It's been 10 years since CSR went offline. Nostalgia has been getting the better of me a lot lately. I got a Retron 5 for Xmas so I can play old NES/SNES/GEN games, my dog died a few months ago, Yuna's and my daughter is 4 years old now...
Anyway, running CSR is one of my fondest memories. And while the Wayback Machine has a pretty thorough accounting of the site's history, what I really wanted was to be able to see the site as it was a decade ago. I've always maintained good backups, and I still have my archival copy of the site's PHP source code from September 2006 when ReconGamer rudely ceased to exist. After extensive updating, I managed to get the site actually running on a modern copy of Apache, PHP and MySQL. Without a game server, a lot of the old site's nifty features were crippled and needed to be disabled, but the forums were browsable again at least and that was always really the heart of the community that I miss so much.
It'd be a huge security risk to put that back online directly, so instead I crawled the site using HTTrack to create a static HTML copy. That copy is now available here: csreloaded.com/historical/2006/.
It is my intent to get a CS 1.6 game server back online, hosted here on iCabbit, and to rebuild this site in some manner. I make no promises about when that might happen though, given that my track record here is pretty abysmal. But, bandwidth is good enough these days that hosting it from home shouldn't be difficult if I can find the time and remember the commands to coax hlds into action. If you'd like to get back in touch, you can apply to join the temporary forums and say hi.
I miss you all!
- [Wumpa] Porter
Our forum package is pretty securely locked down. New members must be authorized by the administrator before they join. Unfortunately, the only information available to me is your email address. If I recognize your email, I'll approve your membership immediately. If I don't, I'll deny it to prevent bots from getting in. If you're worried I might not recognize you, send me an email first: beporter [at] csreloaded [dot] com or IM me at "Wumpa Porter" on AIM ahead of time so I know who you are when you sign up at the forums. Thanks!
Update (2006-12-21): Well, I finally got around to installing some forum software. I'm afraid that because of where I'm currently hosting this site, I can't reload the existing YaBBSE boards. Instead, I've set up a very basic board using the Vanilla package. I hope a couple of you will stop by and check in. Have a happy holidays everyone!
Update (2006-09-18): Latest news here. The 800 number and the Fairfax, VA number are both busy signals. With a little more investigation, I found out that ReconGamer's parent company, Recon Networks, is also having problems with it's website. Namely: Their site is a basic "phpinfo" page (www.recon-networks.com). Determined to get SOME kind of response, I looked up the "whois" information on the two domains. Here is the ReconGamer WHOIS info. Based on this, I tried emailing Brian Steele, who is listed as the administrative contact ()brianhome@softhome.net). This message bounced back to me immediately with the error, "PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 550 brianhome@softhome.net presently exceeds storage limit". Obviously Brian doesn't check this account very often. Failing this, I decided to try one last-ditch attempt: I called the home number listed in the WHOIS data (). This number turned out to be a fax line, which now that I think about it, might be another vector to try to reach someone with. The only thing left I can think of to try is snail mail to the variety of postal addresses I've gathered (example). Again, any ideas anyone has to reach somebody about this would be appreciated. Is anybody within driving distance of this place?
Update (2006-09-12): Well, more news from the front. ReconGamer's main site is obviously still online, but I tried an older link I had for the account management website (manage.recongamer.com) and was able to log in! This also gave me the opportunity to look up the game server's IP address (I never memorized it since the DNS name was easier to use). According to HLSW, the game server is in fact still online. This of course intrigued me, so I tried calling RG's 800 number again. Now, inexplicably, I am once again getting a busy signal instead of a disconnection notice. There might be life yet! I would encourage you all to try the 800 number once or twice to see if you can get through, and if so please ask them for information on the past two week's outage. If you manage to get any answers from them, please email me so I can post it here!
Update (2006-09-06): I aplogize for all of the weirdness with the domain name the past few days. Slight has been trying valiantly to coax GoDaddy into pointing the domain to THIS server. Once you're reading this, you're in the right place.
Here's the quick and dirty: By all appearances, it looks like ReconGamer is going out of business-- violently. On Thursday morning (2006-08-31) the csreloaded.com website went offline. I immediately sent an email to RG support (support@recongamer.com) and called the RG tech support 800 number (877-GO-RECON) and got a busy signal.
At that point I dumped the MySQL database and started an FTP dump of both the game and web servers. (The dump failed halfway though and it appears that FTP access no longer works at all for the account. Not to worry: nothing on either server had been drastically changed other than the database, so I do have a complete copy of everything archived.)
Moving on; the site was still offline Friday morning, and the RG 800 number was still busy. I then tried RG's local Fairfax VA number (703-799-0751), and that too was busy.
Today (Saturday), the account administration website (secure.recongamer.com) also went offline, and now both phone numbers (800 and local) are reporting that they have been disconnected. I have not gotten any response from my email inquires either. The only remaining hint of life left is the official RG website at www.recongamer.com. At this point I am forced to conclude that RG is no more.
I've contacted Slight, who is in control of the "csreloaded.com" domain name, and asked him to point the web address to this page. The change will probably take a few days so you probably won't be reading this till Monday or so. Either way, if you have any questions or comments or what to get in touch with me, you can IM me on AIM at "wumpaporter" or email me at beporter_NOSPAM_ at gmail dot com. I will work on getting a forum set up so survivors can discuss this event (and what should be done--if anything--to rebuild), but for the time being this is it.
Anyway, thanks for your time,
Brian "Wumpa" Porter