JohnD

The DCP sites will be offline on Sunday, Dec 21 for several hours while we transfer the systems to a new server. We don’t have a specific time, but expect to get started mid-morning. Thank you for your patience during this transition.

I am writing today to let you know that, after 20 years of stewardship of Drum Corps Planet and the DCP community, I am stepping away from the site. In the time since I purchased the site around Thanksgiving 2005 we have seen a lot of change in the DCP community, the social media environment, and the very activity we’ve supported. Throughout these changes we’ve done our best to provide a platform for the open exchange of ideas and opinions on the state of the activity - in the largest dedicated online community for drum corps participants, alumni, and fans. My preference has been to largely remain behind the scenes, keeping the technology working and the bills paid ... meaning the overwhelming majority of credit for the success of the site must go to all of our Community Administrators and Forum Support Team members over the years. Without them, the DCP community simply would not function - so I am eternally grateful to them for their dedication to and support of the community over the past 20 years. I’m also very thankful for Kevin Gamin, who has been our Managing News Editor of the DCP news site over all of these years - keeping visitors updated with the latest news and information about the activity. With this announcement, Kevin is adding a new role to his responsibilities - that of DCP’s new owner. He clearly understands the value Drum Corps Planet brings to the drum corps activity and is committed to keeping DCP an active platform for fans and participants to discuss the activity. We will be transitioning the technical and business bits of the site to Kevin over the next couple of months, with an eye toward minimizing any changes that would affect access, operations, or the user experience. There will be a limited amount of time where the Forums will be unavailable as we make the final transfers, but it shouldn’t last more than a few hours. As the transition progresses and Kevin assumes full responsibility for the site, I’ll be stepping away to focus on family and my other activities and interests. I have every confidence that Drum Corps Planet will be in great hands. Finally, thank YOU - the DCP community, for the past 20 years of support for the site, the DCP support team, and especially the drum corps activity. Its been a gas. -john

I am writing today to let you know that, after 20 years of stewardship of Drum Corps Planet and the DCP community, I am stepping away from the site. In the time since I purchased the site around Thanksgiving 2005 we have seen a lot of change in the DCP community, the social media environment, and the very activity we’ve supported. Throughout these changes we’ve done our best to provide a platform for the open exchange of ideas and opinions on the state of the activity - in the largest dedicated online community for drum corps participants, alumni, and fans. My preference has been to largely remain behind the scenes, keeping the technology working and the bills paid ... meaning the overwhelming majority of credit for the success of the site must go to all of our Community Administrators and Forum Support Team members over the years. Without them, the DCP community simply would not function - so I am eternally grateful to them for their dedication to and support of the community over the past 20 years. I’m also very thankful for Kevin Gamin, who has been our Managing News Editor of the DCP news site over all of these years - keeping visitors updated with the latest news and information about the activity. With this announcement, Kevin is adding a new role to his responsibilities - that of DCP’s new owner. He clearly understands the value Drum Corps Planet brings to the drum corps activity and is committed to keeping DCP an active platform for fans and participants to discuss the activity. We will be transitioning the technical and business bits of the site to Kevin over the next couple of months, with an eye toward minimizing any changes that would affect access, operations, or the user experience. There will be a limited amount of time where the Forums will be unavailable as we make the final transfers, but it shouldn’t last more than a few hours. As the transition progresses and Kevin assumes full responsibility for the site, I’ll be stepping away to focus on family and my other activities and interests. I have every confidence that Drum Corps Planet will be in great hands. Finally, thank YOU - the DCP community, for the past 20 years of support for the site, the DCP support team, and especially the drum corps activity. Its been a gas. -john

Perhaps ... but I assumed that people would read and follow the instruction provided in the error page. Rather than simply using the standard server error message, we created a page that let folks know the specific reason for the condition and instructions on what to do. You'd be surprised (or maybe not) how many continued requests from the same IP address we received. Each new 'block' restarted the clock on the timeout and put them further behind. As mentioned in my previous post - this was our first year using this tool and I'm sure there are things to be learned, once we review all of the data.

Apologies for the time it has taken me to respond. Yes, the limits were placed on a per IP address per page - using a specific pattern to match on a forum 'page'. You're absolutely correct - there are many (in some cases, hundreds) of additional 'GETs' that pull in images, related script files, style/CSS files, etc ... but in this case, we were looking for a specific indication this was a request for a 'page'. The limits were put into production on Thursday afternoon and removed late on Saturday evening, after Championships - so that is why you haven't seen it before. This was our first year using the tool. My apologies to those that were impacted ... but please know that the measures made a significant (positive) difference in our ability to provide timely updates to those that didn't exceed the limits defined. Of course, there are going to be some exceptions where users were blocked that perhaps shouldn't have been. Without having all of the details of the connection, conditions and browsing activity, it is impossible for me to diagnose why that happened. I didn't exempt myself from the filters - which allowed me to test the experience for myself. I didn't have any issues as long as I stayed within the parameters defined (10 requests / 30 second window). Again, thank you for your patience and understanding. We do our best to provide a reliable platform for the community and deal with the very few days each year that we're simply bombarded. Kind regards, -johnd

If you share a public IP address with another system user, that could be the issue. The filtering is done before the traffic hits our server, so the only identifier we have is the IP (IPv4 or IPv6) address of the device making the request. Generally - wait one minute after your last request and try again. Do not exceed 10 requests per 30 second interval. Our apologies for the issues you're having with a connection. I am subjected to the same rate limits and can honestly say that I do not experience any blocks, unless I am really trying to cause it. We will remove the limits once we get through the weekend's load. -johnd

I'm guessing you were looking at the site with a mobile device in the Portrait orientation. The menu was wrapping around on smaller-width devices, so we did a bit of consolidation on the menu. Should be fine now.

As I remember, and believe is borne out in the data, the star indicates a thread you have commented/participated in.

The DCP News site and Forums have been restored to service. Please note any issues you see in this thread. Thanks!

We'll be taking the DrumCorpsPlanet sites, including the Forums, offline on Saturday, Oct 22 to make some changes to our server configuration. Expect the site to go offline around 9am CDST and be down for a few hours. Please know that the work we're doing *may* result in some minor issues on the forums that will reveal themselves over the new few weeks. Thank you in-advance for your patience as we track these 'tuning' issues down and get them resolved. Remember - please post any issues you see in THIS Member Service Center forum. It is the place we look for reports of problems and issues. Thanks! -john

Thanks for raising this question. I've had a look at the system and talked with the moderation team about the matter. There *was* a time when certain users abused the 'reputation' system and littered the forums with negative votes on posts by targeted individuals. It turned out to be quite a mess and did nothing positive for the community - so we took steps to reduce the abuse. Further, the system software evolved to permit greater control over the handling of 'feedback' and "Reactions", which we implemented - but with some limits (200 "Reactions" per day per Member). Looking at it today, we've 'lost' many of those that were creating the havoc and eliminated the ability to "downvote" posts by users, some time ago. "Reactions" are generally categorized as "positive" or "neutral". With that, I've removed the limits on "Reactions" - effective immediately. This should remove the roadblock folks were seeing when wanting to react to posted content. Go forth a spread your (positive) reactions!! -johnD P.S. Remember - If you think a post violates our Community Guidelines (NOT that you simply disagree with the poster), hit the Report button.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Jim. I've changed the settings on the system to permit only the Member themselves and the forum Admin team to see the birthday in a Member's profile. Of course, if the Member doesn't enter the information, there's nothing shown to anyone. Thanks again. -johnD

Lost on multicam - fine on high cam

Cappy - I don't know when the change to the mobile template happened, mainly because I seldom use the mobile version. I haven't made any changes to the theme/template settings, so it must've been one of the incremental 'improvements' from Invision along the way. Actually, your suggestion about removing scores from the forum menu was a good idea that I hadn't considered. While in the menu configuration, I moved a couple of other things around so reduce the menu to 3 items at the 'top' level - with plenty of room on the narrow (Portrait) menu display. That should help things considerably. Thanks for the suggestion. -johnD

THIS The issue is that our menu has more options than what is possible to fit on the single row, so it wraps around ... and overlays the info below. The easiest solution is to simply turn your phone on its side to expand the width of the menu while in landscape mode/orientation. You can return to portrait orientation just as soon as you make the menu selection, to provide a 'longer' list of topics/posts. "Why don't you fix it?" We REALLY try to stay within the default Invision 'theme' (including the mobile settings) in order to make upgrades and updates easier. Custom templates add a layer of complications when updating the system. Is this a perfect solution? No - but the 'work around' seems to be a pretty simple accommodation and allows us to stay current on important updates. Thanks! -johnD