Scot Posted November 27, 2021 Share Posted November 27, 2021 I've have given this a lot of thought and last week I let the forum admins know. The time has come for me to pull away form the forums and Scot's Newsletter entirely. Not only do I have trouble keeping up with my commitments to maintaining it, but Google ads (which are disabled on the forums) have not defrayed the the costs of maintaining it for quite some time. To be honest, in recent years -- since leaving Computerworld -- I have lost my long-held zeal for computers. I've moved on to other pursuits, and have even launched a small local business in an unrelated field. My hope is that I can find someone or some group of people to whom I can turn over the forums, the scotsnewsletter.com domain, and all the keys to the castle. In other words, a new owner. As the new owner, you would have the option to use my first name in perpetuity (in any marketing materials etc.) For the first year I would be around to consult on any questions that might arise (at no cost). All that for one dollar. Such a deal. I think that new blood, someone with new ideas who wants to try a few things, will find there's still enough of an ember on the forums to start something new. One of those ideas might be changing the name of the forums. The downside is the cost. We're on a fully managed VPS server with Litespeed and a full cPanel license. On the plus side, KnownHost's managed services (an option you could turn off) are first rate and tech support is lightening fast and very knowledgeable. There are some costs that could be removed either by staying with my host and adjusting service levels or by moving to shared webhosting. The Invision Community software license is $40 every six months. The cost of the domain is about $20 a year. Besides your time, however, those are the only other expenses. (Full details with a cost breakdown on the monthly webhost fees will be provided to interested parties.) If you're thinking you'd like to change the name of the forums and the domain GeekSpeakeasy.com appeals to you, I can include the parked domain with package. Scot's Newsletter Forums has a small but amazing crew of volunteer Forum Admins and Moderators. I can't promise their ongoing service, but I know that at least some of them are interested. My plan is to pull the plug on all the Scot's Newsletter html and Scot's Newsletter Blog content -- including LinuxClues. Everything on LinuxClues is on Bruno's site (albeit without the benefit of Cyndy's or my editing). Anyone who might be interested in Linux Clues, with or without the forums, can email me. Prospective Scot's Newsletter owners should email me at scot@scotsnewsletter.com. Timetable? Some of the All Things Linux folk have created a little space over at the LandzDown Forums. With that in mind, I'm hoping to wrap this up in a month or two. If no one steps forward over the next month or so, I will set a date and let everyone know so you'll have some time to copy off key things you want to save. If no one claims the forums by whatever date I set, probably late January, I will make a full-blown backup of the site that I will compress and encrypt and store locally — as I did with the newsletter mailing list. Then I will personally delete all the databases, images, html content pages, and site files for the forums, blog and newsletter. Some of this, not affecting the forums, may happen much sooner. You may see the newsletter and blog sites go down in the next few weeks. Little did I know that the experimental forum that I launched on March 8, 2003, would see almost 19 years of service and touch so many lives. Thanks to all who have participated in the experiment, especially to the many people who worked to make it special and kept it going day after day. Thanks so much to the hard working moderators and admins, especially to Corrine, securitybreach and V.T. Eric Layton. And RIP Fran "LilBambi" and Bruno of Amsterdam, two of the forums' most important influencers and heavy contributors. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted November 27, 2021 Share Posted November 27, 2021 Thanks Scot for the many years of providing this forum to us. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted November 27, 2021 Share Posted November 27, 2021 Thank you, @Scot... for a lot of things. This place has been a home to many of us for many years. Hard to believe that it's been 15 years since @Urmas dragged me over here. I'll miss it and you. Hopefully, someone will be able to keep it alive. I will stay here to the last moment, as I'm sure, will most others. About the Landzdown Forums' "Bruno's All Things Linux" area... Our own @Corrine, who is also an Admin there, was kind enough to provide us with space to keep Bruno's dream alive. I've populated that area at Landzdown with a few posts in the way of introduction and history, but the area is currently NOT visible to anyone but Admins/Mods at Landzdown. If it comes down to it and we do have to turn the lights off here at Scot's, then Corrine will activate the new BATL at Landzdown. Everyone from here, who would like to, is welcome to come to Landzdown and participate. It will be a place where we can still keep in touch on a daily basis. Oh, and I must also add... Landzdown is a security and anti-malware focused forum. It has a majority of MS Windows members and information for folks using that OS. With that said, any/all folks here who are MS Windows users and interested in security, anti-malware, tips, tricks, etc. should also pop in over at Landzdown and register a membership. A few of you folks are already there, I've noticed. Please stay tuned... ~Eric 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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