What if EoFF shut down?

[Loony BoB]

Thought I'd get your thoughts on this. I've considered palming the place off to a couple of people on staff, but both were not interested and at this point I'm thinking it's perhaps time to close the doors. I'm in no real rush, I don't suffer immensely from the cost of the place but having an extra £40 a month wouldn't be a bad thing. But at the same time, I don't want to make this a spur of the moment decision and I'm very interested in hearing what you all think. Feel free to PM me if you would prefer to keep your thoughts private. I don't check the place every day but I try to, and I'm just at the point in my life that I want to tidy up some loose ends, and this is one of them. I might keep the place running, I'm really not decided on it all. But I thought I'd mention it here and see what the masses think.

[Fynn]

No. I come here every day and refuse to accept this.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'd be pretty bummed since I still come in everyday, but I also understand.

[Vyk]

I'm not going to say what should or shouldn't be done, but as you weigh your options, know that if there is a way to donate with some auto-subscription thing. I'd be more than happy to be added to the list to keep the lights on. Even if I don't frequent like I used to, I still consider this home. I have small donations coming out monthly for patreon and wikipedia. I feel like the internet is better with this place around. There's a high concentration of good, honest, and knowledgeable people here. I'd like that to still be here for new people in the coming releases of Final Fantasy games and such

[Aulayna]

I'll formulate some thoughts later, but on the purely financial side of it:

Does the traffic these days on the site warrant a £40 a month hosting package? I can see how it would in EoFF's heyday, but in 2020 that price seems excessive to me for a fansite. But I also have no idea what the traffic/bandwidth usage of EoFF is like these days so it's just pure conjecture on my part.

Still, there are much cheaper hosting packages out there. Heck, vBulletin's own cloud hosting service has 2 plans that cost less than £40 a month (cuts a few of the bells and whistles of a standalone installation but the trade off is the place is kept up to date).

The Ruby package here is also a lot cheaper.

(Admittedly migrating to a new host can be a pain the rear so I can appreciate that being a concern too...)

[Del Murder]

I would not be happy if EoFF shut down. I want it to still be here when my kids are old enough to use the internet. If it is the hosting cost that is the problem, I'm sure we can work something out among some of us die hard members. If this is more about tieing up loose ends, then maybe we can also work that out.

[Psychotic]

There are currently 337 users online. 3 members and 334 lurkers.

How much does hosting the site for members cost and how much for the bots?

My thought would be to delete some of the older threads and visitor messages. Especially VMs - bots love to read VMs! This is just page one of Who's Online:

(SPOILER)Viewing Conversation FallenSilence and Laugh at face of Danger
Viewing Conversation Fynn and Skyblade
Viewing Conversation Yeargdribble and Ayen
Viewing Conversation Flying Mullet and theundeadhero
Viewing Conversation Fynn and Pumpkin
Viewing Conversation McLovin' and Shiny

I know the content of VMs means a lot to some people, and so I would be very strongly opposed to deleting anything without giving people ample time to transfer their VMs and old threads to a more permanent format on their own drives.

I would also love to go on a campaign of deleting accounts with 0 posts.

http://home.eyesonff.com/memberlist....joindate&pp=60

The overwhelming majority of bots now don't even post - they're perfectly happy just putting their links in their profile fields.

[maybee]

If it happens, it happens, but I'll miss you all.

[Shauna]

As I said in the staff thread, if there's any way to cut the costs of running this place then I'd hope we'd explore all those options before bringing the shutters down.

It is an ultimate inevitably that this place will go, but if we can drag it out as long as possible with the smallest costs for everyone involved then what more would we want?

[Aulayna]

For the bots, if SEO and user acquisition is no longer a concern (which given the amount of broken frontsite links there are in older articles/pages/posts/blogs etc. that will be tanking the SEO algorithms, I guess it isn't) the bots can be combated using a Robots.txt file to block many of them, and then IP ranges on the server side can also be blocked.

Honestly I'm not even sure why EOFF gets so many bots browsing it, for ex. Zelda Universe the biggest Zelda fansite out there that's still got unusually active forums for 2020 tends to have around 5 bots for every 1 active member, not 100.

But yeah, the bots side there are plenty of ways of mitigating that. Some are quite nuclear, but there are softer ways.

I mean heck the forums are also running on an end of life version of vBulletin which doesn't help things either, and vB4 has always been kind of the Windows Vista of the vB line.

------

Regarding the site BoB. You do you. EoFF has meant a lot for many of us throughout the years but there's no denying the site has been showing it's age over the past few years. The internet is moving on to a place where video is king, and social media platforms have become the new forums (sadly still missing a lot of features) - and heck a decent proportion of the regulars of EoFF have shifted over to the EoFF discord. I know this site meant a lot to you in the past, but I know your life has also changed substantially over the past 4 years or so so maybe that bond isn't as strong as it once was.

Like I said, if it's the financial side that's the main concern - there are definitely ways it that can be cut down. If it's about tieing up loose-ends and moving on, I can fully understand that too, and like Del said, maybe we can figure something out there too.

I'd be sad to see the site go as I have a lot of memories here, but there's no denying it has been on its last legs for a quite some time now. The discord is all well and good but like most social media platforms, it's very in the moment and it's hard to go back and look at this that happened weeks/months/years ago with the same context in the way you can a forum thread.

But whatever decision you make, I'll respect it.

[theundeadhero]

I still visit every day. I only post once or twice a month. If the site closed it would leave a little hole where it once was, but that hole would be much smaller than it would have been a decade ago, I could move on. I'm not close to anyone here anymore and it's more comforting just seeing old faces than actually interacting with them. Most of those faces I don't see anywhere else.

I'm not sure of the main reasons you're thinking of closing the site down, but I would guess that there are solutions that could be found without the need to close the place.

[Loony BoB]

There are a few things that concern me. The money is one, but if that was literally the only thing I probably wouldn't be that bothered. I know that if I offered a Patreon style thing that people would be around to help me out. I still get very rare help from Amazon so whoever is still using those links, thanks, I appreciate it.

But there are other things. Some have even been mentioned here already.

- EU regulations have kicked in. How long can we hold data? How do we manage that? Could be legal issues to consider there, and that's when I get in over my head and don't want to be running the place. I'm no lawyer, and I don't want to have to pay for a lawyer for the sake of a fansite.
- vBulletin 4 is old news and not getting updates. What do we do about that?
- Personally, while you all know what this site has meant to my life, it has also been dragged down by people who I met through here to become a place of unwanted drama in my life. Admittedly none right now, but I'm confident that this place is not the home I used to have, because if I came back full time then I am confident that I'd just wind up a bit upset about things again.
- As mentioned, I'm trying to just... simplify my life. I may regret that. I don't know. But this place is my past, now. The friends I have made on the way, I am grateful for... but I also know that I am, really deep down, just another part of the past for all but a very small handful of them, too. So yeah. That's a thing.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

Seems like there's a lot of emotions left in you about this place. Sounds like it's time for you to move on, maybe not permanently, but this forum still has life for a few. I have also been around since '99-'00ish (lost my old account log in information ages ago) and I know how much this forum has been a part of your life. You were always there.

Look at it like an ex. You wouldn't want them to be gone, but that doesn't mean you can interact with them everyday either. You tried being friends, maybe it was fine for a while, but you've grown apart. That's totally okay.

I'm sure you'd always be welcome back anytime, too. You may find that after some time away, returning as a member instead of running the website may make some of the feelings you're dealing with feel far in the past.

Announcing it like this will hopefully give people a chance to take over administrative/financial responsibilities.

You've got nothing but love here BoB, but none of us are going to get mad at you for stepping away. Hopefully we can find a new caretaker.

[escobert]

The friends I have made on the way, I am grateful for... but I also know that I am, really deep down, just another part of the past for all but a very small handful of them, too. So yeah. That's a thing.

That's how I feel about it. I don't really have personal connections to anyone that posts here anymore, I just sort of pop in now and then becasue this place was a huge part of my life for a long time. I'd be sad to see it go but, I came to the realization that it was probably going to go away at some point a long while ago. This place was my "safe space" for much of my teenage years and a place to chill and have fun in my 20's. I miss those days for sure, this place was so much fun and full of so many different and interesting people even if I didn't always get along with everyone.

[Spuuky]

The problem with forums is that generally only the Painfully Online still visit them, and that isn't really a problem unique to here.

I met my wife on this website and I've been married to her for over a decade now, so I'd definitely be a little sad and nostalgic if it went away, but it is what it is. It's already functionally dead.