After maintaining the SoccerCityUSA.com site for nearly 15 years (from 1999 to 2013), including the TalkTimbers message board (which may be lost for good, see below), personal issues in 2013 forced me to give this up and take care of what needed to be taken care of. I regret having to give up maintaining the site and attending the Timbers matches at all levels, having attended (and reported on) more than 350 such matches from 2001 to 2012.
But there were other areas of my life that needed my attention, and also forced me to move from Beaverton to McMinnville to be closer to my work (and reduce my budget), which made attendance even more difficult.
Also, at about the same time, my previous web server host took down the TalkTimbers message board (which had already been idled), and said they couldn’t put it back online because it was getting too much spam traffic from China. I have my suspicions as to how this happened but no proof, but I was forced to take that down as well, and it also appears my backup of the site was lost in a drive crash (and the provider only kept backups for a month). I may have another copy somewhere so maybe someday it can be rescued, but at the moment I consider it likely lost.
I also made the mistake of converting my site to a CMS several years ago (first Joomla, then WordPress), and have never been happy with the amount of control it give me over the content. But I also understand the flexibility it gives me compared to the hand-coding in HTML that I did for the first ten years.
So the news is I am bringing this site back up, with my full attention, and will start reporting on the matches again starting with the September 20 match vs. New York Red Bulls. I am also credentialed for the remaining regular season home matches and plan on attending the playoff matches as well. Next season I will be covering as many of the Timbers MLS/Thorns/T2/U23 matches as I can, though my being in McMinnville now will probably make attending all of them impossible.
But I WILL be doing the Timbers Fan Calendar that I did for many years again next year, and also want to revitalize (and improve) the detailed stats pages I used to do for the Timbers. I will be coding that by hand as I do not think any of the automated packages out there can do the detailed level of stats I am looking for.
I didn’t mean to turn this into a novel but wanted to let anybody who still might be monitoring this site know that I am going to be back starting on Sunday, and look forward to seeing you all at the match!
Allison Andrews
September 17, 2015
Welcome back! Damn, now I wish I’d stopped and chatted with you yesterday since a few of us were just talking about the message board.
Be amazing if it turns out that can ever be rescued. It was a cultural treasure. Twitter’s too ephemeral to be able to serve the same function.
Huzzah!!
Allie, I saw you taking photos at the game on Sunday and was delighted. So glad to welcome you back.
I still have my old calendars. I love them and our great reminders of the good old days.