I seem to have gotten the forum running again, but a lot of posts from the Ride Reports forum seem to be missing. I'm trying to recover them.

All of us being too slow in reporting and reacting to this crash seems to have limited fixing it. Hostgator only does once month and once a week backups, and doesn't keep any older backups. So the oldest backup they had was December 21st, and it appears the forum had already crashed and had corrupted files by then. If you see a problem with the forum, try to get a message to me right away. Reacting more quickly would definitely improve the chances of getting everything restored properly.
 
The lower activity of the forum has no doubt contributed to this crash not getting reported right away. It mirrors what seems to have happened to the recumbent world. Recumbents made a big rise in popularity in the 1990's and 2000's, but interest has really seemed to wane since then. Bacchetta got sold. RANS got sold, then shut down. Forum members here have reported about how fewer recumbent riders they see on rides. And I moved away from DFW and only do solo rides these days, so I really lost touch with the forum and my old friends here too, and just don't visit the forum too frequently these days. Such is the ebb and flow of things, I guess.

Quote from jayg on Jan 4^th, 2024, 9:32pm:

 
Really, someone younger should take over the forum. Besides living 60 miles southeast of Dallas these days, I will turn 73 in April, am a 16 year lung cancer survivor, almost died of COVID in 2020, and have had a heart attack and a heart valve replacement since then. We need a younger IT guy who lives in DFW and is a dedicated recumbent rider and forum poster who's willing to run the forum. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that animal exists.