So, I talked to Pete on Friday night. He said he's sorry he left us in a lurch, and has no problem with me taking the Alley off his hands. We talked about the site, and he mentioned that he was going to kill off a lot of the site anyway, for lack of time.
So, if there's anything we want to archive from the main site ( i.e. Not the forums), we should also save that info as well.
For the time being, I can host the site from my house, til my ISP has a small avian creature, that is. After that, I may need a new ISP and a co-lo ( A place, sort of like military school, where I can send the server, that has better internet speeds.) ;) This will keep the costs down for the interim while we're setting up the new home of the Alley.
We talked about it, and Pete figured it might be faster and easier to register a new domain name, and put a link to it on the main Bandit Alley site, and take down that forum, he figured, and I agree, that the important part was that we saved the messages.
Now,.. I know that there are people who don't want to change the name, because this one has a history, and people know it, so I'm going to put this to a vote.
Change it or don't?
The banditalley domain expires in 4 months, so we may be able to reclaim it. One drawback of reclaiming it, though, is that the spammers know where to find us.
Of benefit, of course, is that everyone else also knows where to find us.
If we do wait, what should we do in the meantime? Leave it at the current address, or,... ??
If we do decide to go with a new domain name, we could use either a variation of the name in the new domain name,.. i.e. banditalleyBBS.com, or bandit-alley.com, or some such. I like the name, so I wouldn't be looking to change it site-wide, just the domain name. (I'm throwing the names out there, but I haven't checked into availability at this point. Once we have 2 -3 names that we've agreed on, I'll check their availability.)
Once we've got everything changed over, whether through a new domain name, or through the existing one, we should also decide whether we want to go back to banner ads (i.e the amazon, googleleads, and commission junction ( BikeBandit) banners), if we want to go with any voluntary membership stuff, or some combination of both. I only bring the voluntary membership stuff up, because several people have mentioned that route to me now, and if we were to, I'd want to make sure that people were recognised for their contributions ( unless they chose not to be, of course.)
When the domain thing is sorted, Pete will put a link on his site, directing people to the new one.
He's got an open invitation to come and post and participate whenever he's around, and knows that we want him around. :)
For the most part, I'd like the board to stay pretty much as it is, I hope that all of the mods and admins will remain at their posts, they've been doing a great job!
Down the road, I'd love to change this board over to something easier to admin and mod, and more secure, but I think that's going to be a fall/winter thing now,.. I really can't see spending a lot of extra time working on the site, if I can be on a bike instead.
I will try to make sure it's up all the time though, unless it's being moved to somewhere else, or scheduled maintenance.
Except long weekends,.. if it's a long weekend, and I've gone to the mountains, I'll apologise right here, in advance. That's a Murphy's law thing, and it will likely fall down. I'll bring it back up when I get home.
Comments? Concerns? Questions?
Topic: It's Official! (Read 4305 times)