The Smiley Smile Message Board

It's up and running again. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

It would also be appreciated if people who have no knowledge of the situations at hand yet want to expand on what happened (if not write yet another premature obituary for this forum) would exercise some self-restraint and perhaps some class too and refrain from ordering the coffin and flowers, and also refrain from using it as an opportunity to sling yet more mud at this place and people here and publish more distortions and revisionism about what happened 5 years ago or more. If there are still lingering questions, just ask, the archives here hold the facts.

Thanks and it's good to be back.

Awesome, glad its back.  Don’t post often, but on this board regularly.  And excited that I maybe first one to post to welcome you back. 

Glad the site is back up. Things have been slow, but I still stop by daily.

Best short version is, it was a hiccup on the part of HostGator that I did not see until today, thanks to John Manning.

I just got off the phone with Interserver, and I'm looking at their choices of dedicated hosting options.  That's something I was already looking at, as, for years, I've been associated with GoCollect, including regarding web hosting, and they were interested in ComicList, not Smiley Smile.  But it's possible that relationship will be changing, or ending, in the near future. 

When the time comes for this board to move to Interserver, I'll let you all know, as it will mean a short downtime for the board. 

Thanks for the update, Charles! I'm glad to see this board back up.

Glad you're back I'm on the board usually daily at least once or twice and even though it's slow it's always good to know there maybe something here that's good to read and contribute to. Welcome back

And welcome back board, and thanks a million, Charles.

Yes, thanks guys for all you do to keep the board running. Much appreciated!

And I agree 100% with Craig on what he says at start of this thread. I may have some occasional different opinions here, but this remains the best Beach Boys related forum. Thanks again to those working on it.

Thanks for getting things back up, Chuck. And thanks everyone for being a part of this forum - some weeks are slow, some are full of posts, but either way, you guys are great. Happy thanksgiving from us in the USA to everyone here, Endless Harmony, and elsewhere! We're all fans of a band that has given us so much to be thankful for (and they keep on giving).

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody from me, too!

And about our beloved Beach Boys... the best music ever!

Glad this apparently indestructible forum has been revived again.  Wish there was a practical way to save all the old threads in case the board should (hopefully not) expire for good.

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Good on you GF for speaking truth to you-know-who, and thanks to Charles for bringing us back from the brink again...

...and just in time for Dennis and Carl's upcoming natal days: December is an extra-special BB month! :3d

Loved this board for years, thanks mostly to the number of knowledgeable BB fans who provide such great insight into the band I love. Gotta admit that the negative posts that have permeated the board in recent years have caused me to scale back my posting and even my browsing. This thread has been 100 percent positive, however, which thrills me to no end. Keep it up, folks.

Hey all. I actually tried to check in for the first time in a loooooooooong time recently and was worried this place was gone forever. Happy to see it's back, and it's good to see some old familar names still around!

Kudos to Chuck for keeping this place alive for all these years.

This might just be my phone but is anyone else getting random connectivity problems accessing this board recently?  All of a sudden my Chrome on my phone is giving me a "Your connection is not private " warning message and won't let me access this site.  However my generic Samsung browser on said phone doesn't seem to be having any issues (haven't yet tried my PC browser yet).  

Has your Chrome browser been updated lately? It may have been set to no longer access sites that use http instead of https (which costs extra for websites, and some of us site owners can't afford to pay extra). There may be a setting in the browser you can change to let you access "unsecured" http sites.

I don't use Chrome, but I do use multiple browsers on all my devices, for situations like you encountered.

I can check.  It was working fine on my phone several weeks ago and it works fine on my Chrome browser on my PC.  So not sure what happened.  Just wanted to make sure the board wasn't down again.  :-)

Wholeheartedly agree!

Yours, THD.

So that's the reason why the board doesn't use https?  I never knew that upgrading would cost extra.  Theoretically (Emdeeh, I know you aren't responsible for the board, but as a site owner), would it be possible to upgrade to https if many of us contributed a one-time donation or once-per-year donation?  I'm asking just because everything I've read/heard is that https websites are safer/more protected than HTTP websites.  Thanks!!

Did I jinx something with this post?  😂

Most hosts offer free SSL. There are options like Lets Encrypt that also offer free SSL but with a need to update every 3 months. Cloudflare has a free option as well.

I'd imagaine there would be issues with how old the software this board uses when it comes to making all pages secure. The software is now 9 years out of date.

Correct.  Someday maybe I will be able to fix that.

Hi Chuck, is there a roadmap/plan that could be put in place for such a transition? And could the mods here help facilitate any work moving forward to help this happen? Could our community as a whole do anything to help this happen?

And man this place and its mods sure do live rent free in some people's minds. Once this boards issues are figured out it'll be nice for the universe as a collective whole to not be subjected to posts about "Chuckie" and the "mods" from the EH forum.

That crotchety historian who will not be named is still doing his old "Chuckie forgot to pay his internet bill" routine all these years later?

Not really, though I appreciate the offer.  All I can ask is to be patient.


It does crack me up that the person you speak of will, when the board goes down, urgently and politely pleads for the knowledge that the board will not be lost forever.  And then, when it comes back, retreats back to smart ass comments.  But, unlike you, they never offer any sort of assistance. 

One of these days, all this will be figured out.  This could the year it happens.  We shall see.

Since the board came back it has looked physically different on my end.  All the columns do NOT fit within my page anymore.  Now I must scroll to see the columns on the right hand side. 

I hope this can be fixed soon!

I've noticed that too.  This forum format never really played well with mobile phones unfortunately.  🤷🏼‍♂️