Where did simpeg.com go?

[blunder 1,079]

Hang on folks.

The simpeg administrators still haven't heard back from Pegasus, so we aren't sure what's going on here.  He has the means to communicate with us if he was going to consciously pull the plug on his own server, and he would have done so if that's what happened.  There are multiple possibilities here, some of them nefarious, and not all of them mean that everything on the site is simply gone forever.  Until we do have word of Peg speculation is premature even though the situation is largely out of our hands right now. 

We (the simpeg administrators) will comment on PLEX files later.

[philforhockey51 4,211]

there is yet light!

[Mister Giggles 310]

The first thing that should be done, though, is to make sure SimPeg is actually dead. Not hijacked or otherwise the victim of a prank. I have no idea who Joomia is or their position within the SimPeg hierarchy.

Well, Joomla has nothing to do with the SimPeg hierarchy... I was never a regular at SimPeg, but the closure of this site will leave a huge gap on the SC4 world. A lot of extremely high quality content was based only there, only a few packs are available in the STEX. Now, all this is lost, and I'm afraid Pegasus is not available for contact here at ST for a re-upload permission.

EDIT: Last online, July 2013

 

I find it odd that administration software would leave that broken, engrish message...

Edit: To clarify, I think a person was behind the message, and the software was the vessel through which it was sent into the world. Or something. <_<

  Edited July 3, 2015 by Mister Giggles  

[catty-cb 4,394]

I've got a Joomla website, if you create an article to display anywhere on your site, then you can add your own tags and categories or use the default ones so that looks perfectly normal to me, especially if someone isn't familiar with doing things on a Joomla-based site and may not have realized that when they made the article the home page they could have just had the article appear without the popular tags, latest articles or the login box on the right-hand side

[Hellken 1,658]

How odd. Who wrote this?

 

[Mister Giggles 310]

Problematically, only the person who wrote it knows at the moment. The SimPeg administrators, sans Pegasus (at the moment), are trying to figure it out.

  Edited July 3, 2015 by Mister Giggles  

[metarvo 710]

Oh, man, now this is a shame!    I guess I'd better hang on to the PLEX content I have in my plugins for dear life.  I downloaded things over the years as I needed them, but I shudder at the thought of a craving for a download that I might have missed out on.  I also enjoyed following the development of new content, and there was some promising stuff going on in the last year or so.  If this is real, it just goes to show that we can't take these sites for granted.

[catty-cb 4,394]

Problematically, only the person who wrote it knows at the moment. The SimPeg administrators, sans Pegasus (at the moment), are trying to figure it out.

 

The SimPeg.com website address is due to expire on the 27th of July 2015

[Tarkus 6,932]

The SimPeg.com website address is due to expire on the 27th of July 2015

Typically, I wouldn't put much stock into domain expiration dates, with the way most domains are set up to auto-renew, but if you were going to shut down a site, doing it in the final month of the domain name's billing cycle would be a sensible time to do it.

SimPeg has been an institution in the SC4 world, as one of the big three SC4 sites that's stuck it out all these years.  If the site is indeed shutting down, it is a sad day for this community.

-Tarkus

[Dublin 15]

I'm with Blunder on this one, The admin's will get it sorted out, I seriously doubt Pegasus took down the site without a forewarning. The message (joomia) seems a bit dubious for me. 15 years running on a site that started 9 years ago for a game created 12 years ago. Hmmm lets get out the old abacus and check this math.I'm sure we'll see everything up and running soon. The site and it's administers would not have shut down without a word. So I'm not buying the shutdown after a good run. JMHO

[Dirktator 2,320]

It does seem very strange indeed, but sometimes things in life happen, and you don't really plan for it. I have sent Peg an email, I hope he replies. I'll let you know if he does.

[Hamish 1,369]

Please tell me it's April fools somewhere in the world. 

Would be a sad day if this is real. Hope everything is okay with Peg and the memberbase there, was a wonderful site full of fun and great creations. 

[catty-cb 4,394]

...The message (joomia) seems a bit dubious for me. ...

When you create a new Joomla based website everything has a default category or tag, etc I am surprised it wasn't changed to something else, but its normal, I'm currently moving the contents here

https://community.simtropolis.com/clubs/26-city-builders-website/cb-discuss

as the software license for the software is about to expire and I don't want to renew it due to the costs involved, so I'm copying the contents over into individual Joomla articles here

https://community.simtropolis.com/clubs/26-city-builders-website/cb-documents

If I wanted to do a bit of tweaking I could have a very similiar screen to what's now showing over at SimPeg here

http://simpeg.com/articles

-catty

 

[Hellken 1,658]

For a domain that is about to expire, this is weird.

[Tarkus 6,932]

That article is actually something Pegasus wrote a year ago for his Elks Club down in California--clicking on the little Adam Savage caricature takes you right to the original source.  There's also been an administrative email address posted to the front page below the waving clown.  Both these seem to point to Pegasus himself being behind the closure, though it looks like someone else must have written the text for the "farewell" message.

It's a strange way for the site to shut down--almost like the ending to The Sopranos.

-Tarkus

[Pegprod 111]

Hi there everyone.

Unfortunately we can confirm that Simpeg has ceased to operate as we knew it.   While exact details as to what exactly happened to the site are not clear, it does appear that it was some kind of unexpected fatal board error which has effectively caused irreparable damage to the site data.    As a result Pegasus has decided close Simpeg permanently.

The Simpeg staff are currently working with Dirk and the ST Admin to see what can be done to preserve the content of the PLEX.

In the mean time, we can confirm that virtually all of Pegasus' content is or should be currently available on the STEX as he always uploaded his content and dependencies to both the PLEX and the STEX.  

If you do find something that is not available or missing then please do let us know and we will do our best to locate the missing file.    

We will make further announcements once we have a clear plan in place as to how to move forward from here.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Simpeg Staff

 

 

[APSMS 1,892]

Nooooooooooooo!

[Tarkus 6,932]

Losing the site to data corruption like that is an absolute tragedy, and every site runner's nightmare.  My heart absolutely breaks for the whole PegProd team. 

-Tarkus

[Hellken 1,658]

Unexpected fatal board error? Was this an XSS attack?

 

I have DatPacked files of many things from the PLEX including a few exclusive file attachments from the forums. Needless to say, it is far from complete. I have not visited that site in a year. I wrongly assumed that as one of the "Big 3" sites something like this was not likely to occur compared to small individual blogs and websites. Now, I am shocked to hear that only the "Big 2" remain along with smaller and dying international exchanges. This incident should serve as a reminder that any website may die off unexpectedly and without warning. I am sad to hear this. 

[blunder 1,079]

Unexpected fatal board error? Was this an XSS attack?

Pegasus hasn't shared the exact details of how this happened with us, and at this point it really doesn't matter because the damage has already been done, regardless of exact cause.

Gods below this is a mess, it's like coming home to find your house burned down.  We will be able to preserve probably 99% of the PLEX content so don't worry about that.  The vast majority of it was simultaneously released to the STEX as a failsafe, but some of it does need updated and we need to reorganize it.  That could take weeks but it will get done.  The knowledgebase loss is brutal, we had something like 80 articles and tutorials in the simposium (our omnibus) and maybe a bare handful were cross-posted here.  The development threads and CJs is another heavy loss; many of us posted more to our simpeg CJs than here at simtrop.  Paeng's full Mountainview (Journey through Paengia for you simtropolites); gone.  Krio's Glorious BAT thread; 180 pages; gone.  All our development threads, gone.  CJs all the way back to the Soviet Black Sea Union; gone.

But worst of all is the loss of community.  Simpeg was our electronic home accessed from within our real homes.  We can make new topics and posts here but it will never really replicate what we had.  I can't even express how much this aspect of it hurts, or how much the community we had meant.  Truly a sad day.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Gods below this is a mess, it's like coming home to find your house burned down.

Yup.

I got an email from Pegasus last week while I was on holiday in the Cook Islands with limited internet...    I know we live all around the world far apart in reality, but yeah it was a bit like that.     Pegasus did not say much, but said that the damage was pretty bad.

The development threads and CJs is another heavy loss; many of us posted more to our simpeg CJs than here at simtrop.  Paeng's full Mountainview (Journey through Paengia for you simtropolites); gone.  Krio's Glorious BAT thread; 180 pages; gone.  All our development threads, gone.  CJs all the way back to the Soviet Black Sea Union; gone.   

Yup.

But worst of all is the loss of community.  Simpeg was our electronic home accessed from within our real homes.  We can make new topics and posts here but it will never really replicate what we had.  I can't even express how much this aspect of it hurts, or how much the community we had meant.  Truly a sad day. 

Yup. 

On a brighter note we are currently working with Dirk to at least preserve the PLEX content here on ST.   Please look out for a Pegprod announcement coming soon!

 

[Hellken 1,658]

Is there any small chance that there was a partial site backup somewhere?

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Is there any small chance that there was a partial site backup somewhere?

Well not exactly...

But here is the link to Pegasus' content on the STEX:

https://community.simtropolis.com/profile/2813-pegasus/content/?type=downloads_file

 

[Mister Giggles 310]

...this serves as yet another reminder to back up your data. This is such a common occurrence it hurts.

Based on the description, the host's hardware fried. If such is the case, SimPeg wouldn't be the only site affected. Terrible all around.

Nothing can replace the City Journals, God knows, but the community shouldn't die with them. The SimPeg Night Owls board still exists; Someone just needs to fetch Tariel. Can it be the same? No, but new life can grow from the ashes of the old.

  Edited July 5, 2015 by Mister Giggles  

[Tarkus 6,932]

On the thread front, I've been trying Google Cache (which was once used when ST had that post truncation issue after a hack attack, IIRC).  The best I've been able to do is this and this, which, unfortunately, isn't much.  Archive.org's Wayback Machine is proving completely useless right now, sadly.

-Tarkus

 

[eufl 133]

This makes me totally sad. If I think about the CJs - and I also thought about the wayback machine - if they are lost - my deepest regards to all the authors! I only can hope, that you don´t give up.

 

[CahosRahneVeloza 385]

One set of items I know off hosted here on the STEX which are presented as installers (the bane of our MAC user comrades) but were hosted as zipped archives on the PLEX is the whole "Modular Amusement Park Pack" (MAPPs) series. Also I do recall a few other items from either the CDK or the MTP series were also hosted here on the STEX as installers but were zip packaged on the PLEX.

Also I do recall a few other items from the MTP series which are hosted here on the STEX are a little outdated from their PLEX counterparts. I think they're the MTP ploppable woods and/or the Seasonal variant... or perhaps the dependency files (models) for them.

And let's not forget the awesome content contributed by folks like Murimk, Paeng, Craig-Abcvs, EpicBlunder, Tamorr and Becca (I hope I recalled everyone's names correctly as they used to appeared under the "Contributors" section of the PLEX

[catty-cb 4,394]

As some of you know for the last few years I have been cataloging the exchanges of the various main SimCity 4 forums, SimPeg was one of the sites I had finished cataloging and apart from going in and checking every few weeks to add in anything new so there could have been something added in the last couple of weeks, but this list is what was actually on the PLEX when the site went down.

https://community.simtropolis.com/clubs/26-city-builders-website/component/content/article/9-simcity-4/11-simpeg-exchange?Itemid=198

-catty

[LiamNL 1]

It's a shame that the site will have to go down because of corrupted files. I think some people were still active on it and some of those cityjournals were amazing to read but will now be lost forever.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I agree with Mister Giggles that this sounds like a major system crash by the server, probably complete with disk drive fries.  Could have been a fire on the site.

Surprising that there was no off-site backup.  Good business practice pretty much demands this, but web site providers are often shoe-string outfits with inexperienced management.  Not only Simpeg, but others hosted there are probably in total chaos at the moment.  I hope the site was well insured as there will undoubtedly be suits for all sorts of damages especially if it was hosting any commercial businesses.

  Edited July 5, 2015 by A Nonny Moose