SDC FORUM OFFLINE ?

[mfg]

Wow!… The Studebaker Drivers Club account has been suspended!

Not sure why, however I do feel the SDC forum has been mismanaged for quite some time…..

Time for a new Studebaker Forum administrator (finally!!)

[Dwight FitzSimons]

That was addressed here:

 

[mfg]

13 hours ago, Dwight FitzSimons said:

That was addressed here:

 

I’ll tell you one thing… although the Studebaker Drivers Club is (supposedly) non profit, never ask the Stude Forum administrator his annual salary!!

(Hush-hush!)

[Bob Preston]

Allegedly, the site was hacked and ransom exceeding the administrator’s salary by many multiples is being demanded. It is clearly a high value target. 

[64StudebakerAvanti]

Do not know the admin's salary, but the median salary nationwide is around $115,000 for IT professionals, according to Glass Door. This seems reasonable. When I retired in 2012, my salary was $120,000 for enterprise architect.

Edited December 22, 2025 by 64StudebakerAvanti

[mfg]

2 minutes ago, 64StudebakerAvanti said:

Do not know the admin's salary, but the median salary nationwide is around $115,000 for IT professionals, according to Glass Door. This seems reasonable. When I retired in 2012, my salary was $120,000 for enterprise architect.

More power to him… however, when I’m paying dues to a not for profit car club, and I want to know how my money is being spent, I do not think I should be retaliated against just for asking the question… which is exactly what happened to me.

[lschuc]

Wow, I am really underpaid. In addition to publishing Avanti Magazine, I administer our AOAI website and forum gratis… as an IT professional I should be getting $120,000 from the AOAI at minimum. 😎😎😳😳

[64StudebakerAvanti]

I understand your frustration. As an unpaid volunteer, I administer the campground WiFi/Internet system. We have over 200 users. Let there be a slow down, or heaven forbid an outage, and I am the devil incarnate. I should demand that they triple my salary!

 

As an acquaintance of mine that administers a different park said, "I could spell IT, so now I am it.

Edited December 22, 2025 by 64StudebakerAvanti

[64StudebakerAvanti]

Back to the outage. From what we know, an update was scheduled by however is hosting the forum. This could have gone horribly wrong. It is also possible that the host was "hacked". In any case,  more than the SDC forum is affected. The SDC administrator would not have any control over either of those situations. 

 

If hacked, the SDC is not high value, so is not the likely target. 

[mfg]

4 hours ago, 64StudebakerAvanti said:

“The SDC administrator would not have any control over either of those situations.”

 

 

Wouldn’t be too sure about that!

[64StudebakerAvanti]

IIRC, the SDC forums uses vBulletin. There was a major update released recently. I don't know if it self or cloud hosted. My guess is cloud as it is more expensive to self host and maintain a bank of servers.

 

Ed, seems like you have quite a beef with the current SDC admin. I am sure  Clark is doing the best he can. Do you have any credentials to opine on the technical aspects?

 

FWIW, I have B.S. Electrical Engineering, B.S. Computer Science, and graduate studies in Computer Science and engineering.  I have been in the computer business over 50 years with many certifications such a Sun Certified Java Programmer, Oracle Certified Data Base Administrator, Computer Information Security Professional ...

 

[Bob Preston]

6 hours ago, 64StudebakerAvanti said:

If hacked, the SDC is not high value, so is not the likely target. 

A post on the other thread discussing the same topic indicates that there was some hacking involved. 

[Bob Preston]

7 hours ago, mfg said:

More power to him… however, when I’m paying dues to a not for profit car club, and I want to know how my money is being spent, I do not think I should be retaliated against just for asking the question… which is exactly what happened to me.

Details please.

[64StudebakerAvanti]

SDC forums is back!

[64StudebakerAvanti]

Just guessing, but may have rolled back to previous version. Current version of vBulletin is 6.1.5.

SDC version is now 5.7.5.

 

[mfg]

3 hours ago, 64StudebakerAvanti said:

IIRC, the SDC forums uses vBulletin. There was a major update released recently. I don't know if it self or cloud hosted. My guess is cloud as it is more expensive to self host and maintain a bank of servers.

 

Ed, seems like you have quite a beef with the current SDC admin. I am sure  Clark is doing the best he can. Do you have any credentials to opine on the technical aspects?

 

FWIW, I have B.S. Electrical Engineering, B.S. Computer Science, and graduate studies in Computer Science and engineering.  I have been in the computer business over 50 years with many certifications such a Sun Certified Java Programmer, Oracle Certified Data Base Administrator, Computer Information Security Professional ...

 

Simply stated..I believe term limits on club positions such as forum administrator should be considered by the SDC board of directors….

PS…After being a member of SDC since 1968, and holding an original membership card signed by Harry Barnes, I left the Studebaker Drivers Club over this person….When and if that forum administrator is ever replaced, I will ‘probably’ rejoin the club.

 

[mfg]

2 hours ago, Bob Preston said:

Details please.

Please see my last reply to 64 Studebaker Avanti… Thanks

[lschuc]

Here is what happened to the SDC Forum:

Let your members know that the Forum is back. Here's what happened. 

 

Yesterday, 06:33 AM

Well, it’s been a heckuva weekend. Here’s what happened:

• On Tuesday, December 16, we received a notice that our hosting provider needed to make an emergency migration of our Forum to a new webserver. No reason was given, but these things happen - equipment failures and such. They put us on the new server on Wednesday and all seemed well.
• Then, on Thursday, December 18, the Forum was attacked with a Denial of Service attack, in which hundreds of zombie computers open connections to a web server all at once and then don’t close them, trying to bring down the server by overwhelming it. To protect the server, our webhost suspended our account (that was the “Account Suspended” notice you saw online).
• For the last 5 days, Cornerstone and I have been working with our webhost to restore service and protect our site from more bad actors. Late Monday, December 22, the Forum was turned back on.

Going forward, we’re going to be taking more steps to enhance security and likely examine our hosting options. I hope this doesn’t happen again but the online world is more like the Wild West every day.

Thank you all for bearing with us while we got this taken care of.

Clark 

[mfg]

Sounds like the SDC forum administrator is finally attempting to earn his pay….…. Will wonders never cease ??