Yep----just saw the announcement that ECC has been gobbled
up by "The Don".

If that site gets any slower, I will have to go take a nap between pages.

(Truth be told, it has gotten a lot better over the last year)

Not really lookin' forward to it, after what is happening here.

Hated to see that happen over there. Things have been changing anyway. A lot of the older members seen to have faded away back when they did their change over and so many problems. Plus the inordinate number of wize azzes that are now there have kind of taken the layed back feeling away from there now.
Glad now after they cancelled my Silver Designation that I didn't start paying the yearly to get some of what I once had back then for my donations to the site.
Everybody that gave to help get the new server have been sold out in my opinion.:sad:

I see that they own StevesNovaSite also
http://www.autoforums.com/

sad.....

Just wait... Once autoforums has a big enough portfolio of High Hit sites, it will in turn get bought by another company, even less interested in the people that use the sites, only interested in the ad generated profit.

The simple fact though is- its is a very expensive proposition to run one of these sites. Running a message board off your home computer just doesn't cut it anymore. (and hasn't in a long time) keeping the software updated, the hw running and updated is a lot of work and expensive. Add in keeping hackers and spammers at bay- none of that is fun or easy...

So its not hard to see why individuals are getting out of the "business" of running these sites. Its unfortunate- but its reality. It doesn't matter how much we donate or membership costs if the guy doing the root of the work gets overwhelmed by it. Al has a REAL job that he has to do to pay their bills. So do the admins for the other sites... At some point it was pretty much to be expected that these things would have to become corporate run.

Just my Take.

it's not expensive at all to run a site like this and hosting costs about 10 to 20 bucks a month.

i have a social site i own that i run using vbulletin...(thesidewalker.com) cost me either 100 or 200 bucks for the software, i forget exactly. then i use hostgator for either 10 or 20 bucks a month (again, i forget exactly but it's peanuts)...

i have 200 users total, with about 80 or 90 that are constantly on there yappin away at each other...not THAT much dissimilar than the traffic here, pretty much zero downtime, no advertising...and it hardly costs me anything.

This site is slightly bigger than yours. Let's see: 51,000 users and right now, 700 online.

pretty cheap to scale it up. that site i mentioned is not the only site that i've ever had...but the 20 bucks a month is for unlimited bandwith and storage...you can scale that up to 100 bucks a month for a dedicated server ...which i doubt this site would even need as little traffic as it gets....and pretty much knock down any issues you'd ever have with speed...still not a significant amount of money

the 51,000 user number is pretty irrelevant....doesn't cost anything to have 51,000 registered members....hell, i bet a huge percentage of them are inactive.

700 online at one time is OK, but it's not anything to have to break a bank over....in fact, it's not many users at all. but out of those less than half are registered users...like 300ish...really not that much bigger .

but go ahead and believe what you wanna believe, i dont care. this kind of stuff is a cinch, and it's cheap....one thing it really WONT do is make any kind of profit though. you have to do it cause you wanna do it.

I wonder what it takes to get some of these forum owners to sell out to Autoforums?

Before we had any sponsors it was costing $10,000. per year.

pretty cheap to scale it up. that site i mentioned is not the only site that i've ever had...but the 20 bucks a month is for unlimited bandwith and storage...you can scale that up to 100 bucks a month for a dedicated server ...which i doubt this site would even need as little traffic as it gets....and pretty much knock down any issues you'd ever have with speed...still not a significant amount of money

the 51,000 user number is pretty irrelevant....doesn't cost anything to have 51,000 registered members....hell, i bet a huge percentage of them are inactive.

700 online at one time is OK, but it's not anything to have to break a bank over....in fact, it's not many users at all. but out of those less than half are registered users...like 300ish...really not that much bigger .

but go ahead and believe what you wanna believe, i dont care. this kind of stuff is a cinch, and it's cheap....one thing it really WONT do is make any kind of profit though. you have to do it cause you wanna do it.

Not trying to be a dink here. Maybe you could start up a small Chevelle site. I have been and will continue to be a paying member here. My thoughts are this if Autoforums ever goes t--s up all the sites we enjoy will be gone. It would be nice to have a backup site sorta speak. Al took real pride in this site. He almost closed it down as he did not want it to be a members paying site many years ago.

I could be way off but with everything Al put into this site to keep it going I doubt he broke even when he sold it.

Get a horse!!!!!

What those user numbers are not showing is guest visitor hits. bot & crawler hits... All the images stored here that have remote links to them hitting it... The club sites hoested, the tech pages (not forum) hosted.

There is a lot more to TC than just these forum pages- and a lot more traffic then active members.

elcamino central was a good example of a home run site that could not handle its user base- and its MUCH smaller than team chevelle.

I was i think the 10th member or so on that site, and Very shortly after they got started(within 3 months i think) it became unbearably slow. Robert Tried to keep up with it by upgrading servers and his network service but really never could quite keep up with demand.

Looking at the forums over there you would never know why... there aren't that many members, But they get a lot of hits. Their elcamino gallery is by far the largest i've ever seen- and I'll bet that generates TONS AND TONS of traffic- which slowed down the whole site.

Now add into that the constant efforts of hackers and spammers- and you've got a non-paying full time job for these guys who started up the sites for "FUN".

I'm not thrilled with some of the corporate directives (ads) but i do understand the little guys giving it over to someone bigger to run it. It allows the site to continue, hopefully in a better level of performance than they could offer.

Think of it this way- Al was not getting paid to ward off hackers & spammers- upgrade the servers when they got old, etc. Now that we are part of autoforums, they PAY someone do to that work. IE: It will get done.

Of course the reason it will get done is different than before, ie- their ad income stops if the site goes down, but regardless- we win because the site runs better and stays up.

its a two edged sword guys. It sucks to get bought out by the big boys and have to put up with the ads, etc-

However- the alternative is to have the site slow down, go offline occasionally because of hacks, etc because the people running it get burned out as it was a hobby.

Personally i'd like to see the site continue.

Before we had any sponsors it was costing $10,000. per year.
wow, that's pretty off the chain. somebody misspent their $$$ in my opinion.

wow, that's pretty off the chain. somebody misspent their $$$ in my opinion.

Well, you are certainly welcome to YOUR opinion but you are comparing apples to grapes and obviously don't know what you are talking about.

But then EVERYTHING posted on the net has to be true so I hear. l:)

And there is always the problem of some wise guy posting something that offends (like serious vendor bashing) that requires hiring lawyers to straighten out.

And there is always the problem of some wise guy posting something that offends (like serious vendor bashing) that requires hiring lawyers to straighten out.

Like the "Street Beasts" suit against Hotrodders.com

Jon is now in round 2 of the lawsuits

Hi Dennis, I hope your site continues to grow and when it does you will see that there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth. We measured our traffic in hundreds of GB's per month and that means a lot of resources were in use, not just a stock VB forum. Dedicated servers mean hackers, constant patches, blacklisting from email notifications being sent etc etc.
The costs did drop from that number as the years went by and servers got cheaper (although traffic kept going up) but don't forget this site has been around for 14 years so our fees have been dramatic at times.

wow, that's pretty off the chain. somebody misspent their $$$ in my opinion.

Not to be an a**, but I have run a MediaMetrix global top 50 website (measured most traffic web site in the world) as a VP of Eng and Ops, and ran the $75M budget for eng and ops, which includes bandwidth. You don't know what your talking about.

Come on Dean,, you know having 50,000 members don't cost a thing,, as long as the activity isn't more than 3-4 gigs of bandwidth a month!!!!!

I helped start another board in the late 90's that now has 1.7M posts and 28,000+ members, and I'll tell you, it's more than any 20 people can deal with when you start geting popular. Riding heard on spammers and hackers alone is a 24/7 job. T-shirt sales, 'site' supporting members... it's barely a drop in the bucket. Deans $10k a year doesn't surprise me one bit.

Just to squelch bandwidth is "free", PRIOR to youtube getting purchased by google the youtube gang was paying approx $1M/month in bandwidth. IRCC, they were a month or two away to $0 in the bank account because of bandwidth usage.

I know its not cheap to maintain a large site like this. But I will admit I just cant see how its possible an individual or company can sue a website forum just because of one or several individuals opinion on a perticular view of a company. Its a public bulletin board after all. That just never made sense to me.

Didn't make sense to me either Chris but it happened. I think some of them just want to raise a stink and the only person they can physically track down is the site owner. It may not be a valid case but I can tell you from experience that it really sucks time, money and puts a lot of stress into your life.
It's kinda like some clumsy dude slipping on a dropped banana in a parking lot, they don't go after the guy who dropped the banana, they sue the store that owns the parking lot.
Al

I know its not cheap to maintain a large site like this. But I will admit I just cant see how its possible an individual or company can sue a website forum just because of one or several individuals opinion on a perticular view of a company. Its a public bulletin board after all. That just never made sense to me.

Chris it has happened. As stated, frivolous or not, it cost a lot of money and takes a lot of time. Even if you win you can still financially lose.

Streetbeasts attacks our free speech with a frivolous lawsuit against me (http://www.hotrodders.com/forum/streetbeasts-attacks-our-free-speech-frivolous-lawsuit-against-me-147173.html#post1034681)

It's just easier to not put yourself in that position.

A big part of the Streetbeast thing-----and the suit before it, is that Jon REFUSES
to give out the personal information of his users/members.

Also had to deal with a lawsuit a few years ago in another country----pretty much the same thing. I think I recall INTERPOL was involved.

Jon pretty much funds his site all on his own-----no advertising at all, and this lawsuit
is grabbing some funds.

He is accepting donations for the legal battle, and just so ya know, a win for him on this
case is a win for EVERY SITE THAT HAS THE SAME INTERESTS!!!

I see that they own StevesNovaSite also
http://www.autoforums.com/

That "take over" happened the same day as the Team sites. ( I moderate the 4th generation section there)

Didn't make sense to me either Chris but it happened. I think some of them just want to raise a stink and the only person they can physically track down is the site owner. It may not be a valid case but I can tell you from experience that it really sucks time, money and puts a lot of stress into your life.
It's kinda like some clumsy dude slipping on a dropped banana in a parking lot, they don't go after the guy who dropped the banana, they sue the store that owns the parking lot.
Al

Chris it has happened. As stated, frivolous or not, it cost a lot of money and takes a lot of time. Even if you win you can still financially lose.

Streetbeasts attacks our free speech with a frivolous lawsuit against me (http://www.hotrodders.com/forum/streetbeasts-attacks-our-free-speech-frivolous-lawsuit-against-me-147173.html#post1034681)

It's just easier to not put yourself in that position.

I know it has happened before. I remember hearing about that Street Beast thing and I also remember the debacle that happened here many years ago. I guess all it takes is that potential of the cost of time and money. That would be pretty much all it takes to put the kabash on something and I think the whole idea of that is a shame.

Laws should be changed requiring that the plaintiff reimburse the defendant for all costs if the plaintiff loses the suit. A lot of suits would never be filed if they had to pay when they lost.