Which is weird though since all websites need to be HTTPS now days for security reasons.

There is no private or financial data being transferred on that site (or this one, or for that matter most any other forum-type site) ... HTTPS is not needed.

Reason might be that some hosting companies takes extra charge from using https.

This. that extra (and un-needed) 'S' is going to cost more since there are fees associated with the "certificate authority"(ie: company that validates the site's security certificate)

Gallery of Lights is down 

Sad but not surprising... One of the reasons I haven't bothered to update my gallery there (I do have both more pic's & info for existing ones) is because it seems like atlest once a year the site goes down and can be down for who knows how long.
I just have a feeling that one of these days it'll just be dead & gone

You can contact Joe (joseph_125) that he could help with your GOL account.

Note that I can only reset passwords etc. When the site is down we have to wait until the owner fixes it.


Yeah I'm not surprised the site is down again. It seems to happen at least once per calendar year when the domain/hosting expires or when something in the site breaks. Unfortunately the extended outages really took a toll on the site's membership. It had been in decline for years, but after the first extended outage was really when activity on the site dropped off.

It's the same with LG. I and the rest of the team can do most things, but if the site goes down, only Patrick can reset it. When we were down a couple of days ago, the settings file got wiped out somehow, he had to restore it from a backup. So I hope that when sites do go down (us or GoL) that people understand why it doesn't always come back up straight away. It's frustrating for me as well when I can't get in..!

Not only the gallery page is down, but the index page as well

I just wanted to let you know that Colin (Sailormoon_01_uk) is coming out of his shell and started posting pictures at the Gallery of Lights prior went off.  The other member from this site was being banished has only outlet to post his stuff at that site too.

Of course, I do have some disagreement on this site.  But I do respect this management's policy here.

So, once again I am asking if one of the members on this site can contact the person who host that site to see if he can get this up and running.

I already sent the owner of the site a text message.

Thanks

Gallery of Lights is back online.

Great!

I know this isn't really related to GoL, but I'd love to help out with the backend of this site. Not sure as to the code used, but I know a fair bit of Python, HTML, and CSS. I feel like learning another coding language, if needed, would be a feasible task for me...

Patrick, this is directed to you.

I would possibly consider bringing on somebody to assist if they had the necessary experience and were able to make a sizable time commitment.  You might be able to do an excellent job, but training will take time and effort, and perhaps negate the benefit of having a second person.  If in the long run you're able to put in decent amount of hours, that might make up for it, but if you're juggling it along with school, work, or other responsibilities, I might never recoup what I put in.  Even so, if you want to look into it, the site uses PHP and is built on Simple Machines Forum and Coppermine Gallery.  Download and configure them if you want to get more familiar with the software that powers this site.

There's also a shedload of customisation here as well, and it's all too easy to break something..! I'm no coder, but I've seen it happen 

GOL is down again for me!

I can't login I get this error message

"
An Error Has Occurred!
Your session timed out while posting. Please go back and try again."

I was able to access to the GOL recently and uploaded some more pictures there.

Make sure to use the form on their login page and not the login box in the header.  The quick login box at the top doesn't work.