[frolix:
And to anomaly: You'll never do that, will you? I don't know, maybe I'm just overly-sensitive, but friends are friends...whether short-term or long-term...whether in person or in cyber-space...and I hate to lose anyone I've come to care about. But I have. And it sucks. -frolix]
I have no plans of closing this site and I certainly wouldn't do so without notice. In fact, just the opposite, I have two or three more in the works with other area programmers. These forums and this site are amazingly cheap to host, so very little cost is incurred by me running them and the rest of the site. Although, I'm the only “owner” that posts on the site, I do have the support of other area professionals, one of which hosts this site for free because we dreamt the site up over a lunch at Wings in Daphne a few months ago. (his site is http://www.gulfnetsys.com and he's a real talented web developer for hire)
Worst case scenario, if GulfNetSys became unable to host the site - I could host the site at any number of virtual hosts for around $30/mo at most. The options I have with gulfnetsys are much greater but there are certainly backup alternatives. I say all this to say, it's in my personal and professional best interest and certainly worth the $30/mo to run the site indefinitely. That's just me paying out of my pocket to run the site. Best Case Scenario -We find a way to tastefully advertise condos, restaurants and other area businesses and the site brings in seed money that keeps the site self-sufficient and allows me to add more features.
Media General probably didn't have the sense to base their forum technology on a low-cost solution like this.
I agree with you that it's pretty lame to get people hooked on a forum and then pull up and leave town without notice. A Coworker and I were talking about that recently concerning other sites we visit and how it ticks us off when they disappear. A SQL Server tech support site I often frequented for help was gobbled up by corporate america and is no longer available. I'm getting sick of my favorite sites dissappearing. I thought about loosing a few homegrown spider/crawler-bots on some of my fav sites to index them in my own private google-like collection.
NoWorries. We're hear to stay.
=)
With KRG forums closing, if you get a chance to talk to some of your old buddies there on other forums- be sure to bring em' on board here and some of the other non-corporate area sites, like gs unplugged. I just love seeing people use the internet to hook up with one another.