Trainzkuidindex.com to be closed soon

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Tony_Hilliam said:
I really like the Kickstarter idea proposed by BlueOdessey.

Set a funding goal to cover the time it would take you
to support the website.
If not enough people commit their pledges, then they do not value the service enough to see it continue.
If enough people see that they will lose this valuable resource, then you may get sufficient contributions to continue the service.

If the pitch is not successful, I am sure once the website no longer exists, there will be alot of people who wished they had contributed.

I am also sure that N3V Games will be a willing pledger to any Kickstarter project. Pierre, you have my email address, so please message me if you would like to discuss further.

p.s. If anyone is wondering why N3V would want to support a third party site, the answer is simple. For various reasons a number of content creators prefer to host their content on their own site rather than the DLS. This means that while their site is live, people can get it for free and share it for free and include it as a dependency in content that is hosted by us. But ultimately it's their call and 1 in 3 items are hosted this way. (Unfortunately a huge number of these sites also fade off into the sunset).

A site like TKI makes it much easier for customers to find this content (but far from easy) and it takes continuous effort to keep things up to date with all the sites that shutdown. It's better than having no solution, hence our support
Click to expand...

I also like what Tony has suggested in the quote above, and I would also support a Kickstarter project as well (as I think I mentioned further up, I've also been a contributor to TKI although my finances have limited how much support I can give).

Shane
 
euromodeller said:
Another expense to running a website, if you have a customer login, you will soon need to provide a secure web addres, i.e. httpS//www. etc.
I have 3 sales sites running at the moment and I am only selling stuff from my collections (hoards) but try to log in with some browsers and you get a "this connection is not secure" message. These security certificates will cost about 50.00 GBP each year for each web address!
I don't have any personal payment details on my sites, customer pays by clicking a Pay by PayPal button.

Here is what I get on Trainz Portal in Firefox browser...

Portal-Login.jpg
Click to expand...

There are free solutions available for your own website, 1and1 hosting offer free SSL.

Cheerio John
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
The root cause of missing kuids is that they are on 3rd-party websites instead of the N3V Download Station. I wouldn't expect N3V to, in effect, support 3rd-party websites in any way.
Click to expand...

There are restrictions about what can be uploaded to the DLS. Typically texture files can be a problem so there will always be some assets not available on the DLS.

Cheerio John
 
pierreparis said:
Because of the time-consuming work to keep up-to-date the data base and the weak support of the community to help, and also because I have no more money and I need to spend my time to find money now, I decide to close the site in a few days.

I am very sad of that situation and I apologize to the thousands of users who make every month more than 20.000 requests for finding missing kuid.

Many thanks to the 69 people who support my work by donating. I apologize to them too.

Pierre
Click to expand...


What sort of support do you need? Can we make it simpler by sending the information in an xml format?

Thanks John
 
Pierre,

I too am sorry to see this go away.

What exactly do you need besides the funds to keep the service running?

Please supply details and we can help. We may not all be able to contribute financially as some of us are on disability income, however, we are a large community of skilled people with talents in many areas and resources we can contribute to the cause as has been suggested by many here already.

John
 
pierreparis said:
Peter

Yes, I must renew the hosting next month. And yes I could pay for 1 year more, it not so expansive (120 euros/Y). But if I stop to crawl Trainz fan sites and don't update trainzkuidindex, the data base will become obsolete very quickly, and the site quite useless after 1 year. Many links change very quickly on Internet for various raisons : when I begin to crawl I was very suprised by that.
Pay a fee : how many people will accept to pay arround 15 US$ per year ? I worry, that, instead to pay, some guys share 1 username/password with many people on some forum. My feeling is that people don't have money for that.

Pierre
Click to expand...

My friend I really hate to hear this. Your site has helped me so much and I'd never have found all the assets for Sodor Island 3D's routes. I wish you could turn it over to someone I'm sure that a lot of the coders out there would be more than willing to take over. I will hope for a successor to you site and I wish you luck as well.
 
Pierre,
As a previous donor to your site I would be more than happy to make a fee payment to your site as I use it a lot.
I can't see why everyone who uses the site could not contribute to it.
Cheers,
Mike
 
Tony_Hilliam said:
I really like the Kickstarter idea proposed by BlueOdessey.

Set a funding goal to cover the time it would take you
to support the website.
If not enough people commit their pledges, then they do not value the service enough to see it continue.
If enough people see that they will lose this valuable resource, then you may get sufficient contributions to continue the service.

If the pitch is not successful, I am sure once the website no longer exists, there will be alot of people who wished they had contributed.

I am also sure that N3V Games will be a willing pledger to any Kickstarter project. Pierre, you have my email address, so please message me if you would like to discuss further.

p.s. If anyone is wondering why N3V would want to support a third party site, the answer is simple. For various reasons a number of content creators prefer to host their content on their own site rather than the DLS. This means that while their site is live, people can get it for free and share it for free and include it as a dependency in content that is hosted by us. But ultimately it's their call and 1 in 3 items are hosted this way. (Unfortunately a huge number of these sites also fade off into the sunset).

A site like TKI makes it much easier for customers to find this content (but far from easy) and it takes continuous effort to keep things up to date with all the sites that shutdown. It's better than having no solution, hence our support
Click to expand...

Hi Tony,

I check on the Kickstarter web site : people living in Thailand like me cannot start a project :

Project creation is currently available to individuals in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mexico who meet the requirements below.
Click to expand...

And as french creator :
French creators

To be eligible to start a Kickstarter project as a creator in France, you need to meet the following requirements:

  • ...
  • You are a permanent resident of France.
  • ...
Click to expand...
So it seems not so easy for me to use Kickstarter.
Pierre
 
pierreparis said:
Hi Tony,

I check on the Kickstarter web site : people living in Thailand like me cannot start a project :



And as french creator :

So it seems not so easy for me to use Kickstarter.
Pierre
Click to expand...

What do you need precisely preferably technically? If its just a web site there are a number of use who can host you without charge. For example I have unlimited bandwidth and disk space on JATWS.org so there is no additional cost to me to add you. If you need a certain type of database and scripts that might be different.

Cheerio John
 
Pierre said something about it takes time to trawl sites and (presumably) he has to look after his bread and butter (income) and maybe will not have time to trawl sites for changes, cdp files, dependencies. I suspect this is ONE major, insurmountable issue.

* John mentioned something about XML files

* Others say they are limited with financial capacity to contribute.

* I wonder if it is possible to create bots or crawlers to crawl sites for changes and download, send on to TKI website or upload to cloud/dropbox with xml file attached stating contents, version, etc?

* Could the task be split up and shared out and volunteers take the varia xml files (whatever), do the crawling and send the results back to Pierre on a regular basis?

* Is this a workable solution for TKI and our community?

* Any thoughts? Up to ⅓ of my site visitors (across many domains) are various bots and crawlers and search engines.

Hope this helps in some way
Chris
 
pierreparis said:
Because of the time-consuming work to keep up-to-date the data base and the weak support of the community to help, and also because I have no more money and I need to spend my time to find money now, I decide to close the site in a few days.

I am very sad of that situation and I apologize to the thousands of users who make every month more than 20.000 requests for finding missing kuid.

Many thanks to the 69 people who support my work by donating. I apologize to them too.

Pierre
Click to expand...

Hello,

I have hosting space available on the Akamai CDN Network System and would be willing to help out if possible. I would not be able to help setting it up or maintaining it. If you look here and see the different options we offer at this front end SmarterASP.net Hosting, there may be something that would work for your application. Again I would only supply the server/hosting for it.

If this could help in some way, reach out to me and I will do what I can do to help. You can host your index with me and I could cover your hosting expenses. I also am an OpenSRS Domain Name Registrar, and we can help you in that area as well.

.
 
cascaderailroad said:
It is/was such an important service that it absolutely can not be allowed to fade away into cyberspace !
Click to expand...

I quite agree we must keep it alive. I've looked around the posts and there are dozens of us that can offer you server space, A few who could help maintain the site's database and more. Pierreparis we all want to help keep your search engine alive please give it some thought and discussion with us we can come up with something if we all put our heads together. I wish I could be of more help than ideas but I am no good with code, haven't any money to spare and no server to speak of. Writing is my forte as is pixel art and those really aren't going to help but I will help in any way I can if needed.
 
If you do decide to close it down, would you be willing to post a database dump somewhere for others to use as starting point for a new site? Something like this would be great for a community project and although I have never used your site it looks to be a great help for others. I am a part time web developer myself (currently working on train related website http://cabrides.eu) and would not mind taking a stab at it.
 
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