walking melbourne website

peter_j

This great database of Melbourne buildings seems to have vanished - anyone have any news on its whereabouts?

www.walkingmelbourne.com

Sean

Hi Peter,

Walking Melbourne is no longer as a result of a malicious Sanity Worm hack to our PHPBB discussion forum, despite being the latest version 2.0.11 (as recommended by PHPBB) and having all patches up to date.
As a result the web host felt that it was a security risk to run the site and am unable to find a host that is inexpensive and that will.
This was the last straw for the site, which in the end was consuming too much time, and there are many more alternative resources these days on the web than there were when the site was first developed.

From here, the site may eventually get a redesign and come back online, possibly in 2006.

Thanks to all visitors and their support !

Cheers,

Sean Fishlock
Walking Melbourne.

peter_j

Sean,
That's awful news - if you were on version 11 then I'd better move up to 12 bloody quickly.

Thanks for the Walking Melbourne site, it was (and may yet be again) a valuable and fascinating resource into the buildings of the Melbourne CBD. And it had one of the few well-attended Australian web forums. Hope it is back soon. Did I hear right that there is going to be a book?

P

Sean

Peter, I think it was more a problem with the version 10-11 patch rather than version 11 itself. It seems that although the patch updated the version number, it didn't actually fix the vulnerable piece of code. Rather than search it out myself, I mistakenly trusted the developers ...

As for the database, anyone still interested, can visit one of many copycat sites that have emerged on the back of Walking Melbourne:
http://www.adonline.id.au/buildings/

A book is already out, but it is a publication of the National Trust by Rohan Storey.
It is not affiliated with the website.
http://www.nattrust.com.au/info.asp?pg=Publications
At one stage, I had thought the site would be a good way of selling the book to raise funds for the Trust. (I have recently renewed my membership and faith in the Victorian Trust despite some niggling opposition to their windfarm policy and passionate loathing of their website).

There has also been another book with the same name about walking trails. It is also not affiliated with the website.

I'd like to be involved in similar publications of this type if only I could find the time.

Sean.

Anonymous

Sean,

That's such a shame! What a wonderful resource your site was. I truly hope that you can find a way to get it up and running again. Would it be possible to have the site without the forum? As it was the forum that seems to have caused the problem. Thanks so much for all your hard work and I just want to say what a wonderful dossier the site was on Melbourne's architecture. Keep in touch and best of luck.

Regards

Peter Barrett

sb

Hello Peter,

Just wondering if The Collector has surfaced ... I miss his Marvellous Melbourne challenges.

Susan

thomasjfletcher

Sean-
I'm a Sydneysider living in New York and I run the website www.nyc-architecture.com. I understand how much work goes into these things.
I think you should reserect your site without the forum. I have room on my server- I could upload it if you want me to.
I enjoyed it a lot and wondered for ages where it got to.
cheers
Tom

peter_j

www.walkingmelbourne.com is back!

Sean

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all of your support guys!

As Peter said, the site is now back up online, including the forum.

It is a lot of work Tom, but like you I do have a passion for it.
Sites like yours and Peters are one of the things I love most about the Internet.
I really didn't realise what an impact it had on people until I saw posts like these and had so many offers to help out.

I am going to start spending a lot more time improving the site's content and the community features.

Once again, thanks, stay tuned for more and hope to see chat more with you all on the forum.