Dang, no more Webring. :'o
Damn, that is terrible news. Seriously, this is a serious blow to the MyBB hosting community. Don't really know what else to say...
My heart goes out to you, Brandon. Webring America has been around for quite some time, and you put a lot of work into it. Are you planning to restart on another host?
It was really a shame that I had to close down WebringAmerica, but it seemed things just were not meant to be. I had backups, but they were not saved correctly and were corrupted so I couldn't import them into a new host, so there was total data loss. To make things worse, the freemybb.com server is falling apart and I have no way of making any full database backup of that server as well.
I may restart WebringAmerica some day, but I may not as well. If I were to start again I would have to overcome some of the very challenges that led to the downfall of WebringAmerica in the first place. It seems too I have bad luck in choosing web hosts as for the past few months I've had nothing but server issues from multiple web hosts.
Honestly, I want to start WebringAmerica again, but before I do I want to make sure that I would do it right this time. That includes finding a partner who shares my vision and who also is committed to the project. Honestly, running a site like WebringAmerica can become at times to be a full time job, sometimes requiring me to spend hours a day working on things. I realize that a host as big as WebringAmerica was cannot be run alone, at least not forever.
Maybe if I can vastly improve the MyBB Multiforums Mod the WebringAmerica site will be back. There's a lot of technical as well as personal hurdles though I'll have to overcome before I can consider bringing WebringAmerica back.
I'll hold on to all the WebringAmerica domain names though. This could be something that I decide to resurrect someday once I've fixed all the bugs that ultimately led to the site's demise.
Thanks everyone. I'm going to miss hosting free MyBB forums, but the
MyBB Multiforums Mod is still free and is available if anyone wants to pick up where I left off.
Brandon
Just to update everyone, if you had a backup that you generated from Webring America and you wished to stay with a free host, you are more than welcome to join TopixCube. Brandon has asked me (in the TopixCube showoff thread) if I would take anyone who had a backup and I agreed.
If you were one of those affected by this terrible loss and you have a database backup, please read the instructions here:
http://supportcube.topixcube.com/showthread.php?tid=22
If you need assistance, you can register on our support forums,
http://supportcube.topixcube.com and open a support topic.
Thanks nightfox. Yeah, if you had a backup you made from your WebringAmerica forum before the server went down you can have nightfox install it on his service and it will work the same as your old forum. He uses the same system that I was using so there should be no issues.
Brandon
Sorry for not being an active staff there, probably crashed on my part.
Hope you can bring it back alive soon.
(2008-12-23, 12:33 AM)Infranight Wrote: [ -> ]Sorry for not being an active staff there, probably crashed on my part.
Hope you can bring it back alive soon.
Just got word from the web host that although they are going out of business they're going to attempt to give a 72 HR window where backups of data can be made. I'm going to try my best to get a working backup during this time period. If I can, Webring may be back online by the end of the year, in some form at least.
Brandon
How about reopening it in style? I can partner up with you and we can bring it back with a completely new design, better front management (I developed a CMS I never used, so we put it to use), and loads more. Send me a PM if you're interested and we can talk about it over MSN, or other form of communication.
Best Regards.
RCPalace - I sent you a PM. Assuming we do re-open I would love to take on more staff members. It's gotten so big that it's hard for one person to run it alone. The main thing is I'm looking for people who want to share my vision of running the best free MyBB forum host. From the start I've never wanted to show ads and that's the most important thing, whoever joins me has to be in it not for profit but just to do something good.
Brandon