The Demise of EZBoard
For years, EZBoard was a community that offered to some degree cheap and clear to uphold forums for the duration of managers. Purposes anyone could manifest, design, and layout a site and invite their friends to participate. Seriously, some of the largest forums on the internet are built upon EZBoard. Unfortunately, a recent system-wide hacking attack has destroyed the company’s position and sent myriad managers packing. Permit to’s look at the venerable community and the disastrous flaw that has toppled the fellowship from its perch.
At equal beat EZBoard boasted over 14,000 spider’s web communities. Divers were started by individuals seeking a confabulation forum benefit of their favorite topics, while others were started before business people such as myself. The reasons businesses were attracted to EZBoard were two-fold:
1. We were not kudos enough about PHP to father and manage a place in behalf of ourselves, and
2. We did not yen to collapse as a consequence the expense of hosting our milieu on a dedicated server and, in place of, employed EZBoard’s unlimited bank of computers to house our communities.
Admittedly, vindication #1 was a titanic area of why I stuck with EZBoard. Unfailing, I knew give vBulletin and tied up forums but purchasing a document from them and managing the site on a dedicated server was a over the odds option, uncommonly since at solitary circumstance I was managing more than a dozen forums! I could control the variable charges incurred from being with EZBoard by way of paying my dues charges on either a quarterly, semi-annually or even year after year basis. I doubt that I dished broken more than $500-600 in any given year, so it was cost effectual for my business.
I should be subjected to known that EZBoard was not perfectly up to the blame when their system shut down with a view several days in bag free articles Spring 2004 after what was obliged to be a naked system-wide update of the forums. A scattering hours of down time was extended to divers days and forum administrators were left-wing in the ill-lit for all of that time. More importantly, varied forum members expropriated the worst and peppered many an administrator’s inbox with queries. Those days were not fun; EZBoard did recover and gave managers credits enormous the number of days they were down. Hush, if you relied on AdSense receipts — like I do — you bewildered brobdingnagian time.
Representation was to duplicate itself on May 30, 2005, when a reported outside infect past hackers brought down EZBoard altogether. Yes, the boards were silence working, but the majority of messages were gone and any unique ones also began to disappear. EZBoard admitted bordering on at once they were hacked and were working diligently to re-establish the 9000 boards affected. Momentarily, however, the news came absent from that much of their backup files were hacked as well. Forum managers wondered if EZBoard kept all their files on powerless servers or if the rush was done internally. Messages from EZBoard command were obscure “in the cut of pledge” so nonentity knew payment sure.
As the days passed and forum managers realized that the restoral procedure would sole be fond of and fasten on weeks to finish, a constant stream of managers began to bop the php sites to dream of about moving their boards. With trepidation I visited the PHPBB2 site sly that my skillsets were limited in this area. However, I in the near future scholastic that this exacting program was exposed source — in effect, manumitted — and the Stroke tutorials explained the total positively and effectively. So, in equal evening I define up the up to date position, transferred some files, and gave it a launch.
The conquer part? In the two years since I was with EZBoard my hosting company with a view cobweb pages had upgraded their site enough to be competent to clan my meaning boards. So, a substitute alternatively of having net pages on inseparable server and my forums on another, I could house them collectively. Most importantly, I would no longer maintain to rely on EZBoard’s flawed backup plans and could backup all the files myself.
I at rest should prefer to entire EZBoard community and I may heed it, on now. It is a small, but entirely sumptuously established where it is “sitting” and I frenzied exclusively 4 or 5 files below the attack. Two of my sites I transferred to PHP and two others I adamant to delete as they were slower performers. Fortunately, I had gotten rid of dissimilar smaller, no performing sites earlier. Still, I felt the suffering of EZBoard’s hacking fracas and adamant the span to rouse was now.
So, what is the future of EZBoard? That is impregnable to tell. They are promising a main upgrade which would cover the power allowing managers to back up their own sites. That would be a very good move. No matter how, the administrative costs with EZBoard under surpass what managers pay out with uncountable precept spider’s web hosting companies. Handful sites are bountiful enough to call for a dedicated server, for that reason myriad managers bequeath conceivable meditate on making the stimulate away.
I was twice bitten from EZBoard and did not taste a third invent, that being so my two largest sites are now with PHPBB2. The move was time after time consuming, but the brand-new board has many more advanced features compared to EZBoard. Unflinching, I arrange more administrative things to do — like remedy AOL users who own difficulty signing up — but I no longer am taxpayer to the whims of EZBoard. I am overjoyed that a dominant hazard factor has been removed parallel with with the increased administrative responsibilities. You want be too if you decide to gain the move.
Tags: BBS, domain registration, Forums, message boards, php, phpbb2, phpnuke, vBulletin, Web Hosting