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I thought that the official shut down was scheduled for November 14th..?
And, it was supposed to be archived as well.
This seems ...abrupt.
>>>The Power of the Good and the Way of the Magic!<<<
@disneyboy Yea it’s not getting proper closure. It would have been an easier pill to swallow. Now when you check it says “connection not private”
I think it shut down between 12:30- 12:40 am eastern time today. There was a thank you message on a He-Man and She-Ra Secret of the Sword poster. I get that warning message now, though.
Never was on those forums, but I know what it's like loosing a site / forum you really enjoyed 😢. Hopefully, some of you guys can find a new home here.
Community Leader
Its sad that the org is gone....maybe one day it will return. But I hope this place can be our new home. Here is to the future!! 🙂
I was giving Val a very hard time there with some of my last posts, for what it's worth. I'm very pissed off with how he handled the situation, and the bizarre mixed messages he put out on the last day. What an insult.
@durendal My problem was that he took away the ability to donate because he said that wasn’t fair for the users. Then he made a post after he announced closing the site that the donation option was always there but people chose not to. Unless I read that wrong but pretty sure I didn’t.
it was supposed to be archived as well.
Assuming that still happens, it's going to take a while just to download final backups including everything up to the closure. Or the plan might have been to create a static archive from the site whilst it's still in situ but with forum set to private apart from for admins.
I'm not sure if Val did his own coding / technical maintenance? So a lot's probably resting on whoever's helping out and their availability.
Anyone have an idea what kind of bill he was looking at? You find 20 people to split 20 ways it can't be too much can it?
🇺🇸 SNOUT SPOUT FOR PRESIDENT 🇺🇸
The way a friend who hosts TFArchive does it, he rents a server and is technical enough to keep the Linux environment up to date himself. We've never discussed actual costs but there've been plenty of server moves over the last ~25 years and it's gotten cheaper each time. But he does use that server for other more current personal projects.
These days actual storage is cheap, assuming that the Org wasn't on an old contract that didn't offer essentially unlimited resources. If the contracts hadn't been kept up to date, they might have been paying older rates with more limits.
I think the closure was probably a mix of factors -- technical debt and being faced with having to upgrade vBulletin plus the server environment plus rewrite the old code for the rest of the site. Contracts that probably weren't optimal. And years of paying out of pocket for it all. Maybe with a bit of friction with Mattel thrown in, they're generally considered less friendly than Hasbro with fan sites and generating income with sponsors, ads, etc, could have been a line. Plus real life, being busy, etc.
edit: The biggest shame is it wasn't handed over to other people who could deal with that stuff.
And bandwidth could still have been a fairly big cost. I think it would probably have made sense to turn older parts of the forum into a static archive and block crawling by most bots. Effectively keep it online for normal browsing but start a fresh forum with the user database.
@durendal I hate to say this but you brought up a lot of good points and I agreed with your train of thought. Somebody had to say it and you just ended up being the one to call out Val. I certainly didn't have the stomach to say it.
Last night after the site went down the chatroom still worked and a few of us went into it and gabbed for a bit. It was somewhat surreal. The site was down yet that one part was still there and working. 😥
I'm not sure if Val did his own coding / technical maintenance? So a lot's probably resting on whoever's helping out and their availability
No. I'm pretty sure Adam Tyner jumped in every once in a while for maintenance. However, about a year or two ago, Val did put out a call for volunteers to update the site. I responded (once or twice), but never heard back, which is a shame because I've been managing large and small website since the .org started. Then, I commented on updates needed for the site, and one of the mods mentioned that a new site was coming (which made sense based on what Val emailed a year or so prior.) I also found it strange that the donation option went away at some point.
Regardless, the reality is that the site was technically Val's to do with as he wished. Although, it was the community that made it what it was.
I thought it would always be around!
😥 We all thought it would always be around
As I've said, I never created an account for he-man.org (although I did anonymously lurk from time to time), so I'm unaware of the behind the scenes drama. Although, from what I gather, sounds like things had been problematic for a while.
Community Leader
Regardless, the reality is that the site was technically Val's to do with as he wished. Although, it was the community that made it what it was.
Yeah, I figured it was worth posting in the closing thread to mention options but I assume that decisions had already been made and/or things were on a tight timetable.
Assuming there's a proper offline backup of the database with what sounds like several hundred gigs of data (from comments by people who tried making an archive of it in the last week) plus the existing files, there's always the option of making a static version of the old forum and sticking that on cheaper hosting, and starting a fresh forum with the existing user accounts pre-loaded. It'd get around needing to update the vB software. Blocking most bots from crawling the static copy (allow Google and use that to implement search, of course) would reduce bandwidth needs.
Upgrading the rest of the site code would probably be a bigger pain. Uploading some big archive files of the pages, photos, etc, and letting people input the useful info into a wiki would likely be the best bet (whether a privately hosted instance of MediaWiki or one of the ad-supported free options).
I was giving Val a very hard time there with some of my last posts, for what it's worth. I'm very pissed off with how he handled the situation, and the bizarre mixed messages he put out on the last day. What an insult.
Just sad how it ended. It seems that he would rather let the org die than hand it over to someone.
Personally, I think it's best to leave the .org as a static snapshot, at this point. Build what there is now; e.g., support AJ and this community.
I tried taking a couple of snapshots of the site, but the crawler kept getting confused; basically, it took the first page of everything, but after went to a page not found. Even that came out to 3-4gb.
Who else tried to archive a static version?
Without divulging too much confidential information and overstepping my bounds, I can tell you that running the ORG cost Val a LOT. Just the amount of data just for the forums was HUGE. It was more than a car payment every month. I can't really blame him for no longer wanting to shoulder the costs.
He has tried donations numerous times. While there are many generous fans who have donated throughout the years, the donations couldn't pay for the hosting, much less the much-needed refurbishment. I have a feeling, and that's all that it is...a feeling, that he stopped taking donations because he knew in his mind that he would be closing the site and didn't want to take money from people for a doomed cause.
The fact that the traffic has severely waned in the past decade was also a contributing factor. During Classics, when the traffic was at its peak, donations and banner ads would have probably made it much more palatable to keep the site operational. Traffic has dipped so much due to the downturns of forums in general in favor of social media, it's just a fraction of what it used to be. I think anyone who was around the ORG a 10-15 years ago could probably tell the difference.
Overall, it IS a very sad situation. I'll admit that I welled up a few times in the final week. I wish that things could have been different, but I understand why it had to come to an end. I'm just very grateful that there are place like this where we can still have a community. 🥂
Regardless, the reality is that the site was technically Val's to do with as he wished. Although, it was the community that made it what it was.
Assuming there's a proper offline backup of the database with what sounds like several hundred gigs of data (from comments by people who tried making an archive of it in the last week) plus the existing files, there's always the option of making a static version of the old forum...
Who was making an archive of it? None of the messages on the "the site is closing" thread suggested certain fans were archiving certain things. I'm not Mr Tech, so I apologize for my limited understanding here, but wouldn't only Val be able to back-up the site?
Do you mean people took screenshots of the various threads...or literally went through pages of threads and somehow backed them up? I'd like to think it was the latter, but I don't understand how that would be possible...
How many people were doing this? Was it a concentrated effort?
Like I said, I heard nothing in those final days so I assumed nothing was happening. It would be a relief to know tech savvy fans made an effort to archive as much as they could. I certainly wouldn't have been able to.
Without divulging too much confidential information and overstepping my bounds, I can tell you that running the ORG cost Val a LOT. Just the amount of data just for the forums was HUGE. It was more than a car payment every month. I can't really blame him for no longer wanting to shoulder the costs.
He has tried donations numerous times. While there are many generous fans who have donated throughout the years, the donations couldn't pay for the hosting, much less the much-needed refurbishment. I have a feeling, and that's all that it is...a feeling, that he stopped taking donations because he knew in his mind that he would be closing the site and didn't want to take money from people for a doomed cause.
The fact that the traffic has severely waned in the past decade was also a contributing factor. During Classics, when the traffic was at its peak, donations and banner ads would have probably made it much more palatable to keep the site operational. Traffic has dipped so much due to the downturns of forums in general in favor of social media, it's just a fraction of what it used to be. I think anyone who was around the ORG a 10-15 years ago could probably tell the difference.
Overall, it IS a very sad situation. I'll admit that I welled up a few times in the final week. I wish that things could have been different, but I understand why it had to come to an end. I'm just very grateful that there are place like this where we can still have a community. 🥂
The site traffic had definitely slowed down, no question, as fans aged up and had other priorities and internet habits shifted a bit. And you make some very valid points about the strain of running a site so big. I don't think anyone begrudges Val saying "I need to bow out - this is more than I can handle". He did a remarkable job over the course of two decades.
...it's the fact that so much rare and fascinating information had been built up across various threads over the years, and there was no opportunity to compile and preserve it. Maybe that's something Val intends to do behind the scenes now, I don't know...but that's the point. He didn't say anything without prompting regarding what would happen with the site's contents...contents that the community built up and did so with the thought that it would be preserved in some way.
Imagine what the response would have been if the announcement had been made that the site was going away come February 2024 or something, and that help would be needed to archive it's discoveries. Honestly, I think plenty of people would have stepped in to say "okay, let's pack up the good stuff". The Org was THE resource.
Yes, it would have been great to hand it over to new owners and see if it could endure in a slightly new format...but if that wasn't Val's preference, at least we could have been involved in packing it all up and making sure the gems were documented.
Google has it archived right now. Can you pull it from Google? This evening I was researching the Netflix He-Man show and many of the posts show in searches.
It was more than a car payment every month.
I think the problem was trying to keep the forums operational as they were, on that hosting. Having a domain and site that's been running for 25+ years (we were on the first page of Google results for 'transformers' for a very long time and got through particularly high bandwidth circa the 2007 movie) leads to heavy crawling -- even ages after algorithms have been adjusted -- unless you've got automated blocking of abusive IP ranges.
Once static and only being hit by real people and "good" or well-behaved bots there's a few options. Various versions of S3 probably the best known, but working things out with Archive.org and/or data hoarding and preservation communities would take cost out of the equation because there's interest in not losing internet history.
But even the host I use for personal bits, ultimately owned by Iomart and hosting big public sector stuff and things for international companies, has an inexpensive essentially unlimited storage and bandwidth option for a low annual price. I'm sure they'd kick customers off if it was seriously abused or customers didn't set up (or agree to set up) some defences, but hosting isn't really the same minefield it was a decade ago.
If it'd been costing a bomb each month recently, it suggests rolled over old contracts. https://sitereport.netcraft.com/?url=http://www.he-man.org gives the impression it's been with the same provider for quite a while.
@disneyboy "wouldn't only Val be able to back-up the site?" -- from the point of view of getting a database backup including private messages, private forums, etc, yes. Copying everything publicly available to a logged in user, anyone could do with sufficient time and some knowledge of tools.
I didn't personally. I know how long it takes to do smaller forums because I've done it at the request of owners. If the announcement had been that things were going away on a longer timeline might have considered it, or more likely tried to coordinate with other people. I'm also taking at face value the statement made in the announcement thread that there's an intention to archive things, and it's a bit impolite to add huge amounts of additional traffic to a site when the owner's said that running the site is already expensive and without knowing why / contract details.
edit: Someone apparently grabbed a few hundred gigs worth but it didn't complete within the week --
And that much data might seem like a lot, but consumer grade 16TB drives are about three hundred quid.