TvChaosUK News

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Update

A much needed and long awaited update on our situation.

This is going to be a long and comprehensive explanation, aimed at answering all the questions which have been raised and taking into account all the opinions and ideas of those who have expressed them. If you just want a short version and not really interested in the details, we can say that the development of the site is ongoing, we are aware of all the problems and are working on them.

What happened?

After around ten years using Template Shares source code for our old site and being with the same host for around five years we were met with a catastrophic disaster when the data centre was closed down by German authorities. I don't think it's any secret now that we were hosted in the Cyberbunker, which was reputed to be not only the safest DC in the world but one of the safest places in the world, built to withstand a nuclear blast! All the data was lost.

Because of the secure factor of the location, all our daily backups were also kept in the same data centre and due to already very high bandwidth use, local backups were restricted to monthly downloads of the database. Under normal circumstances, that would be enough to rebuild the site back to how it was, albeit with the .torrent files missing. However, around four years ago Template Shares was abandoned as a project and because of it's proprietary nature being licensed software, although we still have the source code, without the ability to register a new server in their licensing system it will not work.

To all those who have constantly said to us "but other sites are still using tsse", they wouldn't be after the kind of loss we suffered. TSSE is encrypted with Ioncube and there is only one person who could patch in the xbt tracker, that person being the author who vanished (after accepting payment from many of his subscribers and delivering nothing).

What have we been doing?

We have spent long long days exploring all our options. We have reviewed and tested a few of the remaining source codes. We have mock up sites running other codes and spoken to all the devs who are still active. Unfortunately support on just about all of them is now non existent, limited to customising the look rather than keeping the core updated. The UNIT3D source which we are running is different in that it's new. It's actually so new that it still lacks a lot of basic functions such as mass delete, etc. But... it is still in heavy development, though only by a small team.

We know that this is not perfect but taking all factors into account, it made the most sense. We were assured that it would handle our large peer numbers but as is evident, it is struggling. Something that we need to remember is that it took over twelve years to get the old site as it was. We have had a monumental task of having to start from scratch basically, in a very short space of time.

We know that the script still has many issues to resolve, but already we have ironed out hundreds of issues which affect the site functionality.

What next?

We are currently working on creating a high performance branch of UNIT3D employing XBT tracker. We're in communication with the XBT author (he's somewhere on site hiding in the member ranks  ) and looking at how we are going to patch the script mods such as freeleech, bonus points, seedtimes etc. We are also looking at a new server set up for better performance and security. The UNIT3D devs are always updating their scripts and any coders out there are more than welcome to take a look at the code and any ideas you have for improvement can be submitted directly on github. Source bugs can also be posted on github: github.com/HDInnovations/UNIT3D-Community-Edition.

Our plea to you

We know it can be frustrating navigating the site when the server is overloaded, it's even harder for us but staff have got to the point where their breaking point is the negativity of a few members. On the whole the support from you guys has been nothing short of amazing and is what has kept us going. However, we have had a few staff leave and others are very disappointed with the attitude of a few. We keep seeing comments like "You guys better get this stuff sorted, and fast!" and "whose idea was that theme? I hope you all crash and burn for that choice." The latter was a very real email from a member who became the first member who we have banned from this site for about 3 or 4 years. We give our time for free and it is hard, we work hard, it is a completely free service and if it is not to your liking then please do the rest of us a favour and just leave.

To the vast majority of you we give our heartfelt thanks for your patience and sharing our view that TVC is a project worth preserving. We hope you will stick with us while we build up, once again the worlds largest collection of UK TV. To those who have contributed towards the cost of the relocation and all those who have donated in the past we say a massive thank you. This certainly would not be possible without your help.