LES Updates April 2022 - Welcome to LowEndSpirit.com

Mason

We've made some changes here at LES over the past 24 hours... here's a quick summary --

Where'd the TALK go?

That's right!!!... talk.lowendspirit.com is no more! We are now live at lowendspirit.com!

Hopefully the redirects are all working properly and any links to posts on the blog are now going to their appropriate place on the forum. Please reach out if you notice anything funky going on!

Introducing "LES Talk"

SEE! We didn't lose the "talk" after all. The WordPress blog (formerly at lowendspirit.com) has been replaced and folded onto the forum as a separate "featured" category, now called... LES Talk.

LES TALK is the place that all past LES blog post have been moved to and were all future "blog posts" will go. The reasons for bringing this content back to the forum is to drive more community engagement and discussions for important topics. Rather than posting the article on a different domain and platform (i.e. WordPress), it makes sense to have the content here where LES members can actively participate and easily see. This move also allows us to decommission the VM where the blog used to live, bringing down our monthly costs a bit.

All new LES Talk posts written by a LES members will be featured/announced for a week to allow time for enough eyeballs to look at it and discussion to be had. We will be aiming to eventually hit a goal of 2-4 LES Talk posts per month, but will take baby steps as we inch towards that goal. @mikho will be announcing some more details about the Content Writers group (how to guest write, join, get paid, etc.) along with an idea we have to generate both LES and the writer some income.

You can see our first official LES Talk post already from our very own @vyas - Alternatives to CentOS -- After The Storm. Great write-up and resource to get smart on CentOS and similar alternatives!

Also big shout out and a ton of thank you's to everyone who has contributed articles in the past for LES Talk (formerly LES Blog):

@vyas - 9 Articles
Anthony Smith ( now @InceptionHosting ) - 9 Articles
@Ympker - 7 Articles
@mikho - 7 Articles
@Not_Oles - 6 Articles
@ehab - 3 Articles
@alexxgg - 1 Article
@Laton - 1 Article
@sahjanivishal - 1 Article

You guys rock and we hope you consider continuing to write for us!

New "About LowEndSpirit" Page

Available here: https://lowendspirit.com/about

The about page was created in pursuit of our goal to be completely transparent with everything that we do here. On that page you'll find a short blurb about what we're all about, short history of LES, staff, donations link, public ledger (month-by-month accounting of all donations and expenses), and development plans for LES. Ledger will be updated on a monthly basis.

Other Small Improvements

Swapped the LES Blog widget for LES Talk posts - links to 5 recent LES Talk posts

Menu links have changed - added links for About and Rules, Wiki link moved to sidebar

Font color for h{1-6} tags are now white on dark mode - these were being hidden by blending in with the background, so that should be patched up now

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but my brain is pretty scrambled at this point. @mikho fill in any gaps I missed. Please report any bugs or issues you see! Thanks all and have a great week/weekend!

TheDP

bikegremlin

I'd suggest making the forum on either www, or forum. subdomain.
And installing WP on a separate (sub)domain (though, if I got it right, you ditched the WP and use forum for that now?).
More sturdy in the long run.

Redirects are working fine so far - that's the first thing I checked since I linked to some topics in some articles.

Mason

@bikegremlin said:
I'd suggest making the forum on either www, or forum. subdomain.
And installing WP on a separate (sub)domain (though, if I got it right, you ditched the WP and use forum for that now?).
More sturdy in the long run.

That's exactly how it was in the past. Forum on talk.les and blog on base domain. But we really wanted to get away from WP and drive the activity back here rather than separating it and having to maintain two environments -- as a wise prophet once said, "ain't nobody got time for that."

bikegremlin

@Mason said:

@bikegremlin said:
I'd suggest making the forum on either www, or forum. subdomain.
And installing WP on a separate (sub)domain (though, if I got it right, you ditched the WP and use forum for that now?).
More sturdy in the long run.

That's exactly how it was in the past. Forum on talk.les and blog on base domain. But we really wanted to get away from WP and drive the activity back here rather than separating it and having to maintain two environments -- as a wise prophet once said, "ain't nobody got time for that."

Yup, ditching WP makes sense.

Just - the naked domain is potentially less flexible IMO. If forum is going to be it, I'd still suggest making it www.

Though, I think it's even better to have a www. landing page with a link, or a (302/301) redirect to forum. Who knows what you might decide to do in the future. This gives you more options.

Mason

@bikegremlin said:

@Mason said:

@bikegremlin said:
I'd suggest making the forum on either www, or forum. subdomain.
And installing WP on a separate (sub)domain (though, if I got it right, you ditched the WP and use forum for that now?).
More sturdy in the long run.

That's exactly how it was in the past. Forum on talk.les and blog on base domain. But we really wanted to get away from WP and drive the activity back here rather than separating it and having to maintain two environments -- as a wise prophet once said, "ain't nobody got time for that."

Yup, ditching WP makes sense.

Just - the naked domain is potentially less flexible IMO. If forum is going to be it, I'd still suggest making it www.

Though, I think it's even better to have a www. landing page with a link, or a (302/301) redirect to forum. Who knows what you might decide to do in the future. This gives you more options.

Gotcha! Thanks for the insight/input. I believe www. and talk. should already be 301's to the forum (no subdomain), so we should be set there. But I get your point if LES was to expand to something besides just a forum, we'd want that at the base domain and not the forum. Currently, I don't really envision LES trying to be more than just an online community/forum, but who knows what the future holds, we'll see. Thanks again!

bikegremlin

@Mason said:

@bikegremlin said:

@Mason said:

@bikegremlin said:
I'd suggest making the forum on either www, or forum. subdomain.
And installing WP on a separate (sub)domain (though, if I got it right, you ditched the WP and use forum for that now?).
More sturdy in the long run.

That's exactly how it was in the past. Forum on talk.les and blog on base domain. But we really wanted to get away from WP and drive the activity back here rather than separating it and having to maintain two environments -- as a wise prophet once said, "ain't nobody got time for that."

Yup, ditching WP makes sense.

Just - the naked domain is potentially less flexible IMO. If forum is going to be it, I'd still suggest making it www.

Though, I think it's even better to have a www. landing page with a link, or a (302/301) redirect to forum. Who knows what you might decide to do in the future. This gives you more options.

Gotcha! Thanks for the insight/input. I believe www. and talk. should already be 301's to the forum (no subdomain), so we should be set there. But I get your point if LES was to expand to something besides just a forum, we'd want that at the base domain and not the forum. Currently, I don't really envision LES trying to be more than just an online community/forum, but who knows what the future holds, we'll see. Thanks again!

Yup - exactly. www. and the naked domain should redirect to forum. or something similar.
Preferably with a 302, in case you make other stuff with the domain.

I'm not very smart, it's just that I've been there, made that mistake.

As far as Google is concerned, I'd bet a beer that using a separate subdomain for articles (blog. or www. for that matter) would make stuff less confusing to its bots (take it with a bucket of salt, not an SEO ninja).

deank

I never start threads anyway, so LES talk is meaningless to me.

o_be_one

You guys seems to surf on a wave of new users here !
(yeah, congrats on my first post 8-))

cgs3238

Nice changes, congratulations!

BarryHercules

Can I write a series of articles about my disastrous encounters with prostitution/escorts?

deank

No, you may not.
But you can write aplenty about your encounters with grim rippers.

chocolateshirt

Noice for all LES Admin & Moderator.. at least I can access it directly from lowendspirit.com

Mason

@BarryHercules said:
Can I write a series of articles about my disastrous encounters with prostitution/escorts?

Only if you make companion youtube videos to go along with it

BarryHercules

@Mason said:

@BarryHercules said:
Can I write a series of articles about my disastrous encounters with prostitution/escorts?

Only if you make companion youtube videos to go along with it

Two problems with that;

• These encounters happened 5-10 years ago, and alas I was unable to film them at the time
• The girls usually get really annoyed if you do try to film them, especially when you’re paying them to say unusual phrases like ‘mash my fudge tunnel like it’s Wednesday’ and ‘use me like a toaster filled with mashmallowows’.

BarryHercules

@deank said:
No, you may not.
But you can write aplenty about your encounters with grim rippers.

I’ve had a few of those. They say ‘never meet your heroes'… what they should say is ‘never hire your one of your favourite pornstars for an hour after she’s been out of the game for 3 years, because there’s a reason she ain’t been shooting scenes for a while and it’s not that she doesn’t need the money’.

BarryHercules

Why can’t I comment on @vyas LES talk post?

Mason

@BarryHercules said:
Why can’t I comment on @vyas LES talk post?

Because I'm an idiot and fucked up the permissions, one sec.

Edit: alright should be fixed

BarryHercules

@Mason said:

@BarryHercules said:
Why can’t I comment on @vyas LES talk post?

Because I'm an idiot and fucked up the permissions, one sec.

Don’t rush, I just wanted to post and ascii penis, tomorrow is fine.

AlwaysSkint

@BarryHercules said: I just wanted to post..

Refugee from OGF?

root

MichaelCee

@BarryHercules said:
Can I write a series of articles about my disastrous encounters with prostitution/escorts?

Yes. Click the message button on my profile

cybertech

awesome work by the admins and whoever helped

curl

Overall, it is a nice update.

Forum on a TLD looks better than just on a subdomain.

Monke

It looks way more professional now the only thing left would be applying some css to the helpdesk support page and make it look similar to the forum theme style and maybe make it auth with the forum session details.

bdl

Get some talk on your fork

Falzo

definitely a good change... I didn't ever read or have been interested in checking the blogposts.
having it integrated here an be able to directly comment on it makes it so muich easier. thanks! ;-)

PS: still, don't ever make me type something else than 'ta' into the browser bar to get here, or I'll have to come for you...

deank

Indeed, just give us unsustainable deals and enough with blog entries and whatnot. None of us is here for dat shit.

bdl

@Falzo said: PS: still, don't ever make me type something else than 'ta' into the browser bar to get here, or I'll have to come for you...

THIS. 100%

jmaxwell

Any plans to make the dark theme purely dark like OGF?

Mason

@Falzo said: PS: still, don't ever make me type something else than 'ta' into the browser bar to get here, or I'll have to come for you...

Heh.. no worries, I don't plan on ever removing the redirect

@jmaxwell said:
Any plans to make the dark theme purely dark like OGF?

I have a slew of updates to the dark theme that have been identified with the help of @TheDP, so I expect to patch up the dark theme here soon when I can find the time. I've also been digging around in the site code quite a bit recently and feel confident that we could add an additional theme (dark_v2?) that can be selected, so maybe (with the help of some of you fine people) we can make another dark that's more to your liking?