The revival of TIMGUL

b/Website Talk publicado por u/Dream of Omnimaga July 06, 2016, 11:34:08 PM

The revival of TIMGUL - Progress

So in response to many requests for MP3s from TIMGUL and to a lesser extent a place to discuss MTV Music Generator, I was contemplating putting TIMGUL back online.

TIMGUL stands for "The International Music Generator Users Lounge" and it was a place where people showcased their songs made using the following softwares (although there was also a smaller section for former MTVMG users to showcase their Ejay/FL Studio/Cubase/Reason/etc songs later in the site's life):

Music (Playstation 1)
Music 2000 (PS1/Windows)
MTV Music Generator (North American version of Music 2000)
MTV Music Generator 2 (PS2)
MTV Music Generator 3 (PS2/Xbox)
Music 3000 (PS2)
Funkmaster Flex's Digital Hitz Factory (North American version of Music 3000)
Pocket Music (GBC/GBA)
Music 2002: Club Edition Slinky (Windows)

It also included video and text tutorials. The site was created by me and lasted from 2007 to 2012, although I did not moderate it all the time during that period. It suffered several data losses so as a result, only about 400 of the 1200 songs uploaded there are still available. All posts made from July 5th 2011 to April 2012, unless @Juju can find his 57o9 backup, are gone, but all songs posted during that period were lost long ago anyway.

A similar website, called Consolemusician, existed from 2004 to 2007, but it was much less active and it covered every single music creation software released for game consoles rather than the MTVMG series itself.

What I would like to do is put the site back online, but in read-only mode. Then I would clean up the entire showcase section so that all topics with missing songs that are not available on Youtube are moved to a different sub-forum, to make it easier for people to find working download links. I would also invite every member to CodeWalrus to avoid having to run two different sites that have a music showcase section, especially considering we can just expand the music showcase section based on people's need.

Anyway I think what's left of the site takes about 6 GB, perhaps even less, so of course such project would require Juju to stop using 50% of the CW diskspace as his personal disk space.

An actual merge could also be possible, but this would result in the recent posts section stopping working for a few weeks, so I'm unsure if I would like to go that route.

Last Edit: August 10, 2016, 04:41:40 AM by DJ Omnimaga

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u/Yuki July 06, 2016, 11:46:38 PM

Another thing we could do is to rebrand our current music section as the new TIMGUL or something. I think I still have the old URL somewhere that would be rather easy to do.

u/Dream of Omnimaga July 06, 2016, 11:52:13 PM

Yeah that's what I originally wanted to do on Omni in late 2012 or so when I considered trying to become admin again. Wasn't the old domain name on your Namecheap account? It's still working IIRC but it points nowhere. We can nest as many sub-forums as we see fit there, but we might want to start with as few sections as possible.

Also TIMGUL used smf_ as db prefix so the db would need to be edited prior being uploaded to avoid overwriting CW by mistake.

u/Yuki July 06, 2016, 11:57:00 PM

We did attempted some sort of TIMGUL branding on Omni back then iirc, dunno if it worked. The old domain still works and points to some (uninteresting and rarely updated) music blog on Tumblr, right now. That could probably work on CodeWalrus, together with a custom theme for that board, maybe?

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on July 06, 2016, 11:52:13 PM
Also TIMGUL used smf_ as db prefix so the db would need to be edited prior being uploaded to avoid overwriting CW by mistake.

Or put in a different database.

u/Dream of Omnimaga July 07, 2016, 02:00:00 AM

Thr same db would be better IMHO, so it's easier to integrate some sites functionalities into each others.

As for Omni the TIMGUL merger failed because I stepped down just a few days after downloading a backup, then Omni let the site die in a database corruption or something.

u/::CMG (UTOPIA):: July 22, 2016, 07:48:13 PM

so apparently someone else tried to make a "2.0" version of the site, but it seems like it went nowhere fast... last post was from 2010 and there was apparently a naming issue since Omnimaga owns the TIMGUL name or something. Might be worth trying to get a hold of Not A Number to see if you can get it up and running for reals this time.

u/Yuki July 22, 2016, 08:02:18 PM

Eh, didn't knew that. The actual TIMGUL stayed around for longer than this site IIRC.

Anyway, as far as I know, Omnimaga did gave up on TIMGUL during a server move (not before somehow corrupting it) and I ended up with what was left of it. So, after Omnimaga let it die, I think I pretty much own the rights of TIMGUL. Still own the original domain name as well.

So, in my idea, we could easily make a TIMGUL 2.0, or 3.0, whatever, here on CodeWalrus, probably from our music section, with the original domain redirecting there. We can at least make a TIMGUL theme to be applied to the music section, kind of like we did with Microcat. That or a separate thing, but using the same user databases as CodeWalrus so you can login with the same account. We still have to figure that out.

u/Dream of Omnimaga July 22, 2016, 08:35:48 PM

Quote from: ::CMG (UTOPIA):: on July 22, 2016, 07:48:13 PM
so apparently someone else tried to make a "2.0" version of the site, but it seems like it went nowhere fast... last post was from 2010 and there was apparently a naming issue since Omnimaga owns the TIMGUL name or something. Might be worth trying to get a hold of Not A Number to see if you can get it up and running for reals this time.

Yeah that was when TIMGUL ended up with drama with Quade 77 and it never ended. Ended up ownerless and in the meantime we had two massive data losses. So someone started a temporary site but then the original re-opened with 4 months of lost posts and the backup site remained unused.

Also when Quade got banned someone else got mad and sent me hate mail, threatening to start his own site. He did, but it not only remained inactive, but he never posted at all, so since that one was on Freeforums, it automatically closed after 21 days of inactivity from the root admin. This was the site, btw (it only reached about 500 posts and guests couldn't see them https://web.archive.org/web/20090608133053/http://timgul.freeforums.org/ (the guy even went as far as stealing our site name in the URL)

Then the original TIMGUL remained open, but I gave Omni ownership and then they abandoned TIMGUL. The remaining files were handed over to Juju in April 2012 but his free host was unstable. Now that CW exists it sounded like an opportunity to re-open the archives and redirect the domain name to CW music section.

TIMGUL has the 12K posts curse: Everytime it reached 12000 posts it suffered from a data loss, severe downtime or died down due to drama (although all drama was concentrated in early 2009 and late 2009 and always involved the same group of users). It had close to 20K total if we count everything lost over time...

Last Edit: July 22, 2016, 11:39:39 PM by DJ Omnimaga

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 10, 2016, 12:42:35 AM

It's progressing

http://archives.mtv-music-generator.com/index.php (although juju should really move it to the original URL). It's not complete, though. However I replaced the default SMF theme with a modified CW theme (the unused TIMGUL 2011 theme was gonna be the same colors as CW anyway).

EDIT:
-I added a sub-forum in CW music section that redirects to TIMGUL archives and edited TIMGUL navigation so that it redirects to CW.
-The nav tree on TIMGUL now includes CW music section navtree, as if TIMGUL was a sub-forum there
-What's left of TIMGUL is now in read-only mode
-The TIMGUL forum theme has been altered so that the banner, background and colors are closer to the old TIMGUL site. The background was unused on TIMGUL, but was planned for an Omnimaga merger that finally never happened.

TODO:
-Move topics with missing songs in a separate section for easier music browsing
-Decide whether TIMGUL database content should be merged into CW's or not (or find a way to let people use their CW account on both boards)
-Decide whether TIMGUL post stats should be included in CW's stat section or not
-Decide whether TIMGUL should continue as a separate site or have old users cross-post their content on CW (we can add new music sections). Considering TIMGUL has a strong interest in retro gaming, 8-bit trackers and already have MTVMG users, keeping both sites userbases split might be counter-productive.

Last Edit: August 10, 2016, 04:51:36 AM by DJ Omnimaga

u/::CMG (UTOPIA):: August 10, 2016, 02:37:11 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on August 10, 2016, 12:42:35 AM
TODO:
-Decide whether TIMGUL database content should be merged into CW's or not (or find a way to let people use their CW account on both boards)
-Decide whether TIMGUL post stats should be included in CW's stat section or not
-Decide whether TIMGUL should continue as a separate site or have old users cross-post their content on CW (we can add new music sections). Considering TIMGUL has a strong interest in retro gaming, 8-bit trackers and already have MTVMG users, keeping both sites userbases split might be counter-productive.

I think the main "hurtle" as far as TIMGUL/CW merge goes is whether or not you want the old members of TIMGUL to return/recruit new members that use MTVMG/MusicSeries. Keep in mind these programs/games are usually used by a niche group of people, unless you're looking to broaden the horizons and include people that use FruityLoops/GarageBand/LMMS/etc...

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 10, 2016, 03:55:09 PM

Well CW users are already oriented towards low-end music softwares, such as HoustonTracker, Famitracker, Garageband and Musescore. Plus MTVMG is for retro consoles. I could easily see the music section by groups of programs if the demand is there.

u/Yuki August 10, 2016, 08:24:05 PM

Yeah, MTVMG is one of the various software our members use to make music. If we ever split the music section by groups (which sounds like a good idea), it will definitely be one of them. So yeah, we'd definitely include users of other software. Anyway, I'd leave the archives in a separate forum install, Omnimaga did that back then it it resulted in a huge mess.

Also the main URL http://mtv-music-generator.com/ now redirects to the music section.

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 10, 2016, 09:05:40 PM

It depends. If we exclude timgul from recent posts for a month then a merge might be viable. Keep CW ID's intact but bump TIMGUL's

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 11, 2016, 05:53:10 PM

So I began filtering topics that have missing song downloads and stream links. The topics are still intact, but have been marked as locked. I am far from done, though. So far, I screen roughly half of the House/Disco section in the MTVMG showcase: http://archives.mtv-music-generator.com/index.php?board=23.0

It will be easier to find working songs that way.