I've not logged in for some time, as I've had so much going on, but was surprised that we haven't had a single post since I last checked the site. Seems the forums are finally dead.

Do I therefore contemplate shutting down the server? I've been thinking about it because the big increase in the cost of living (fuel, energy bills, water, food) means I'm having to consider all ourgoing money at the moment. I don't get any help with server costs. Haven't had a dontion in years. Therefore closing it down might be something I need to do to save money.

Failing that, would anyone still be interested in these forums if I were to regenerate the site and try to put new life through content back into the site?

I've said for a while I wanted to rework the site to make it more emulation focused. Especially with the massive surge in handheld and cheap Android emulation TV boxes we have been seeing recently.

Not sure. Will be considering options until the summer.

Anyway, hope everyone is ok and enjoying the very hot weather.
[Reply]

Very hot weather indeed.

I check out the forum every day, but I don't post mainly because I don't get any response. I got so much stuff lately again like the Odin Pro, Switch OLED, Pico Pantera mini PC, installed RetroPie on my Raspberry with 1TB SD card full of games...

So what would be the purpose on keeping the site running? Reworking it makes no sense either in my opinion, as it's a lot of work and there are sites and forums existing for basically everything.

I'm checking also Retro Video Gamer forum, the one from our member Zapiy, but it's almost the same like here, I log in after one week and there has been one single new post.

I'm hanging most of the time around in the LaunchBox forums because I'm currently still very active with it, and there you also find everything emulation related.

So if you ask me
[Reply]

The last two years have been very challenging since the COVID pandemic reared it's ugly head. This of course has had a knock on effect in many ways, the cost of living being hit hard almost exponentially. - Fuel hitting over £2.00 a Litre, 20+% on food, 30+% on Gas, electric etc & no pay increases to cover.

I do recall you asking for donations some time ago H. What ever happened about it?

My back is fux0rd some more now. Couldn't walk properly for three weeks & didn't even dare to drive the whole time, now four weeks ago. Just did my first week back in work & now referred for an MRI with some deep Sports physio.

Deb & I are good though. - 25 years together on October 19th this year; I get treated to my 60th year of residing on this rock; Deb has bought me the T-Shirt already!

NBlueT.jpg
[Reply]

25 years is great. We have our 14th this year. So many give up the days after only a few years with some lame excuses.

Back problems are a nightmare. I have had a bad back for years now. Getting older for us all. Pit mine out lay year at at Christmas. Went on a diet in thr new year and so far lost 2 stone and that's really helped with my back though and given me more energy.

Regarding donations. I got a few but they only covered 1 month's hosting costs so useful but not long term. I might look at cheaper cloud hosting just to keep the forums running, and close the rest down. Depends how much time I have over the summer.
[Reply]

If you need some breathing space, I can make a donation to help....
[Reply]

Any donations would be very welcome to help out.

I might actually have found a cheaper hosting solution to move the site over to, to save hosting hosts. Running a VM droplet server. We have been testing one to move Amibay to and it is so far performing well. For Amibay we are ditching vBulletin and moving to Xenforo. Something I originally tried to get them to do but they wanted to stick with vBulletin, which ended in disaster. We won't know how well the VM actually performs until its turned over to the menbers and we see real traffic and the impact it has to performance. If it's good I will definitely be considering one to half my monthly costs. I might also consider moving over to Xenforo too if I then do press on with my ongoing rejuvenation plans for these forums. We will see.
[Reply]