Motorcycle Racing Forum

Racing Discussion => Racing Discussion => Topic started by: Russell2566 on September 02, 2011, 03:47:34 PM

Title: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Russell2566 on September 02, 2011, 03:47:34 PM
For a few years I have provided free hosting and and spent tons of hours on the My Racing Bio site. A few months ago I decided I would no longer be able to justify all of the costs; heck I'm not even able to race this year due to my current work/life balance.

I have offered to carry forward the My Racing Bio site branded as a CCS product and to focus some more development time on the product simply in return for the future hosting costs that until this point I have been personally been paying for. That said, CCS has not shown any interest in picking up these costs. After a few un-returned emails the fact that I have not been sent any race results since my first email, I can only come to certain conclusions.

As a result, I will be closing down the My Racing Bio in the next 4 weeks or so. I apologize for the disappointment that this may create. While not everyone uses the site, I am amazed every month at the traffic numbers that the site gets for such a small group and zero publicity/marketing.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: IFMracing on September 02, 2011, 04:01:09 PM
Damn.
I can understand your position, and I will miss the site.

Thanks for taking the effort to have it up there for us in the first place.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Super Dave on September 02, 2011, 05:05:38 PM
Quote from: IFMracing on September 02, 2011, 04:01:09 PM
Damn.
I can understand your position, and I will miss the site.

Thanks for taking the effort to have it up there for us in the first place.
I'll echo that too.

Thanks for what you did.

And I wish you tons of success in the next step of your life!!!!
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Gixxerblade on September 02, 2011, 07:30:40 PM
Thanks for everything you did Russ. You provided a valuable resource for tracking and comparing out times.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: RoyHefner on September 02, 2011, 10:19:25 PM
The time, effort, and money that you've put into the site has been much appreciated, and your decision to discontinue is also very understandable.  Thanks much and best wishes!
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: grasslander on September 03, 2011, 02:30:40 PM
Quote from: IFMracing on September 02, 2011, 04:01:09 PM
Damn.
I can understand your position, and I will miss the site.

Thanks for taking the effort to have it up there for us in the first place.

Thanks as well!  Good Luck moving ahead...
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Andi on September 03, 2011, 10:12:28 PM
CCS not returning emails or phone calls? I've never heard of such a thing! Thanks for all you did. I alway enjoyed looking at the times.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Cowboy 6 on September 04, 2011, 02:38:01 PM

Stay in touch Russel!
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: roadracer162 on September 04, 2011, 02:41:42 PM
Thanks Russ for all you have done.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: vnvbandit on September 04, 2011, 10:13:10 PM
Thanks! Good on you for all the work you did!
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: JOHN 3:16 on September 05, 2011, 07:22:54 PM
   Thanks Russ for the all the hard work you did. 
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Fast Eddy on September 06, 2011, 04:21:21 PM
Thank you for all you have done.

Good luck
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: bodie1331 on September 06, 2011, 07:11:17 PM
It's very unfortunate that such a good resource will no longer be available. Thank you for all your work on keeping the times available as long as you did. Best wishes
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Dieselboy on September 06, 2011, 09:23:09 PM
Appreciate the effort, sad to see it went unappreciated for so long. Good luck with your future endeavors.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: alexm on September 07, 2011, 11:31:37 AM
Russell - thanks for all your hard work on this.

If hosting is a burden, I have access to a few hosting resources in case you're interested. Check your PM.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Russell2566 on September 07, 2011, 03:44:50 PM
I'm currently hosting on a HostMySite.com private VPN. It's possible a cheaper shared hosting solution might work. I need either a ColdFusion, BlueDragon or Railo server to run the application with a SQL Server backend.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: steve p on September 07, 2011, 04:30:55 PM
CCS is so far behind the times I doubt they will ever catch up.  Thank you for all your hard work and your efforts to keep it going over the past few years, it is greatly appreciated.  Someday, CCS may actually step up and be a professional organization.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Russell2566 on September 07, 2011, 05:45:34 PM
Business is business, but I can't believe that after a few years and TONS of MY money and time that CCS doesn't even have the basic decency to call me back and talk...
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: antirich on September 07, 2011, 06:01:17 PM
Just sent a PM.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Cowboy 6 on September 07, 2011, 09:32:02 PM
Quote from: Russell2566 on September 07, 2011, 03:44:50 PM
I need either a ColdFusion, BlueDragon or Railo server to run the application with a SQL Server backend.

Yeah, what he said......
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: alexm on September 08, 2011, 10:40:45 AM
Quote from: Russell2566 on September 07, 2011, 03:44:50 PM
I'm currently hosting on a HostMySite.com private VPN. It's possible a cheaper shared hosting solution might work. I need either a ColdFusion, BlueDragon or Railo server to run the application with a SQL Server backend.

I have access to a shared VM with SQL Server available, but I don't have CF server or BlueDragon licenses, although Railo looks to be oss.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Peter998 on September 12, 2011, 04:03:22 PM
Russell,
Thank you for all your hard work. I used it as a resource and found it very informative.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: nj01_6 on September 13, 2011, 12:59:29 PM
Russell,

Sent you a PM.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: firefightergarcia on October 04, 2011, 05:05:59 PM
Great job on keeping that site going. I will truly miss the  "i ran such and such" and then thinking Bull*hit let me go check my bio, hah damn liar....lol
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: CounterSteerer on October 07, 2011, 02:23:31 PM
Russell Thank You Very Much. It was much appreciated.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: EnvyCycles on October 10, 2011, 11:07:55 PM
Russell how much do you need to keep the site going? Maybe we can help out?????
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Russell2566 on October 11, 2011, 08:47:51 AM
Due to the DB Size and nature of the plans it ends up being around 160+ a month for ColdFusion hosting. Hosting plans for medium size sites has gone up, while the plans of hosting very large sites has gone down. You could make a few changes and make the code Railo or BlueDragon compliant, but the DB is MSSQL and converting to MySQL might not be worth the trouble.

Personally I say screw CCS. Kevin Elliot didn't even have the common decency to get back to me and have a conversation after I provided a free service to the group for almost 3 years. He had no problems sending me results and leveraging my hard work, but couldn't man up and even respond to an email.

50/50 chance I'll be putting up with the headaches instead at WERA when I have more time to race again.

I will be putting out the source code on to someplace like Google code or another open source SVN tool in the near future to give everyone access. The current DB Backup is a little over 250 megs.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: ChitownNexus on October 26, 2011, 09:57:16 PM
What kind of file does CCS send out?

Is that the only way to receive a digital copy of the results?  Just wondering if there is another method to post everything online.  I have use/access to a server that we use to host other client sites.
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: catman on November 28, 2011, 08:46:11 AM
Seems like a noble endeavour, good luck
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: ChitownNexus on December 04, 2011, 11:20:51 PM
Quote from: DR ENERGYSMART on November 28, 2011, 08:46:11 AM
Seems like a noble endeavour, good luck

I've been talking with my business partner and programming this would not be a big issue.  We just need to see a sample dataset or whatever the timing system exports so we can test our application. 

I'm going to contact CCS this week and see if I can download a file to test. 
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: twilkinson3 on December 05, 2011, 11:03:31 AM
HOller if you need any programming help nexus - I've got some free time over the winter 8-)
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: ChitownNexus on December 05, 2011, 04:41:10 PM
Quote from: twilkinson3 on December 05, 2011, 11:03:31 AM
HOller if you need any programming help nexus - I've got some free time over the winter 8-)

Thanks for the offer.

At this point it looks like we won't be doing anything.  I called the CCS office and was told they are working on a website to do all the functionality.  Hard to believe when their main site is still static HTML :P

Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: Toy Store on December 06, 2011, 03:34:24 PM
This may a little late, but we have server space and could offer it-up for a worthy cause...
Title: Re: My Racing Bio Closing Down
Post by: ChitownNexus on December 06, 2011, 10:55:58 PM
We spoke about it today and might still put something together after we close a few other projects.  I have a sample CSV file from a BHF GTO race.  CCS has stated they are more than happy to send the results to us, but at this point not interested in funding/sponsoring or otherwise assisting in the development.  Not a big deal.

I realize most racers don't want to spend money, but if we built a site similar to the previous version with maybe a few other added features would a subscription of $20-25 per year be acceptable?