# Wine press Us Defunct? Or my computer



## jcnoren (Dec 5, 2009)

I enjoy learning about wine making via a varriety of wine forms. Of late I can not get wine press . us to load. So I am uncertain if it is my computer or if they are defunct. 


JC


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## vcasey (Dec 5, 2009)

I believe they have been doing some site maintenance. I had no trouble this week or last night.
VC


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## Wade E (Dec 5, 2009)

I am a member there but dont frequent much at all. They are down though cause I am watching a thread there of how they are putting down all other forums. Boy they can be so arrogant there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## cpfan (Dec 5, 2009)

wade said:


> I am a member there but dont frequent much at all. They are down though cause I am watching a thread there of how they are putting down all other forums. Boy they can be so arrogant there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Wade:


Perhaps you can send me a link to that thread when they come back up. I have never noticed negative comments about other forums.


Thanks, Steve


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## Wade E (Dec 5, 2009)

Will do! It was something like we missed you where they were all crying about the forum being down and that they strayed to other forums and then laughed at the advice given there and then shut their computers off. It should be a hot topic again soce the site is down again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## AlFulchino (Dec 5, 2009)

oh boy what i could say...but the old saying is less is more

suffice it to say....Rich told me about FVW..said it was the friendliest place around...


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## Wade E (Dec 8, 2009)

pm'ed you on Talk.


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## xanxer82 (Dec 8, 2009)

I like this forum a lot and winemakingtalk


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## Wade E (Dec 9, 2009)

As do I!


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## Jeff D (Dec 9, 2009)

This is hand's down the most friendly wine site.


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## Goodfella (Dec 9, 2009)

Jeff D said:


> This is hand's down the most friendly wine site.










I HATE ALL OF YOU!!! J/K


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## grapeman (Dec 10, 2009)

They appear to be down again. Even the main website is down for them this time.


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## AlFulchino (Dec 10, 2009)

a few less self indulgent ego's online
overall a great site and concept and MANY MANY great participants....i just cant take their 'you owe me matyr-like attitude'

wine was here before them and will be after them (and us)


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## Wade E (Dec 10, 2009)

Here here!


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## grapeman (Dec 11, 2009)

I think they must have been hijacked this time. You click on them and a Facebook Login screen appears. That happens both with the website and forum. Very strange.


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## vcasey (Dec 11, 2009)

Looks like a redirect to their facebook page that says the server is being upgraded and they hope to have it finished by Christmas Eve. They even suggest you make more wine while waiting for them to get up and operating. While I don't spend too much time over on W/P, I do think making more wine is a great idea.
VC


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## Brewgrrrl (Dec 11, 2009)

Goodfella said:


> Jeff D said:
> 
> 
> > This is hand's down the most friendly wine site.
> ...


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## grapeman (Dec 11, 2009)

Thanks for the info vcasey. I don't have a facebook account so I just go to the login page and never saw that redirect.


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## vcasey (Dec 11, 2009)

I don't have a facebook account either, but it did let me read some of the info. If any of us gets desperate enough for more info I can get my hubby to become a friend or whatever it is you can do to find out more. I just read that forum to get ideas or to verify something, still hope they are able to get everything up and going I would hate to see anyone lose their community. 
VC


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## RJMehr (Dec 12, 2009)

I am a member of this forum and the WinePress.us forum and find that I like both forums. WinePress is still down today, they must be having major server problems.

What I do not like about the WinePress Kit forum is how just a few very inexperienced winemakers have become the major voices there, giving advice that really is wrong and misguided. Several individuals who have just started making wine in the past year now have over 1,000 postings. They have not even tasted most of the wines they have made yet are now giving detailed expert advice on all aspects of winemaking.

What I do like about this forum is that the major emphasis of the forum is for kit makers. I love the forums that deal with the major wine kit makers.

Being a winemaker for a little less then one year now, I have found the advice and help on the Fine Vine Wines forum to be excellent. I have been busy this year making 37 wine kits. 

I have never been one to post a lot, but I check both forums everyday and do really enjoy reading and learning from everyone. 

Robert


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## Runningwolf (Dec 12, 2009)

RJ, I agree with everything you said. That being said people on this site and one other site not mentioned really do care about you and what you are doing and if someone misguides you another member will respectfully chime in and set you straight. You will find humor and seriousness on here, but its all focused on wine making, one of the most enjoyable hobbies/ventures there is.


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## hannabarn (Dec 12, 2009)

Good post, Robert. I had never tried WinePress.us until I read about it on this forum! I guess it is down but what it did was to introduce face book to me! I found that I have a lot of friends on Facebook! Friends that I hadn't heard from in a long time!!


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## Waldo (Dec 16, 2009)

Dang, you mean wade lied to me when he told me this was the only wine forum on the internet !!!


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## Wade E (Dec 16, 2009)

Actually waldo, this one doesnt even exist. You really should have laid off all those drugs a lot earlier then you did!


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## Waldo (Dec 17, 2009)

Oh Meeeeeeee..I have been posting to hallucinatory people again !!! I am even imagining I am making potentially award winning wines..I gotta get into rehab ..QUICK !!!


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## Wade E (Dec 17, 2009)

The funny thing is I have 1 of your imaginary bottles in my basement.


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## djl - Michigan (Jan 4, 2010)

Has anyone been able to access the Winepress.us forum?

I haven't been able to get in for about a month. I see they no longer say they are in the process of replacing their server on winepress.us web page.

Dave


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## vcasey (Jan 4, 2010)

Joel had an update on Facebook this past Saturday. According to him they are still working on the server. Apparently the find one error, fix it and then another error shows up. The facebook page is open to the public and the address ishttp://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&amp;gid=50933654464


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## grapeman (Jan 4, 2010)

I got this from Joel earlier this afternoon when I e-mailed him on the progress.





Hello, the WinePress.US server has been going thru a complete rebuild, and the temp server hosting the forum and many other sites, has been having software conflicts. There is a Facebook WinePress.US forum member group where updates are being made. 


This is a major and much needed update due to the over 10 million hits it receives each month. The WinePress.US server will be better, faster, more secure all for your enjoyment. I also plan on rebuilding the main WinePress.US site once I get time and caught up on bills. 


You can join the WinePress.US facebook group here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=wall&amp;ref=profile&amp;id=685120995#/group.php?gid=50933654464 


WinePress.US is free for you to use, and I hope it is a valuable tool for your winemaking hobby. If you would like to assist by making a donation, you can do so on the main page www.WinePress.US. 


I wish you the best, and hope to see you in the forum as soon as I have it all back online again. Cheers, and here's to a truly great 2010. 


Joel Sommer


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## djl - Michigan (Jan 4, 2010)

Thanks for the info vcasey and appleman, I'll start watching Facebook for their updates.

Dave


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## geocorn (Jan 5, 2010)

I have spent the better part of 15 years working with servers and I am having a real problem accepting his explanation. Server issues take hours or, at worst, days to fix. 


We had an email problem for several weeks but the forum still worked while we fixed the email issue. I think there is something else going on.


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## grapeman (Jan 5, 2010)

It's hard to tell the problem he is having over there, but must be major. A year and a half ago I had a small forum I started get hijacked by the ..... well, for lack of a better term, the Russian Porn industry. I did not know it at the time, but all of a sudden the index page was corrupted and I could not rebuild or restore it. Since this was a new forum there wasn't any real content left on it. I just basically said , oh well and began another more secure one. Then about a year later I got an e-mail notification that I had a new member join and it wanted me to approve it so I clicked the link to see what was up. It brought me to the forum for approval and I was into the old forum! I checked around and there were hundreds of new member and a lot of new posts. Virtually all the posts had attached porn pictures. The member names were all obviously russian or related. I deleted all those members and attached posts, which took a while. I blocked all new members from signing up for the time being. Within hours I got several new membr signups- even though they were blocked. They had put dozens of pictures up already


Apparently the forum had become a repository to hold porn pictures for their organization. At that point I decided rather than trying to sort it all out, I deleted the forum and database structure to prevent further attacks.


It is for reasons like this that I left the computer support industry several years back. I'm too old to match wits constantly with the younger crowd and stay sane. Now I just do simple house plan drafting and work with my grapes and wine.


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## AlFulchino (Jan 5, 2010)

"I have spent the better part of 15 years working with servers and I am
having a real problem accepting his explanation. Server issues take
hours or, at worst, days to fix."

thats pretty much how i saw it as well.....anyone....anyone who has a server EVEN if they host their own site always has had a tech in at some point and one of the first things they do upon arrival or just prior to departure is do a back up of info......server components are pretty much plug and play and then wait for your upload

i hate even to doubt his explanation in public because the website is a good concept and almost any questioning could seem out of place.......but


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## Dean (Jan 5, 2010)

As someone who builds server infrastructure and networks for a living, Joel's problems sounds quite legit to me. He's running the system on Dell hardware (I'm not a fan based on past experience!) and it's quite underpowered. On top of that, his forum gets more traffic and posts than his server can keep up with. It's not just apache and PHP engine that he has to contend with, it's the underlying database and the number of rows that it has to index and keep up with.

I think he's finally hitting the limits of the forum software and he's limping it along to keep all the existing content. With the number of hits he's getting, he should have a 2 to 4 server front end cluster over a 2 server backend database cluster. I'm not sure which forum software can handle that. On top of that, I think a while ago, he lost a few drives in a raid array failure. Once a single disk goes in an array, I've seen Dell servers powerdown the other drives, resulting in full on raid failures, which takes away the whole data resiliency that raid gives you.


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## AlFulchino (Jan 5, 2010)

as one who builds server infrastructure would you let a client get to this point?

older posts and topics should have and could have been archived thereby reducing the overall load

anyways..wine under the bridge.....the point is that it is down...its like having no gas at a gas station


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## xanxer82 (Jan 5, 2010)

He should switch to some apple servers. Hot swappable drives and massive amounts of storage memory and reliable hardware. the BSD unix enviro is very stable too.


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## Dean (Jan 5, 2010)

Al, Joel is not my client, and No, I wouldn't let it get to that point. I just know what he's dealing with, and when you under-build, don't use enterprise level hardware(my personal opinion of cheap Dell crap), and don't choose appropriate software for the load you will place under it, this tends to happen.

Usually, if a client goes against our recommendations, within a few months, we fire the client, as they end up with something we cannot support. Joel has something he cannot support right now.


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## Wade E (Jan 5, 2010)

Its a shame about that site. There are a lot of good people missing their home.


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## RJMehr (Jan 6, 2010)

I have been making wine for a year now (made nearly 40 kits, I got really hooked) and have grown to love this forum and the WinePress.US forum. Each has it's own personality and charm. Nearly everyday for the past year I have gone to each forum to get my daily fix of wine related news and chat.

I am starting to get withdrawal jitters from the lack of WinePress postings. Can't wait until it returns. 

A glimmer of hope, this morning in the wee hours (2:30am) I tried to log on to the WinePress site and found myself at www.invisionpower.com web site asking me to install somekind of software. It turns out the invisionpower.com sells forum/blog software so Joel or someone was burning the midnight oil working to get the forum back up. 

In the meantime, I am content in getting my daily fix right here with all the good winemakers who share their time and wisdom with all of us.

Robert


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## grapeman (Jan 6, 2010)

Robert you need to post a bit more here to get yourself busy and involved so you don't notice their absense as much. The error message I got the last week or so about some line of code not working was gone this AM and the page is entirely missing agian so they are working on it.


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## AlFulchino (Jan 6, 2010)

one comparison i will speak about is that here..i do not get silly pm's from a moderator telling me my opinion on something is less valid than the next fellows..or more laughable that a get a silly pm from an authority telling me my signature does not conform when their own moderators had the same issue

at this place, i have been left alone....not as treated as an interloper...and it is why i actually do purchase things from George even when shipping from texas to nh is an issue....i owe something back.....speaking of which i finally pulled the trigger of a racking machine/filter the Buon Vino Super duper thing he sells...went out the door the day after i bought it...should be racking and filtering this weekend

is the other site a GREAT site? YES!!!!!!!!!!

is it a great concept????? YES!!!!!!!!!

is there a ton of info??? YES!!!!!!

however sometimes what seems like less is actually more

petty people turn me off...it got sort of martyr like w some of the mods and the owner over there.....and everyone is free to do in *their* sandbox as they see fit so its up to me to decide if i want to stay in that environment...i decided i did not need to...i am just one of those who don't bend over nor do i believe that a person should be made to feel obligated...i have never ever seen a moderator here grumble to anyone about how much they help others on the website....never...at the other place i did.....

anyways..speaking of my participation here....i am nearing a problem..and maybe Rich or Wade you will have a word to help me in my decision...my winery/vineyard is soon to sell its first bottle....and i have a problem...its a moral dilemna....how do i particpate here via George's good graces and keep my sig as it is and my home vneyard topic.....i have mulled this over for a while now and knew i would have to police myself because its just not right to infringe in any way on George's place even though it would be unintentional.....its wrong to use this place as an advertisement for me and essentially once i open the doors to the public that is what would happen by default

so as much as i don't want to close that vineyard topic, i see that must do so soon and probably disassemble my sig as well


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## geocorn (Jan 6, 2010)

Al,


I have not issue whatsoever with your signature containing your winery name. I want your winery to succeed. Please do not change your signature and let me know if I can help in any way. GOOD LUCK!


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## grapeman (Jan 6, 2010)

Al I will be in the same boat eventually since I will be commercial. While it is true we have our topics in the home vineyard section, it is because that is all that is there and not an all inclusiveVineyard section. Don't worry about it. As George says, he welcomes you and others like you to help contribute to this site.


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## ASAI (Jan 6, 2010)

Al, I throughly enjoy reading your post and gain from each. To me it is a part of the process of learning home wine making to see the possible end result if I had a greater life expectancy, as well as more land than my 6inch flower pot.


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## Wade E (Jan 6, 2010)

The way i feel about the situation for Al and Rich is that they contribute enormously to the one part of the forum that many fall short in with everyone trying to grow their own. There are a few people here that grow their own and lots of people that want to and the 2 of you are IMO the pros. Besides, even if you do sell a few of us a few bottles we all still want t make our own and probably even grow our own after trying yours and since George sells equipment and supplies for us to do this he still reaps the benefits from this venture. Now if you 2 start elling wine kits or supplies or even equipment well then that would be a different story!!!!!1
As far as Winepress goes. I dont mind when others have a different way of doung something as there is more then 1 way to skin a cat so to say but I dont like being told Im wrong unless I really am and yes Ive been wrong before but usually Im right to with just a different way of doing something which some will try and love and sme are just stuc in their old ways or its just common practice fpr them.


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## AlFulchino (Jan 6, 2010)

well first of all George, you are way to kind...your place here is ALL that Rich told me it would be when he sent me the link to this forum...i just want do the right thing by you as you have done to me and others

Thanks for your comments Wade , i guess you are right....and thank you to the others who commented.


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## cpfan (Jan 7, 2010)

It sounds like many of you won't care, but winepress.us is back up this morning.


I needed to upgrade my bookmark, sign in, and wander around the new software.


PS...want to echo my thanks to George for this forum, even though I am unlikely to ever be a customer. But, if I ever visit Texas, a visit will definitely be on my to-do list.


Steve


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## grapeman (Jan 7, 2010)

Thanks for the heads up Steve. I had checked earlier this AM and it wasn't there then. Man it surely does look different. It looks like they have a lot of work ahead yet, but at least it is working for them.


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## fivebk (Jan 7, 2010)

Al, Rich, Don't you guys go leaving this site. I am going to need a lot of help with my vineyard and grape growing project this year and without your knowledge it would surely be doomed to failure. Having you guys around gives me that added cofidence to succeed.

BOB


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## vcasey (Jan 7, 2010)

Thanks for the heads up Steve.


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## xanxer82 (Jan 7, 2010)

geocorn said:


> Al,
> 
> 
> I have not issue whatsoever with your signature containing your winery name. I want your winery to succeed. Please do not change your signature and let me know if I can help in any way. GOOD LUCK!



I think you'll have to buy a bottle from Al, George.

Hopefully I'll someday be able to order one of your wines too but current laws prohibit shipping in my state. 
I'm still tossing around the idea of starting my own vineyard. Been doing research and market research all the while learning more and more about wine and the vines they come from.
Al, I've been following your winery progress and it impresses and inspires me.

As for the Winepress forum, it's a great concept. I've checked it out but I feel more "at home" here and one other place with basically all the same people from here.
This forum is pretty much always up and friendly. Plus having the catalog button so close is handy. (Saw my order just shipped out by the way).


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## Wade E (Jan 7, 2010)

Yeah, its up and I hate change, Its much harder to navigate now.


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## grapeman (Feb 3, 2010)

Down again....................................................................................................................................................


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## Wade E (Feb 3, 2010)

Anyone want to place a bet for tomorrow?


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## IQwine (Feb 3, 2010)

Up again !


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## Wade E (Feb 3, 2010)

Joel must be pulling his hair out!!!!!!!!!!


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