I know alot of you visit Vodhin.org on a regular basis, but unfortunately – due to improper hotlinking from many external sites – it has temporarily gone offline as of July 28th. A similar event happened last year for this very reason. I certainly hope that RCTDb did not aid in it’s hiccup, as I have linked only to the download page, and not a file hosted on the server. Please, let’s all let help out by not hotlinking his files (ie: vodhin.org/downloads/somecoolfile.zip – not the real url, but you get the idea), and instead just link to the site (vodhin.org). Bandwidth costs a significant amount of money, and until you operate a website, you don’t know how big of an issue it really is.

Vodhin has been generous enough to offer his webspace to host any custom files you may have created. Unfortunately, a large resource has gone offline and users cannot access said files. I’d like to help out with this in any way possible, starting with making the files widely available. So please, don’t hesitate to send your files our way.

Straight from Vodhin.org – as of July 29th, 2010

What happened is that there has been – and continues with greater resolve, an attack against php based websites, against a certain CMS based website spicifically, and the old site was hammered with thousands of bad requests from a number of robots that were trying to add malware to the our files.

While the attacks were unsuccessful in injecting the malicious code into our server, the sheer number of attempts were enough to overload the server and prevent tthis and other websites from loading. The attack continues right now as you read this, and so I have decided to dump the a certain CMS CMS system since the develpoers have not been able to offer a fix (which would require re-writing the entires CMS, something that is already in the works anyway) and my web host has decided not to support a certain CMS based website for now.

The bots have been using Google to locate these sites, and will more than likely evolve to atack other php based websites in the near future. With that in mind, I’ve decided to hold off on restoring this website until I learn more about ways these “bod bots” can be stopped. I had already implimented a trap to serve these bots a Forbidden page, but the number of attacks grew to a point where the server just could not handle the real requests, let alone serving the forbidden page.

So, My website will remain closed for a while, but not to worry, I have backed up the database (in full this time) and I will archive the downloads that were hosted here (that, as of this writing, is still a work in progress). Hopefully we will be back up and running by September 2010, but to what level I don’t know…

Let’s hope for the best.
-T10

Hot off the press – you can now “Browse by Creator” right above the search field, for even greater access to your favorite custom creator. Maybe you’ll even find something new! Along with their names is a bracketed number of releases or projects they’re involved with. Click to see and the page automatically loads.

Thanks!
-T10

Photo Credit: Moby

This highly innovative set combines precise structural steel work, and beautifully curved glass architecture to give your park the modern edge it needs. Use as modular building, or as standalone supports.

Access forum and files:
View Thread | Download

Photo Credit: imagineertom

Made from wood and manmade rock, this was the first car for one of the Tomorrowland rides in 1959. The first coaster to ride tubular steel tracks, now in RCT form.

Access forum and files:
View Thread | Download

It has come to my attention that the feed was out of date. For those of you that read the feed via RSS – I’ve got some good news for you. It’s fixed! It’s been stuck on April 16th, 2010 for some unknown reason and I have now fixed the issue. It was pointing to an older URL and I never got a chance to update it. All is solved, and now you can receive up-to-date feeds via RSS. Subscribe now if you haven’t already!

Thanks!
T10

As most of you may have read, a short while ago I had requested some additional help with publishing content on this site. This was due to my ever increasing busy lifestyle. A few emails were sent to me, I sifted through them, and I’ve picked the most qualified applicant. There are now two people who will be regularly posting on the site, to bring you the high quality content you desire.

Without further ado, let’s all give a warm welcome to Jdrowlands, the newest member of the RCTDataBase staff! I’m happy to have another individual on board, and this will bring new insight to the website as a whole. Prepare for this week’s lineup, it’s gonna be a good one. This week will be dedicated to all of his custom sets, and we will return to regularly scheduled programming in the following week, with no commercial breaks!

Any questions, comments, suggestions, concerns, welcome messages – drop a comment below. Thanks.

I’ve been lacking in the updating department this month, but then again it was a busy time of year. Moving out of college (to go back for one more year), taking the oh-so-wonderful final exams, settling down at home, and starting my summer internship, not to mention summer in general. I just haven’t quite had the time to publish as many updates as I would like to. Especially the YouTube Tuesday videos. I missed a few of those, and I’m sure you’re all greatly disappointed about that. Submissions to the the support email would greatly increase your chances of the video/set/park/track appearing here – no matter what level of work you posses. It’s getting pretty difficult to lurk all the forums to bring you guys quality updates, and with your help, we can promote all kinds of new work.

So bear with me this month, and June should bring some additional quality updates. I have 10 new(ish) sets to put up. Some have already seen them, but for our non-atari/sgw/lounge readers it will be a treat.

Send me your submissions!
I might even have a volunteer blog poster spot open to help spread quality roller coaster tycoon content on the site. *wink wink* (apply to be one). Just send an email to the support address telling why you’d be a great candidate for blog posting here, and what you would do to make a difference. It is unpaid, as I have a minimal income from the site, and bills to pay =p. This will not only help me, but greatly help the RCT community.

In other technical news:
-Wordpress 3.0 is coming out (yay!) and I’ve tinkered with the beta. Lots of new features in it. Maybe I’ll even create another theme for this site, to update it a bit. We’re a little over a year old!
-traffic has skyrocketed in the last few months ~40,000 visitors last month, and coming up to 50,000 this month
-on May 2nd we had 2,684 visitors. I don’t know what they feed you guys, but keep coming back!
-RCTDB has 404 posts, 6 pages, 20 categories, 157 tags, and 186 comments to date.

Thank you all for your continued support.
Email me if you’re interested in being an author as well.
-T10

I’d like to welcome matt9537′s Britannica Park to the site! For those unfamiliar with the park, it is broken down into 5 files (which will be in the downloads section), and are based in part off of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Mercia, Londium, and West Wales. For this post, we’ll be covering the “Ireland” area of the parks. Below are a few pictures of the area, and a POV.

Video after the jump.

Photo Credit: matt9537

Photo Credit: matt9537

Photo Credit: matt9537

Access forum and files:
View Thread | Download

(more…)

As of last week, I’ve been removing the “open in new window” element from the links in each post. I’ll continue to remove that from links in this month only, and implement that for future posts. No more layers upon layers of new windows just to get files. Now the simple “back” will be sufficient.

Comments/Questions/Concerns, let me know.

-T10

Be here, tell your friends. It will be big. Exciting. And super beneficial to the community. You don’t want to miss this.

Some of you may have already found out, but shhh – not everyone may be as sly as you.

-T10