expanded permissions: 6 images per gallery, max upload image size 4.5 Mb. Use this forum to show off your Monte / SS as a virtual car show.

PC

This is awesome - thanks so much for keeping the board running Paul!

Great news! "...images are resized after upload..." excellent data-compression strategy. I'm sure there's a huge middle ground between images that are way "over-pixeled" with enormous file sizes and images that are blurry with small file sizes. I'm sure you'll find a good balance. Thx again.