…though it has moved to this URL. Tremendous gratitude to @HoustonRetail at RetailWatchers.com for taking custody and keeping the board alive and helping me maintain my sanity!
Some background and context:
I started the message board probably 25 years ago using a freebie service called Boardhost. In 2005, I set up the current version of the board using an open-source PHP-based platform called phpBB. This was also about the same time that I converted Groceteria.com all my sites to the WordPress platform. I was always very insistent about keeping the message board history-focused because I knew that allowing posts about current operations would basically hijack it and drown out the history focus. Sometimes that made me kind of a heavy-handed moderator (understatement) and I’m sure I alienated a lot of users. I was also starting a whole new profession at this time and my attention to the board (approving new users, etc.) was really spotty for a while. Traffic declined, understandably.
In 2009, RetailWatchers was launched by Aaron (@submariner), a Groceteria user who wanted to create a place for discussions of current issues. I was really excited about this because I thought it was a fantastic idea for a message board, just not one that I wanted to run. The two always complemented each other; it was never a “competition” thing.
About seven years ago, the Groceteria board started having load issues and because a very early victim of the bot attacks that are so common today. These attacks eventually took both the message board and the main site offline for a time. At that point I moved the message board to another host and a new domain name, which took care of these issues for a while. But I was still spending a lot of time combatting spam registrations and other issues. And honestly, the board just didn’t have that much new traffic, but I was determined at least to keep the years of posts accessible in some form. Basically, though, the 80-20 rule kicked in and the board became 20% of my traffic and user base but 80% of my headaches.
Over the past few months, the bot attacks returned with a vengeance. I was also in the midst of moving my other sites (including the main Groceteria site) to the same host as the message board. When things got out of hand and the bot swarm on the message board took down ALL my sites a few weeks back, I realized the message board had to go unless I was willing to put a lot of time and effort into mitigation. Frankly, I was not willing to do that given the amount of usage it was getting, so I disabled the board temporarily to protect the other sites. But again, I was determined that the 20 years of user contributions should remain available to users and search engines.
Enter RetailWatchers, who had recently saved that board from extinction when Aaron had also had enough of the damned bots. After some discussions, some work, some DNS tweaks and other tech tricks on both ends, the board is now live again at https://retailwatchers.com/groceteria/. You should still be redirected to it from the old URL for some time as well, but it’s time to update your bookmarks. Your existing account usernames and logins from the old Groceteria board should still work. Your RetailWatchers logins will NOT work unless they are the same. Consolidating the accounts would have been labor-intensive and buggy and was more than we could manage what with us having real jobs and all.
So the board is live again with someone else in charge (which will probably help it greatly) and I can spend my time concentrating on this site. I am incredibly grateful and really excited about this. There have been some hiccups but they should smooth out over the coming days and weeks.
Thanks to everyone who has been so patient and supportive over the years and to everyone who made the move possible, especially @HoustonRetail, @wnetmacman, and @SteveLandry.
Happy endings are nice.