If you leave those front page pics up much longer your going to need a subtitle like pinball circa.....

We wanted to post pics up from the next meeting... but that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon. I will look into putting something else.

hey send us your pics from your meetings! or your get togethers or of yourself playing something. this message is for all!

Quoted from JD3

hey send us your pics from your meetings! or your get togethers or of yourself playing something. this message is for all!

We'll being "Montreal"AACA, I didn't think you wanted pics of TOPL guys. I can take some pics the next time I host again on the 27th of Aug, but you probably won't know anyone.

If that's what you want then I can send you some.

Glen it is appreciated besides the current ones are from Ottawa so it doesnt make a difference to me as people can see we just need a change.

Quoted from JD3

Glen it is appreciated besides the current ones are from Ottawa so it doesnt make a difference to me as people can see we just need a change.

...until someone comes forward to host a meeting in Montreal, other than Mrhide!!! It seems that the meetings are pretty much dead... unless by some freakish miracle I end up having pins again and have a meeting at my place...

Quoted from JD3

Glen it is appreciated besides the current ones are from Ottawa so it doesnt make a difference to me as people can see we just need a change.

Even a group pic from Allentown would have been nice .... (hint for next year).

The summer months have been historically slow for meetings, hopefully in the fall things will start to pick up.

Not volunteering myself due to lack of basement/game room

Quoted from Sparky

...until someone comes forward to host a meeting in Montreal, other than Mrhide!!! It seems that the meetings are pretty much dead... unless by some freakish miracle I end up having pins again and have a meeting at my place...

Odd. Not to knock you guys in Montreal but TOPL has a sizable group of dedicated followers and conducts weekly meetings (league nights). There are several good sized collectors in the area to support this kind of activity.

Now if I could only get Charles (the pres) to get off the friggen Google groups and put up a real forum I'd be happier with them.

I've been thinking about doing some like that for TOPL for quite some time, just never found the time to do it.  I know the guy who owns the TOPL.org webpage so I could even modify that as well.  

One thing is for sure, at least MAACA has updated their page more often then TOPL the last TOPL update was sometime 2001.

Quoted from Vengeance

I've been thinking about doing some like that for TOPL for quite some time, just never found the time to do it.  I know the guy who owns the TOPL.org webpage so I could even modify that as well.  

One thing is for sure, at least MAACA has updated their page more often then TOPL the last TOPL update was sometime 2001.

I thought I had Charles convinced to do it. He seemed rather willing but then it just seemed to fizzle out. Tell him I am going to hold him hostage from hosting if he doesn't.

I am really getting tired of the number of emails I get through Google groups. Most of it is really only a conversation between two people and yet we all receive it. It is a pain in the a** to be honest to stay registered with the Google group.

Here's a good place to start.

http://www.eblah.com/

All you need to have is a host that runs Perl, PHP, MySQL and/or SQLite database depending on what the bulletin board is written in. That's pretty damn common these days. Actually, I think Perl that this uses is getting less common, but I am sure someone who works in this industry can comment; I don't. You likely also have to have a cgi-bin directory on the host to run cgi scripts from but that is also common and will be provided by your host once you ask for this service. It may not be called cgi-bin, my knowledge is a bit rusty, but you get the point.

I used to run this one which I found to be easy and robust. It used to be free.....

http://www.vbulletin.com/

A cool thing about vbulletin if you enabled it is you could use HTML and java within the reply fields so you could do neat interactive things. Like voting, push a button to start something else or have a countdown timer to show the next up coming event, etc.

Your host might charge a bit more for running a server side application for you. Maybe not. I was using http://www.netfirms.ca/ because they were cheap and reliable, there are tons of them out there. You can apply to have the domain name transfered to a different host if required and keep TOPL.org.

You should also find a good FTP application to transfer your files. SmartFTP or FlashFXP were good but again there are many out there. Some are free... the better ones are well.... if you know what your doing free too. Frontpage won't cut it for this stuff.

So basically in summary.

• Find a suitable bulletin board and figure out it's requirements.
  
• Find a suitable host that can meet those requirements.
  
• FTP the files to the appropriate directories which you should be instructed by both the BB instructions and your host. (They all speak the same mumbo jumbo.) It will work!
  
• Log onto your bulletin board and start setting it up the way you like.

As a side note Adam you can do all this before you transfer the domain name to test it all out first. Then transfer the domain over once your sure it's working the way you want it. You may not have to transfer if your existing host can provide you with the service required. You might just have to pick the BB that suits your existing hosts services.

If your head hasn't exploded yet wait till they start rambling on about Apache.

Really it's not that hard. The whole thing if you know what your doing would take two hours to set up once the host has prepared it for you.

Note: I was just looking at Netfirms, even their $6.95 Cdn / month service includes Perl, MySQL and PHP.

My suggestion would be pay the 7 bucks a month, set it up independent of TOPL.org and get it running so you can maintain access to it and not have it become a free for all. Then link it to TOPL's homepage. You wouldn't even need your own domain name and save those fees because it's a link just like they do here for this forum. A free one would be like "www.topl.netfirms.com", so you just need to hyperlink that. You can give out administrator rights just like MacPhreak does, but you maintain the service yourself so it doesn't get played with.

I am glad that you all are meeting once a week for league play, but one of the comments I got a long time ago was that most members in Montreal and Ottawa just wanted to get together, shoot the mess, drink some beer and play pinball and vids with no strings attached. I also noted that most wanted to meet no more than once a month, due to most having families and other priorities... it is a hobby after all. As for the competition factor, I have proof in my garage... the MAACA cup is now collecting dust due to members not really wanting a tournament anymore at meetings.

What I think it is is that I believe people are shy about hosting a meeting, thinking that you need to have all A-list games to host a meeting, or a shitload of machines. Quite untrue! One of the best meetings we had was at SpaceCadet's place, playing mostly the older pins he had in the garage! Jeez...I have just as much fun, if not more, shopping out other people's pins during a meeting than playing.

As for the next meeting, we will wait until September, unless members want one in August, which is more than fine by me!

It's not so much as a lack of knowledge it's more just a lack of time.  I haven't even had time to setup my website for my side buisness and I've been meaning to do that for a little over a year now.  I already have the hosting that can support the board again it's just a matter of taking the time to sit down and set it all up, I know once done it will pretty much run itself most of the time but it just a matter of sitting down and finding the time.

As for TOPL meetings, for hosts we only really have 2 requirments.  That the machines work and that you have 4 of them.  The reason for 4 is that we need to play a minimum of 4 machines for scoring purposes.  Other then that there isn't much more to it.  If you wanted to setup a weekley league out in Montreal I'd be happy to send you the Excel spread sheet we use to calculate the standings and send you the rules and stuff that we use for the TOPL league.  TOPL started back in like 1996 with like 4 guys who just got togethor weekly to play some pin and grew from there.  

As the old saying goes, if you build it they will come