So, what happened?

[Revenant]

I think I speak on behalf of many, many users when I ask if we're going to get an explanation of:

- why VPL disappeared,
- why there was no communication,
- why none of the old content and posts are available, and;
- why VPL has returned?

 

[Jackie]

I am glad that the site is back and as far as explanations, it doesn't matter to me.

 

[Evolution]

I think I speak on behalf of many, many users when I ask if we're going to get an explanation of:

- why VPL disappeared,
- why there was no communication,
- why none of the old content and posts are available, and;
- why VPL has returned?

- why VPL disappeared

This isn't an official VPL response. This is from myself (Evolution).

Our host became very hostile towards us. They were threatening even to me in emails when they weren't able to get a hold of other admins. I unfortunatly couldn't afford to keep VPL servers up especially with the dollar conversion rate being 50% of the USD.

why there was no communication,

@Martyn was able to give some discussion about it on our Facebook webpage. I personally was going through a hard time at my workplace and so wasn't as active as I should have been.

- why none of the old content and posts are available, ,

Our host deleted it and between this and my backup hard drive failures we were unfortunaly able to salvage it. I am gutted at this, I wish every day that I backuped more and that I made a second backup of things rather than the host which turned out to unreliable in my views. We didn't know this until it was to late.

- why VPL has returned?

Us admins wanted to give back to the community. VPL was a place to find information but also to chill and relax. I personally missed it and thought it a lot. When I approached @cpvr about it, I was thankful he agreed.




Please note these are my thoughts.

We want to be sticking around for a long time to come. We are definatly going to try. We hope you would love to be a part of it.
I am taking backups a lot more and storing it multiple places. 🙂

 

[*TJ]

This isn't an official VPL response. This is from myself (Evolution).

Our host became very hostile towards us. They were threatening even to me in emails when they weren't able to get a hold of other admins. I unfortunatly couldn't afford to keep VPL servers up especially with the dollar conversion rate being 50% of the USD.



@Martyn was able to give some discussion about it on our Facebook webpage. I personally was going through a hard time at my workplace and so wasn't as active as I should have been.



Our host deleted it and between this and my backup hard drive failures we were unfortunaly able to salvage it. I am gutted at this, I wish every day that I backuped more and that I made a second backup of things rather than the host which turned out to unreliable in my views. We didn't know this until it was to late.


Us admins wanted to give back to the community. VPL was a place to find information but also to chill and relax. I personally missed it and thought it a lot. When I approached @cpvr about it, I was thankful he agreed.




Please note these are my thoughts.

We want to be sticking around for a long time to come. We are definatly going to try. We hope you would love to be a part of it.
I am taking backups a lot more and storing it multiple places. 🙂

Thank you for the transparency.

I think I speak for a few of us when I say that we just want an honest account of what happened as we felt a bit left in the dark and abandoned, and even if we commit to VPL again - what's to say this won't happen again?

It seems the circumstances were partly out of your / the teams control but it seems that there have been some lessons learnt - which is always good.

I'm not sure if VPL will be as popular as it once was, partly due to the shifting environment over the past few years. But I'd be happy to be an active member of the reboot as long as we are kept in the loop regarding the situation.

There's no embarrassment in disagreements or financial difficulties. Ideally we should all be a part of one close kit community/team. 🙂

Anyway, my babble over!

Thank you for sharing your story @Stranger

 

[cpvr]

I think I speak on behalf of many, many users when I ask if we're going to get an explanation of:

- why VPL disappeared,

VPL disappeared because I personally was dealing with a lot of health problems, financial problems and family issues. I had no intentions of letting VPL disappear.

-

why there was no communication,

There was communication on our facebook page from time to time.

-

why none of the old content and posts are available, and;

We didn't have any backups. However, our new host takes daily backups and they're uploaded to another server. These backups are available on the another server for 30 days. We're trying our best to try to bring back a lot of the old content that we used to have. We're currently working on our games directory.

- why VPL has returned?

VPL has returned because we wanted to bring back the community that we've been missing for quite sometime now. We're quite grateful to have everyone back so far!

Thank you for the transparency.

I think I speak for a few of us when I say that we just want an honest account of what happened as we felt a bit left in the dark and abandoned, and even if we commit to VPL again - what's to say this won't happen again?

It seems the circumstances were partly out of your / the teams control but it seems that there have been some lessons learnt - which is always good.

I'm not sure if VPL will be as popular as it once was, partly due to the shifting environment over the past few years. But I'd be happy to be an active member of the reboot as long as we are kept in the loop regarding the situation.

There's no embarrassment in disagreements or financial difficulties. Ideally we should all be a part of one close kit community/team. 🙂

Anyway, my babble over!

Thank you for sharing your story @Stranger

VPL disappearing will never happen again and that's a promise that I'll forever keep.

 

[Sim]

Unfortunately VPL will never be the same. Allow me to rephrase, web games will never be the same as they once was. EOR (End Of Rant)

They're sites which have copies of the whole internet. That itself is a great place to start looking for the good back up content. I can't remember the site itself, but when you find the URL @Evolution please post it. I also lost my backups of all my projects and databases including oRPG Creator. 🙂

I want my coder tag back.

 

[cpvr]

Unfortunately VPL will never be the same. Allow me to rephrase, web games will never be the same as they once was. EOR (End Of Rant)

They're sites which have copies of the whole internet. That itself is a great place to start looking for the good back up content. I can't remember the site itself, but when you find the URL @Evolution please post it. I also lost my backups of all my projects and databases including oRPG Creator. 🙂

I want my coder tag back.

In regards to your comment that vpl will never be the same, only time can dictate what will happen to Vpl.🙏


Well.. I can honestly say that your rant isn’t 100% false because a lot of games aren’t actually just browser based anymore and some of them have moved on over to the mobile ecosystem.

By any chance, are you referring to Alexa’s Wayback machine’s script? If so, we’re unable to find any of vpl’s old content on Alexa.

Also, welcome back to VPL, Sim. I hope all is well with you!