Our Community Will Always be Free
 

There's been some speculation that we will become a paid-membership only community. There is no truth to this speculation -- what you see here today will always be free. We have no current plans to run ads on the site, either, because it doesn't really cost us anything to keep these forums running.

Others have wondered why OBT has so many problems running forum software while we don't... I honestly don't know. We did make him the offer to run/host OBT when it went down and I heard nothing back from him. (Getting vBulletin up and running literally takes about 15 minutes if you're not doing an import -- which he didn't do.)

I think the problem comes in that OBT decided to purchase their own server and so you have to work with the hardware you have, even if it breaks. In the hosting world, all hardware is commodity and virtually the same, so if one of our servers goes down, we just swap out hard drives into a working server and we can be back online in a few hours. This is why I lease all of our servers, so if one goes bad, I get a new one in a few hours.

Once running, software like this requires very little maintenance. We run a script once a week to clean up the database and we monitor stuff, but it really pretty much takes care of itself. However, as a community gets large (greater than 20,000 members, I'd say), some little issues can turn into bigger issues, since it all runs on a database. The key is to keep active tabs on things and put monitors in place to let you know things are going wrong *before* things become catastrophic.

In 11 years, I've never had a community be down for more than a day (including running the world's largest online mental health community for 4 years) and I've never charged for any community.

John

you also dont make us feel like we're in a sandbox.:D I'm pretty impressed.

alffe...you give ktm back her shovel!:p :p

I didn't hear any speculation, but it's nice to hear about that anyway!

Thanks Doc.

Sandbox. :D Or under gag orders. :rolleyes:

Yes Mr. Frog, tis so, I should know, 4 kids and bunches and bunches of grands. Never heard it put quiet like that but it will work :D :p

DocJohn, I enjoy snooping around your site. I find it most interesting. If I go where no woman has ever gone before, better tell me:p I'm not too good at reading minds.

I like your place and I had not heard about the pay rumors either. I find it very hard to understand some people these days.

Well, I'll thank you once more, but I'm not leaving unless you lock the door and turn the porch light out:eek: take care, Jo

*Ditto* to what Jo said.

Yes, thanks Doc for what you have done here. I am not going anywhere even if you do turn off the porch light;) ...Sue

Poor Doc. I can just see snoozie... standin there on the porch, ringing the doorbell, pounding on the door..."DOC!? YOU THERE? ANYBODY HOME???" :D

We keep our porch light on all the time! :)

Have to say I'm not planning on going anywhere soon.

And glad the porch light is staying on. I don't like the
dark, I fall to much.

Donna

Don't you guys know I always carry one of those flashlights that you shake and don't need batteries?:p I can shake shake shake...shake shake shake...shake my booty...Am I showing my age just a little:D Sue

On that...you are in good company :o. Who doesn't remember that?

Cara

Impressive...
 

Doc John, You'd da man!

Thanks, Claire

Would you mind elaborating on how you pull that off? I have friends who have a web site similar to this only with triple the members and several more features. Their band width, tech support, and all costs them money. Are there just major behind the scenes sponsors here, do you eat the costs, or do you have some great tricks for making it cheap which I can pass on to them?

Laurie

Bravo
 

I have been here little more than 24 hours and I love this site and the people who I have come to know in that short time.

This site is truly special in so many ways. The fact that you have been so successful in maintaining a website and keeping it running with so few problems is a true credit to you and your staff.

Color me impressed
Mister

Having a great web site we must have great members like we have...
Doc is 100 % owner but where would he be without all our wonderful members.

Keep posting,sharing and supporting each other :)

I agree with you Mister, this is a great site ! I had been lurking around OBT for ages, rather than posting- i just never felt "welcome" or at ease there, but its a very different atmosphere on this site.
Thanks to Doc John and the mods here...great job...and very much appreciated.
Cate

Thanks
 

for the enlightening message. I was certainly one of the people who speculated that this would one day be a for profit site, but mainly because I did not understand how little it takes, financially, to run it.

A geek friend of mine who is familiar with vBulletin did not understand why JL was not getting things back up, and found the story "fishy". He, too, wrote JL offering support.

I gave generously to OBT when its servers crashed two years ago, and John said he raised $10,000 at that point. Does it make any sense to you that running OBT could have cost that? Or that with those resources it should have been down for that long? Or am I just putting you on the spot?

Sorry if I am. But I do feel that I gave generously to a nonprofit which might have used its funds to "buy land" in Second Life, not exactly what I'd expected.

I'm feeling quite at home here, and am glad I can expect this community to continue and thrive.

LizaJane

www.lizajane.org

Oh, how I do love this site!! It's like a breath of fresh air.

Preparing for crash
 

I hope the below will ensure you that Doc is ready for anything we may encounter and will keep BT2 up and running..

Hugs

Guess what I looked for
 

I think what I am really concerned with and wonder, is tehre a drive that is a sister twin with all the information stored to retrive it?

Does someone have a back up somewhere, aside from getting a system back online. In police work at night and weekly we did back ups on an external drive. I also had protability in case of fire to install in a new system.

Granted OBT had years and too many post to count to store, but can it be done.
I am sick over the information it seems we lost at OBT. I was even concerned and upset when the new system went online, we were no longer able to link back to the old forum anymore for some reason, none of them.

There were some back ways in for some information, such as the way back etc. But nothing like a click and link.
Di