A few days ago, we did a soft launch of Incantation (the phpBB forum), but soon there was a power blip and it went offline. Derp. We brought the machine back online, but then there was a server error which I spent a day fixing.

Well, let's do this properly. We applied two countermeasures to this problem. One is to connect the server to a wonderful UPS. Jason says it's not entirely reliable, but at least it's something. The other countermeasure is that the forum software now starts automatically, so a reboot should only bring it down for a moment.

I want to add as a disclaimer that the same thunderstorm that caused the first outage is still going, and that it could happen again. Still, the above countermeasures give us more confidence to present the forum again.

For the sake of completeness, I will include Jason's description.

/u/LarrySwinger2 set up a centralized beautiful deep-featured and well supported phpBB forum, called Incantation for now. Larry has configured it to be accessible on the Internet and TOR networks. This forum can be our first lifeboat for SaidIt should it go down for whatever reasons. With beautiful advanced features, this forum can also become the next centralized hub along side SaidIt with decentralized spokes orbiting them. (This could become the greatest thing out there with the best of both centralization and decentralization.)

We must all be very patient with Larry and his forum. The month-long unexplained absence of /u/magnora7, co-founder of SaidIt, as well as the second banning and second return of /u/JasonCarswell, had fostered a sense of urgency to rush this beta forum forward as a wonderful resource in development. This is NOT any sort of grand launch for wide consumption, as that will come much later, but it's not a secret now either.

Countless forums feature endless neat features, and Larry will too, in time, but what the rest of the world and free-thinking truth-seekers haven't seen yet is Larry's social moderation plan focused on free-expression while dealing with adversaries (spam, shills, trolls, and bots). It is miles ahead of anything else out there, including SaidIt, to our knowledge.

Soft launch #2 / the link

Here's the link, and it's only available via Tor currently. This means you need Tor Browser or Brave. If you use Brave, you need to click File --> New Private Window with Tor from the menu and then copy/paste the URL. Let's familiarize ourselves with this new site and possible home.