Rob Galbraith Forum Closed and For Sale

Bob Bell

This is kind of interesting: http://forums.robgalbraith.com/showrules.php?Cat

I am surprised by not having volunteer mods. I was not a member of the forum and haven't even looked at it in the last couple years but I'm sure people here have and I'm sure they are upset by this.

Andy

Bob Bell wrote:

This is kind of interesting: http://forums.robgalbraith.com/showrules.php?Cat

I am surprised by not having volunteer mods. I was not a member of the forum and haven't even looked at it in the last couple years but I'm sure people here have and I'm sure they are upset by this.

It's a tough job. For a while, people were asking why we had a dozen moderators. I feel for Rob - a good forum they have / had.

David_S85

:wow

And I just registered there a couple weeks ago. I have all of 5 posts.

DoctorIt

I can only imagine the time that Andy and the collective rest of the mods (can't speak for myself, at least lately) put in. But as for $$$... Is this for real!?!

Rob G wrote:

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]These forums are expensive to run; before we began accepting advertising on the site I personally contributed tens of thousands of dollars over time [/FONT]

wxwax

Galbraith is different to dgrin in that they have an active and advertiser-supported news portion of the site. That's not something you want to entrust to unpaid volunteers.

ian408

Andy wrote:

It's a tough job. For a while, people were asking why we had a dozen moderators. I feel for Rob - a good forum they have / had.

It's too bad they weren't able to grow their support staff in the same way
many forums do. However, if they are able to make money off the sale, more
power to them.

Ian

David_S85

Just part of the plan
I'll bet Andy buys it to further advance the AndyBay™ empire. You heard it here first, folks.

DoctorIt

wxwax wrote:

Galbraith is different to dgrin in that they have an active and advertiser-supported news portion of the site. That's not something you want to entrust to unpaid volunteers.

He points out that this isn't the reason though - the news and forums were pretty much 2 seperate and different animals. Even the readership base was totally disparate.

And I still don't see how it takes "10s of thousands of $$$". No one cares to comment on that?

Andy

DoctorIt wrote:

He points out that this isn't the reason though - the news and forums were pretty much 2 seperate and different animals. Even the readership base was totally disparate.

And I still don't see how it takes "10s of thousands of $$$". No one cares to comment on that?

Are you not getting your weekly paycheck, Doc????

DoctorIt

Andy wrote:

Are you not getting your weekly paycheck, Doc????

apparently not!

Bob Bell

I could see web hosting be a thousand or more per month. I know it is at a few web forums.

Stormdancing

DoctorIt wrote:

He points out that this isn't the reason though - the news and forums were pretty much 2 seperate and different animals. Even the readership base was totally disparate.

And I still don't see how it takes "10s of thousands of $$$". No one cares to comment on that?

The main costs of most forums is the bandwidth. A simple formula for estimating bandwidth is Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Views x Average Page Size x 31. So if we knew these variables we could guestimate the bandwidth usage.

The cost of the forum software could range from the rediculous to reasonable, like Vbulletin which is what is used here. Vbulletin charges a yearly license fee. A simple forum format does not take a rocket scientist (or DoctorIt) to install and maintain. Knowledge of HTML, CSS and other basic "web page" languages with a dose of PHP workings and it's up and running. Customizations, add-ons, and custom graphics could be additonal expenses.

I hosted a large crime forum on my webserver. Nowhere the hits of a site like RG, but still very active with many members. I also hosted the complete court transcripts from the Scott Peterson trial. All of them. 1000's of 1000's of pages. Even with those transcripts being accessed daily by 100,000's of people following that trial, it never came close to the 200GB of bandwidth I alotted. Mind you, these pages were not graphic intensive.

Now you could host this on a dedicated server, for example, Intel Dual Xeon, 2.3 ghz, 2GB Ram, 2 250GB SATA Raid Hard Drives, 2,500GB monthly transfer. That would run you about $400/month at a reliable dedicated hosting service such as EV1. That's pretty rad specs for a web server and most are no where near that hot.

Costs do add up. "10s of thousands of $$$" actual or just one of those expressions that are tossed out?

ian408

DoctorIt wrote:

And I still don't see how it takes "10s of thousands of $$$". No one cares to comment on that?

Figure that hardware cost is around $3K for a server and maybe another 3 or
4K for disk. Multiple servers. Hosting costs. I could see that.

I might question someone that continues to throw good money after bad
though (ie; the business isn't sustaining itself and there's no hope of it
happening).

Then again, MRN was "sold" recently as well. Similar sorts of reasons. I know
David put a serious chunk of change into it as well.

wxwax

DoctorIt wrote:

He points out that this isn't the reason though - the news and forums were pretty much 2 seperate and different animals. Even the readership base was totally disparate.

And I still don't see how it takes "10s of thousands of $$$". No one cares to comment on that?

It was the challenge of maintaining the totality, while holding down full time gigs involving travel, that's done them in.

Bodley

Update
FYI

Quote from site:

The RG DPI forums are closed to new posts while we negotiate the sale of the forums. Update, April 19: We have reached an agreement with a new owner that will see the forums continue into the future! The forums will be open to new posts starting at 2PM eastern on April 20. Basic details of the transition will begin to be made available - including who the new owner is - at or shortly after the time the forums reopen, with more information to follow through the end of the week as final details are hammered out. Thanks to those of you who have sent so many supportive emails over the past few days, and thanks to everyone for your patience during this time of transition. Please read the Forums Closure FAQ for more information about why we're doing this. - Rob Galbraith

wxwax

Great news for a great site.

lynnesite

wxwax wrote:

Great news for a great site.

I am also delighted to hear they'll continue!

Art Scott

very cool

David_S85

Good news. Great group of people over there. My guess is they'll transition into a subscription method.

David_S85

David_S85 wrote:

Good news. Great group of people over there. My guess is they'll transition into a subscription method.

...and they've done just that.

May 1st the price will be $25/year then up to $35. Paypal. 5 day grace from April 25 to the 30th then you need to support it financially to keep playing.

wxwax

I shall be very interested to see what level of activity they are able to sustain.

SportsShots

I too am very curious to see what happens when it comes alive again. I was a heavy user of that forum and found it incredibly resourceful. It was filled with tons of professional photogs. I found it useful as I have grown my event photography business. That's one suggenstion I might make here, in addition to the sports section, have a Event Photogrpahy section. Just a thought.

SportsShots

When you go to their forum section now, it redirects to the Wedding review forums. I hope this is not a long term solution. Does anyone have anymore insight?