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Officially Dead
- Thread starter deeplist
- Start date
I thought you were going to bring it back to lifeHow's that going
I contacted you guys repeatedly for two and a half years asking for my ban to be reversed without any reply.
I'll credit the demise of the site to my absence. People got bored without me here and left. Yeah... that sounds legit. The controversy that I stirred up was the life of the party back in the day.
It's not this forum....free hosting is officially dead.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is no need for free hosting anymore. People have Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc. What purpose does free hosting serve? The people who use free hosting now are spammers, porn sites, bots, etc., with maybe the legitimate user thrown in now again who runs a gaming forum or such.
Back in the prime days of free hosting, I had all sorts of people, mainly high school and college kids who wanted an alternative to GeoCities, Angelfire, and Tripod. They were sick of the ads, sick of the limitations, couldn't use their own domain names, etc., so they would use free hosting to share pics, videos, "blogs" (though they weren't called blogs back then...LOL), etc., because there was no place else to do it.
Even paid hosting has almost come to an end for individuals. I might get 1 in 10 new clients now who are running a personal site of some kind. The rest are all businesses. It's so rare for me to get a personal site anymore. There was a time (even up until the end of last year) that I was provisioning a new server, sometimes two, every 2 days, on average! I was writing 5 figure checks for hard drives a couple times a month. It got to the point where we had to more or less stop co-lo'ing equipment and lease, because we simply couldn't order the parts and build servers fast enough.
Now, individual users go for the LEB market, because they want a 10GB RAM unsustainable VPS for $0.50/mo., and the majority of businesses already have hosting somewhere.
And secondly, I think it's horrible that folks who don't participate here are allowed to post ads. I completely understand that changing the rules would be FWS shooting themselves in the foot. Posts bring in visitors and visitors potentially bring in ad money. But how many visitors are going to stay if the forum is nothing more than one giant ad?
There was a time when quality actually mattered here. If somebody came here asking for hosting advice, we could give real, solid advice. Now? Who the hell knows? I know my friends at Gigalicious run a tight ship, and I'd still recommend Deeplist, but who else is around here anymore? There are hundreds of hosts advertising. I perhaps know a tiny handful that I've met on other forums, have done business with, met at conventions, etc., but largely, there are just a bunch of folks coming here posting ads, and that's it. That's the extent of their participation.
That in mind, why even run a forum at all? What good is a forum without discussion? Might as well just have a single section with nothing but hosting ads, since that's pretty much what it has become anyway. Look at a really successful forum (WHT, for example), and while yes, you will see plenty of hosts who do nothing but advertise. There are tons who participate in the discussions. Why? What's the difference? Why do so many participate there but not here? There are no rules forcing participation there. I could go there and post nothing but ads, never engaging in the forum. Yet so many hosts participate.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is no need for free hosting anymore. People have Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc. What purpose does free hosting serve? The people who use free hosting now are spammers, porn sites, bots, etc., with maybe the legitimate user thrown in now again who runs a gaming forum or such.
Back in the prime days of free hosting, I had all sorts of people, mainly high school and college kids who wanted an alternative to GeoCities, Angelfire, and Tripod. They were sick of the ads, sick of the limitations, couldn't use their own domain names, etc., so they would use free hosting to share pics, videos, "blogs" (though they weren't called blogs back then...LOL), etc., because there was no place else to do it.
Even paid hosting has almost come to an end for individuals. I might get 1 in 10 new clients now who are running a personal site of some kind. The rest are all businesses. It's so rare for me to get a personal site anymore. There was a time (even up until the end of last year) that I was provisioning a new server, sometimes two, every 2 days, on average! I was writing 5 figure checks for hard drives a couple times a month. It got to the point where we had to more or less stop co-lo'ing equipment and lease, because we simply couldn't order the parts and build servers fast enough.
Now, individual users go for the LEB market, because they want a 10GB RAM unsustainable VPS for $0.50/mo., and the majority of businesses already have hosting somewhere.
And secondly, I think it's horrible that folks who don't participate here are allowed to post ads. I completely understand that changing the rules would be FWS shooting themselves in the foot. Posts bring in visitors and visitors potentially bring in ad money. But how many visitors are going to stay if the forum is nothing more than one giant ad?
There was a time when quality actually mattered here. If somebody came here asking for hosting advice, we could give real, solid advice. Now? Who the hell knows? I know my friends at Gigalicious run a tight ship, and I'd still recommend Deeplist, but who else is around here anymore? There are hundreds of hosts advertising. I perhaps know a tiny handful that I've met on other forums, have done business with, met at conventions, etc., but largely, there are just a bunch of folks coming here posting ads, and that's it. That's the extent of their participation.
That in mind, why even run a forum at all? What good is a forum without discussion? Might as well just have a single section with nothing but hosting ads, since that's pretty much what it has become anyway. Look at a really successful forum (WHT, for example), and while yes, you will see plenty of hosts who do nothing but advertise. There are tons who participate in the discussions. Why? What's the difference? Why do so many participate there but not here? There are no rules forcing participation there. I could go there and post nothing but ads, never engaging in the forum. Yet so many hosts participate.
We're in the middle of summer vacations meaning most people have other things to do. But yes, free hosting is more or less dead and infact the search for personal web hosting is declining rapidly too. You can now post your personal stuff for free on the internet without a web host. Who's looking for free web hosting today? Not that many people are. So, why would anyone discuss free web hosting?
There is a nostalgia interest in the forum for those of us who have been here for many years and maybe we can build something new from that spirit without offending those still looking for free hosting. A new focus on specific web hosting trends (cloud etc) could be something that might encourage discussions and new members.
There is a nostalgia interest in the forum for those of us who have been here for many years and maybe we can build something new from that spirit without offending those still looking for free hosting. A new focus on specific web hosting trends (cloud etc) could be something that might encourage discussions and new members.
The way it is now, I don't have much of a desire to even come on the site. I get on here maybe once a week and check for new posts. When I do, it's nothing but 20+ ads for stupid hosting plans that apparently nobody cares about.... and maybe 1 discussion thread that has a single reply in it. Do away with the advertising completely. The forum has become nothing but a ---- hole with people posting ads and then leaving. It's a waste of time.
I use the "what's new" feature to see any and all new replies without going from forum to forum hunting for them manually. At this point in the game, the forum is 95% advertising and 5% discussion... literally. What's the point in even allowing ads? Are you getting kick backs? Do you honestly believe anybody cares about the ads, or even reads them in the first place? I don't think so. If you want to maintain the "nostalgia" aspect, crack down on these idiots who post ads but don't actually participate in any of the worth-while discussions. Before long, the place will be 100% ads and nothing else.
Also, restore my ability to -rep. Please and thank you.
Also, restore my ability to -rep. Please and thank you.
No kick backs. I think the ones who post the ads are visiting the forum and care about their own ads + replies. If there is other discussions going on a few of them will participate. We could consider only allowing them to post ads if they have posted a certain amount of posts. If we do that I suspect there will be a lot of nonsense posts to get to that number and you will complain about the nonsense posts.
Real discussions comes from having a main topic to discuss and my guess is that most of us here including deeplist are not so interested in free web hosting discussions? That means we have to refocus the forum on something we would like to discuss. Web hosting in general, trends for the future of hosting, web development. Any ideas on that front?
Real discussions comes from having a main topic to discuss and my guess is that most of us here including deeplist are not so interested in free web hosting discussions? That means we have to refocus the forum on something we would like to discuss. Web hosting in general, trends for the future of hosting, web development. Any ideas on that front?
They join to post an ad to promote their webhosting business. I don't think we can change that or even wish to change that. There's got to be some reason to join the forum. If we don't allow hosts to post ads, why would they join?
Should we make it harder for them to post ads? I don't think that's the answer. We already have certain limits when we moderate initial posts that annoy new members. Let's not annoy new members and make it too hard to join. We get very little spam these days actually compared to what we used to.
What we do want to do is get more of those members to participate in real discussions. That's a catch 22 if there are no discussions for them to participate in.
Should we make it harder for them to post ads? I don't think that's the answer. We already have certain limits when we moderate initial posts that annoy new members. Let's not annoy new members and make it too hard to join. We get very little spam these days actually compared to what we used to.
What we do want to do is get more of those members to participate in real discussions. That's a catch 22 if there are no discussions for them to participate in.
Take a look at the people who post ads here, and it's pretty obvious why there is no discussion. 99.9% of them are all paid hosts. They have absolutely no interest in free hosting, and do not come here to discuss or offer free hosting of any kind. They are here because this is just another forum in which to advertise, and another place to get themselves listed in Google. That's it. They are here for no other reason. So why do we expect them to participate?
I personally think you should have to offer free hosting to be able to post any sort of ad on this forum (including the paid hosting section), advertise in your signature, etc. After all, this site is a FREE hosting forum.
Of course, that isn't going to do anything to increase the participation in discussions, but that isn't going to happen anyway, not when 99.9% of the users are not here to participate in the first place.
I personally think you should have to offer free hosting to be able to post any sort of ad on this forum (including the paid hosting section), advertise in your signature, etc. After all, this site is a FREE hosting forum.
Of course, that isn't going to do anything to increase the participation in discussions, but that isn't going to happen anyway, not when 99.9% of the users are not here to participate in the first place.
wswd, I think at some point way back having only free hosts post here would have made sense. Today though, that would reduce activity and new members way too much. This due to the fact we've all mentioned by now - interest in free web hosting is very low and getting even lower.
Either we accept that activity will be low and continue on the free hosting theme of the forum and keep the forum more or less as nostalgia for us older members. Or we take the forum in a new direction where free hosting is part of the forum, but no longer the main topic. I don't see any other options than those two.
Either we accept that activity will be low and continue on the free hosting theme of the forum and keep the forum more or less as nostalgia for us older members. Or we take the forum in a new direction where free hosting is part of the forum, but no longer the main topic. I don't see any other options than those two.
