PedalRoom - is it coming back?

Noticed that the SSL certificate was outdated a month or so ago, & now the entire site seems offline, for upgrades apparently, but I suspect that's just a timeout page as it takes ages to load.

Guy who made it isn't very active on Twitter, & it wasn't like it was updated much in the last few years with the featured bikes being the same for ages.

Seems a shame, I've enjoyed keeping a record of my bikes' histories on there & finding other interesting builds. Probably cost a bit to run though.

I say this, & I refreshed the home page & it loaded. Nothing else seems to though, hmm.

Yeah its not working, there is no way to prove how many bikes i have?!

Have been using google cache links to view pages. Guess https://archive.org/web/ would also be a temporary way.

Coomer – the guy who "runs" it – posted on the PR forums maybe 6 months ago (I forget exactly) that he's been very busy, but now promises to come back to it after a short vacation. That was his last post, maybe he never got back from the vacation. That thread was bumped up nearly 500 times (not kidding), and meanwhile it started to dawn on everyone that he just deserted the whole thing. There was also an infestation of bots during Coomer's hiatus, creating random threads and "talking" with other bots, quite amusing/terrifying actually.

Anyway, the site was down quite a few times this past half a year, and the updated/added bikes thing never seemed to operate properly. Sometimes weeks would go by without any bike updates, then in one big burst you got all of what had been added during that time.

There was a little bit of discussion about creating something similar because obviously PR was abandoned completely. That discussion may be taking place somewhere I'm not aware of, now that PR is dead. It's a shame too, the community had put so much time and effort in to displaying those thousands of bikes and imo the interface was a good one.

I can pretty much guarantee there's a market if someone cares to set up something that works as well as PR did. The most important things imo, would be to spend a lot of energy on spreading the word that there's a replacement, and have an insane amount of patience to build the community back up. It's a massive catalogue of pictures, parts lists and bike appreciation that's been lost.

Some interesting insight, cheers. I'm not surprised if it's starting to creak a bit, can't imagine it's been updated much in the last five years. The blog does show that he did certainly put a bit of thought & work into it. I've been the same with projects though, start all energised & keep it up for a bit, then lose interest as time goes on as the cost of maintenance builds up.

Didn't realise the bot situation. Wouldn't have thought it'd be that bad, it being a relatively niche site, but I never really hung around the forums.

I do remember there being some other site with a similar idea - being able to post pictures of bikes with some annotations - can't think of the name of it for the life of me though. It was a bit flash, but it was nowhere near the functionality of PR.

Aye, the community & that catalogue of builds is a huge loss. Always worth remembering how lucky we are to have @Velocio!

some other site with a similar idea

saadl?

Haven't used Saadl much but the interface feels a bit more modern than PR and it's got decent high res pics.

Velospace was another one from ye olden days that seems frozen in time with no new bikes added in eons.

Shame about Pedal Room, it was a great database of bikes old and new, and it would be good if some kind of alternative could spring from the PR ashes, as it seems clear the original dude can't be arsed with it anymore.

In fact PR is back up now since the 17th. But since Coomer himself hasn't shown his face I'm guessing it's temporary once again and will go away sooner or later. Weird stuff.

It’s probably quite a lot of work and expense if it’s one guy running the whole thing himself. In the early days when it became a success, it probably made the guy quite happy through the popularity. But then when it got too popular it probably got quite expensive to run, because the bandwidth isn’t free. Plus, [I didn’t know there was a forum too] forums are subject to constant attacks from bots and spammers these days, so require a lot of attention and regular software updates. It wouldn’t surprise me if it became a bit too much and he’s not sure what to do with it.

If we get lucky, someone else might want to take it over and re-host everything. This is what happened with Autoshite and the whole forum and community is alive and well again. The same thing happened with Retro Rides but they managed to make a business out of the brand and forum, with organised shows and merchandise, plus there’s a few of them running it, so the site and forum are well supported.

This reminds me off the danish forum: Fixie-king.dk, that was shut down some time ago..
So many years of knowledge, photos, threads and fun.. Gone... (Im still sad in case you couldn't tell)..

But i think that was also because the original guy who owned the domain didn't want to maintain it anymore...

Well its good to see PR up again.. If only for a while..

The way I see it the goal is wide open for active people to harvest some niche fame by setting up sites to replace aforementioned sites. In fact on PR there are many people willing to chip in and help out from what I've read. The thing is no one can get a hold of Coomer, by instagram email or even phone. This is why handing the reins over is problematic.

Shame to hear about fixie-king.dk, I remember browsing their for sale threads iirc back in the day, even though Danish is only (closely) related to languages I know. Hadn't been there in ages though.

Yeah, as a software engineer by trade, I've mulled over creating something myself as a pet project. Did browsing of social media, LinkedIn, StackOverflow etc. but couldn't find anything on Coomer these days other than that PedalRoom thread. Seems to have completely fallen off the grid.

And in case someone is interested in what's transpired on PR so far you can follow it here: https://www.pedalroom.com/forums/general-discussion/sorry-for-the-absence-15340

You don't need an account to read the forums, and obviously the link above may not work if PR goes down again.

Copied for when it inevitably goes down again.

Hey guys,
I'm really sorry for the absence and lack of maintenance around here lately. The quick version is that my life is finally settling down enough that I'm going to be around a bit more and put some work into the site in the form of moderators (if anyone wants to help, I'd love it) and better spam controls.

Life has been crazy for a while. I started a company in Seattle with a couple buddies about three years ago and it's been so much work and stress that I just didn't have time. Then we got acquired in late 2017 and I moved to Denver, buying a house with a million issues in the process, also a huge timesuck and stress. Quit that company after 13 months, and at the start of 2019 I started another company with the same crew, and that's been madness getting it off the ground, but now the foundation is built and the workload is a tad lighter, and I'm realizing I need to relax a bit more and not burn myself out.

I also really miss the biking community and Pedal Room community. I've still been riding lots but have been missing people and a connection to others. But work has just been so draining and I know that the spam has gotten out of control that even thinking about Pedal Room has been a stress on top of all the other stresses, so I haven't tackled that for a long time, and I'm sorry.

I'm realizing that getting my stresses under control and taking care of things is what needs to happen, and I'm going to make that happen in many ways. I'm getting some professional help with the house, my job is lightening up a bit, and I'm gonna get back into Pedal Room and at least doing a bit of work on it every month. I told my lady that I'm gonna work on it every month and she's gonna keep me accountable. And I want to connect with the community, and ride with others in Denver, and just feel like I've got less hanging over my head in general.

So I'm sorry. I feel bad and I've been meaning to tackle Pedal Room for a while. I knew that just logging in would be stress-inducing because of all the spam and stuff, but I'm in a good spot now in life to start tackling that, and start building some better tools to keep it under control.

I'm on beautiful vacation right now, but next week I'll get started on tackling some of the issues. Removing the existing spam and implementing some anti-spam measures are where I'll be getting started. I'd love to have a couple members help out as moderators if anyone's interested, but that work will come after the initial anti-spam stuff.

Again, I'm sorry it's been too long. I'm a bad admin but I plan on changing that. It feels good just to log in and type this out and start the process of getting it all under control. I love seeing the community still around despite my poor maintenance, so thank you to all who are reading this and still here. And know it will be changing for the better soon.

-Coomer

It can't be that hard to build a copy of it, only real concern is the storage cost for a database of images.

Looks like it back! Noticed a few updates & a message from the maintainer on the home page.

Welcome to the New Pedal Room
Jan. 4, 2023

You're looking at the updated Pedal Room, at least on this page. Bit by bit I'll be working on the site and improving things, starting with the home page. The home page is now mobile-friendly, and does a better job at showing off bikes.

The general discussion forum is temporarily removed, as it was just a cesspool of scumbag spammers and bots. There's new filters to try to better weed out the bots and spammers in other areas too, and as I improve the tech I'll be able to hopefully get things like notifications working again.

Other pages like bike browsing pages and profiles are also updated to use the new mobile-friendly layout.

I wanted to have the whole site switched over, but figured I'd start small and get something out, and continue to iterate. It's been too long since I've spent time updating and caring for the site, and my goal is to change that and improve things.

What I really want for Pedal Room is for it to be a great space for bikes, with more searching and browsing options, a better marketplace, and less lowlife spammers.

Thank you to everyone who's here reading this, and stay tuned for more work on the site coming very soon. Cheers!

-Coomer

Good news. I do love browsing pedalroom. Although it has actually been up most of the time over the last year.

Just updates, rather than it being back. It does look a little different though.

Does anyone know for how long it's been down this time and is there any chance of it getting back up? I think I used it not so long ago, few weeks back?

I was on it earlier, it’s been patchy so I assume it has bandwidth issues rather than actually being down