UTF

Web Site Outages

If you’ve tried to visit the Reverb or even UTF for that matter, you probably encountered some “file not found” pages in addition to a sluggish (slow) site and other issues. I apologize for that. My host was having some major issues, and my site, along with hundreds (if not thousands) of other customers got knocked off line. The issue seems to be resolved for the most part; however, my host is still having issues. I can’t guarantee that Reverb or UTF won’t go back out again. Paying for true 99% uptime is a bit more expensive.

UTF Version 5

Prior to the outages, I was able to make a large amount of progress on UTF version 5. The site is 98% complete. I would have been closer to finishing and launching sooner, but I’m nearly three days behind schedule thanks to intermittent site outages. I still have some backend work to complete, but UTF v5 will launch really soon. Timmy has seen the new site and thinks it’s great. Everyone else will soon see that it’s a vast improvement over the current version of the site. Stay tuned to Reverb to find out when the new site (and very much improved) launches.

Effective immediately, the Official UTF Newsletter will no longer be delivered to subscribers via email. Between this blog and the new version of UTF (which really is coming soon), I no longer see the need to maintain the newsletter. You can subscribe to the latest UTF news on Reverb by subscribing to the RSS feed. The new version of UTF will also have RSS, so you will get the news and updates instantly in your favorite RSS reader.

If you tried to visit the UTF message board and landed at Reverb, then your eyes (or browser) is not playing tricks on you. The UTF message board has been taken off line and the associated database will be deleted. The URL for the message board now redirects to Reverb, the official UTF blog.

If you haven’t visited Reverb before, it is the place where I post random thoughts on entertainment for the most part. I also will post UTF news there until the new version of UTF version 5 is up and available for the public. You can subscribe to any posts at Reverb via RSS. If you don’t know what RSS is, look for the orange symbol on the UTF blog, click on that, and subscribe using an RSS reader.

I have made a decision to shut the UTF message board down. The daily spam fights have just grown too overwhelming and has involved too much of my time over the past year. I’m one person against an army of spam robots. Maintaining the message board has become more work than I’m willing to put in, so at the end of January, the message board will go away.

As most of you are aware, you can contact Timmy directly at his web site. I will be directing any communications I have with you at Reverb. If any of you have made friends here and want to keep in touch with them, I urge you to send that person a private message through the message board while you still can. I would not recommend putting your private email address in the forums as you don’t really know if everyone on the Memberlist is a real person. Thanks.