Seemed that the site went down for a few days there... Are we back now?
That brief scare made me wonder: what's in store for CAPTalk's future?
Many folks obviously seem fine with Reddit as an alternative, but I'm personally feeling pretty done with that platform. I follow r/civilairpatrol via RSS now and only log in if there's something specific I want to share or comment on. Too many ads and garbage for casual browsing. Same goes for Facebook; I log in once a year just to see if it's as bad as I remember (spoiler, it is).
Outside of the CAP space, though, I've actually noticed that some online forums seem to be gaining new users and becoming more active recently, so I don't think I'm alone in looking to create some distance between myself and mainstream social media. I could see the potential for a CAPTalk revival in the next couple of years.
That said, to those in the know, what does the official future of Captalk.net look like?
In addition to the recent outage, the site's SSL cert is missing or invalid (or just never existed), and the e-mail service seems broken, too (possibly due to missing dmarc records?).
Are there plans to fix things and keep them going, or should we be looking for alternative ways forward?
Thanks for all the years, so far.
Social media is so widespread today with multiple niche groups and fan pages alike. There's so much connectivity at everyone's fingertips, and I imagine that there are more people chatting in various Facebook groups, Discord channels, and other easy access apps than on their PC/web browser.
As someone with 2,500 posts/comments on CAP Talk over the years, I don't see it being a viable or even credible source of information.
Let's be honest...most of us check in for scuttlebutt and entertainment, not for deep knowledge or learning opportunities.
If CAP Talk went away tomorrow, very few people are affected. That said, I'll continue to check in and read. But I'm looking for a little more engagement than what's on here lately; and there are more obituaries being posted than there are new topics; and I'm not really interested in reading death notices as my source of CAP intel.
It's still down for me on Chrome...Edge loaded however.
Most people use Chrome.
CT seems to have been dead for years now, this is just decay situation.
I'm not sure if other forums are doing worse or better, but I'm sure it'll just be a concept to my kids, and I'll lump that in with other stories of the early internet.
For the record I firmly believe this forum should be preserved and represents an outstanding records of CAP issues over the years.
So, who actually runs this?
I think there's still value in a non-social-media forum. The memes might be fun for some, but trying to get useful information from Reddit or Facebook can sometimes be a challenge.
I'd be open to helping out here, if needed. I don't have any experience administrating a forum, specifically, but I host several websites and have experience with that side of things (webserver configuration, certs, DNS, etc.) and would be willing to learn how to run SMF.
At the moment, I don't think it's actually possible to compete the sign up process, so that could definitely be keeping participation numbers low.
Quote from: JayT on May 19, 2026, 07:42:48 PMFor the record I firmly believe this forum should be preserved and represents an outstanding records of CAP issues over the years.
I agree. Unlike other defunct CAP-specific sites, this site has always had enough senior officers who took a dim view of "yahoos" who tried to stir up trouble. I remember someone writing that several current and former Wing and HQ officers were counted as members of this group. I believe that's why this group keeps chugging along! (I haven't been active in CAP since 2018, or visited this group in a couple of years). Very glad it's still providing great information for CAP members.
Quote from: Pylon on July 29, 2026, 04:13:55 PMQuote from: Adam B (again) on May 20, 2026, 12:22:08 PMSo, who actually runs this?
Hi. 🙋🏻
Hello sir!
So, is there anything that I (or maybe a few of us?) can do to help support this site?
Like I said earlier, I don't have any experience with the forums/message board side of things, but I've configured mx records, managed ssl certs, and other general web-admin-type tasks and would be interested in helping out if needed.
I purposely refrained from responding for some time to demonstrate that I think that there is really no longer any need or interest. This forum was a really good idea for the time, but tech has marched on and so have the members. We are now just an archive of historical information that is very dated.
I think that's a flawed conclusion.
I would not consider the lack of activity as a measure of interest as much as it is a measure of accessibility. In its current state, new users cannot join, existing members cannot
change their passwords if they forgot them, the site throws scary warning about the lack of security (passwords in plain http), and more than half the time the site just doesn't load at all.
It's like concluding that there's no interest in classic ford trucks because no one is driving the rusted out F100 on blocks in the back yard.
There are a number of very active message boards still around, and while I don't expect that captalk will overtake reddit or facebook in popularity, I think it could absolutely offer an alternative for members who want to
discuss CAP without all the social media bagage.
Reddit killed the forum format.
And the forum here is outdated and missing basic things like "google sign in".