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Comments
Cheeky!
Thing is, we benefit from it and ColoCrossing benefits from it. These things go hand-in-hand. If the forum is more popular/gets more visitors, it brings in more cash. Simple as that.
That would probably mean having to increase the $7 limit as well, am I right?
I think I explained above how it generally works. I realize we're stepping on some toes here, doing the "unthinkable". Ever since @Chief took over, though, both LET and LEB have become commercial properties. The fact that people still seem to use this as an "argument" against certain changes surprises me, actually.
@mpkossen That doesn't make the blight that Colocrossing has brought to this community any less, that is for sure. I love how it has become all about Colocrossing and their money instead of about VPS and the hobby of low end. One thing the people and staff of this community have accomplished is ruining the whole identity of this site and what it was actually meant to be about. The fact you can brush it off like it is nothing is even more abhorrent, but we already know you don't really give a crap about it anyways. Just sad that you have fallen into the $ > content group on this site, and to think people were actually convinced you gave a crap. To those people, you owe an apology for sure, but Colocrossing has never apologized for their behavior in the past, so I won't keep my fingers crossed.
Just horribly sad that you guys feel this is the way to go about things. If you want to have a site about shared hosting, open a new site and forum, combining it here just shows how far down this site has gone since Colocrossing took over and now they have to cater to the shittiest part of this industry just to pull in more views. sigh
Cheers!
You seem to be missing the point. This is not about ColoCrossing and this is not about me. I'm sure if it were about either of us the outcome could have been different. The thing is: LEB and LET have been monetized long ago, before ColoCrossing even owned it. The fact that we're taking it further is something else, but it's ColoCrossing's choice to make in the end. Not mine, not yours, but theirs.
I do not owe anybody an apology. I'm working hard on both of the sites and some of my staff are doing so as well. The fact that you may (or do) not like the course of events doesn't require us to make an apology to anyone. You, and anybody else for that matter, are free to stay or leave. We're not forcing you do to anything; you're free to make your own choice here. Making this personal, though, it wrong and immature.
Accept the fact that things change and that business has been a major part of these sites ever since LowEndAdmin left it to @Chief (which was a wrong decision to start with, but that's for another day). Don't make it personal towards any of us, please. If you want to blame someone, blame @Chief.
So many things have changed + changing on LET in the past few yrs...
I hope we wont see any one selling shared host on Kloxo/zpanel/ any other free CP...
@mpkossen can you add this stuff (No free CP/ similar) + to protect innocent consumers, some form of Ownership verification.
What I mean to say is:
cPanel is not trial/ Atleast 3 month adv. cPanel subscription. Plus those script subscription which is being offered like app install, SEO, Web Design. So that when the user sign in he/she keeps getting those addons...
Is it possible to make a separate category + deals not visible in LET front page, so it's not like that the front page is full with such offer. (Or am I over expecting?)
Well, for one thing it's sure. That's not community dedicated to "low end virtual private servers, where you only need to pay a few dollars a month to get full root access" anymore, but just another random sales hosting forum.
Who are "we" here? You, and..?
Then it's maybe a time to start to pay moderators? As you made it obvious that we don't serve to community anymore but to business.
If this makes your sleep easier...
@MikeIn: I'll be taking some of your suggestions, and others, and incorporate them into the Rules and Guidelines over the next few days.
We could have Shared and Reseller offers not displaying on the main timeline (maybe for the time being). I'll discuss that.
I appreciate everbody's feedback and look forward to working with everyone on improving LET (and LEB)!
It's a very tough position, broer. I wouldn't blame you a bit, as I know how hard it is to balance between what the owner wants, what hobbyist community needs, and what various kinds of provider's interest
Do whatever you think is best. In this case the decision you are making, right or wrong it may be, is the right decision for this particular time.
Not sure what you mean here, but I mean that if you want more views, make the $7 limit higher instead of having the crappy shared offers.
We can easily choose not to spend more than $7, but you literally have to read the entire post for before you can tell that it is shared and not a VPS.
I made a bookmarklet to hide shared/reseller posts : http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/38539/bookmarklet-to-hide-shared-hosting-posts#latest
Which would not be a bad thing, I mean there is a big difference from providing a basic unmanaged VPS to a good shared/reseller hosting service.
However that said there is also a big difference between someone selling space on their hostgator reseller and someone who has dedicated hardware (not VPS).
It's a no win, the cheap deals being offered by VPS providers here are in the main just using one of their own VPS with cPanel. Nothing wrong with that but also a big difference between a predominantly VPS focussed service and someone who knows how to manage and maintain a solid cPanel service.
I have plenty uses for a decent cPanel reseller albeit I would never touch any of the offers seen on here so far.
Almost makes me want to get Delimiter to offer shared hosting
It could work out all right, as long the staff continue to be proactive about potential problems as they come up. If once the word gets out and there's a flood of shared hosting offers (in addition to the usual cycle of vps offers) drowning out other discussions on the front page, @MikeIn's suggestion #2 might be a good one to consider.
However, in doing that, there may be complaints about certain types of services getting displayed on the front page while others aren't. Would it help any to have ad threads not displayed on the front page and ask people to check the different offer categories? If LET is going to expand to include any hosting-related rather than just LEB services, it's confusing to have vps/dedi and the odd "other" (non-vps) type of offers like email hosting, VPN, etc. showing but not shared/reseller.
Guess the base question is, should/would LET direction still be on LEBs (<$7/month), or give equal weight to other hosting offers? i.e. "LEB + everything else", or "LEB + shared + other".
The "LEB + everything else" approach gives the site focus and character, which I like and would probably miss a bit if things were to change. Still, I'll wait and see what happens before forming a full opinion.
Actually, YOU missed the point here, it is about YOU and how easily YOU tend to brush this off as OK and seem to have no direct opinion or intention to fight against it and instead listen to your 'Colocorssing' overlords. For that, you do owe us an apology as it seems you have just given up on doing whats right and have resorted to doing what ever you are told, like a slave. As a community we have to rely on our administrators and moderators to make good decisions, but when it comes down to those people not even using their brain and mindlessly following someone (or some company) that obviously doesn't have the best interests of this community at heart, you become the one contributing to the overall problem and how things are.
In fact, what I said was:
Just because you don't like it and don't have a recourse here doesn't mean you should just blame it on Colocrossing. Step up and write your honest feelings here about how you want it, instead of pointing the finger at them, and maybe with some support from the 'community' things can be pointed back in the right direction. You continue to mindlessly follow everything Colocrossing tells you and fail to include your own true feelings in your posts, you are not only hurting your self but this community and will then lead to mutually assured destruction of what is left of this community.
Also, just because you can't stand up for your self doesn't give you cause or reason to call me immature. I have every right to call you out as I do anyone else here on their bullshit.
Cheers!
As being someone who has sold shared/reseller hosting since 2008... I would say 100% the reseller price needs to increase. Those dirt cheap reseller plans are not reliable in my "expert you-can-say" opinion. I mean just to be profitable on a decent reseller server is going to mean major overselling at that price point. When it doesn't pay the bills or the host gets overwhelmed/Dead Pooled it leads to hundreds of customers and their hundred customers out of their data.
I think it's interesting that the blame is being placed on @Chief, presumably the person who ran the site before ColoCrossing (I don't know for sure as I wasn't around back then). It's basically being implied that since he had taken the first step to set the precedent, anyone who comes after has to follow the monetized model too-- as if it's set in stone and cannot be changed. Yet other (arguably more) fundamental parts of LET/LEB can be changed, as evidenced by the introduction of shared/reseller hosting ads despite such a mixed reception.
To be fair also, it's the old names that are not liking the change, so that probably speaks volumes :P
Frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about the change. I just don't like the whole "Don't blame me or CC, blame the guy who came before us for making money first!" when they're the ones with the power now to nix the monetization aspect of this community if they so choose.
:P
Honestly, I think we are making a bigger deal out of this than it is. Allowing Shared/Reseller hosting plans to be posted will help LET get more traffic and potentially more users that are going to contribute to the community, and it will give people who are looking for low end shared/reseller services a place to look. After all, we do keep seeing all these shared hosting request threads popping up all the time.
On the other hand, I totally understand the point some have tried to bring up. Yes, anyone can start a shared hosting company easily but nowdays same can be said for a VPS company. With a lot of providers starting to offer VPS Reseller hosting, anyone an sign up for a cheap plan and start a "company".
Now I do agree that the pricing for reseller hosting is too low, its hard to find providers that can offer good reseller hosting plans for $4 or under. Increasing that to match the $7 for VPSes might be a good idea.
The Chief by William Holman.
This is exactly what it is though, and if you are going to pay handsomely for this forum which CC did then of course they and any other who would have bought it would have done the same thing.
All the people that shout and moan about monetization would have done the same thing. This site was crying out to be a cash cow like any other popular site. The fakery portrayed by all the "I would not have done this if I owned it" are full of shit.
Everyone needs to stop living in the past, LET/LEB is what it is, a business. A good few people need to let it go or simply move on and away instead of dragging all the same boring shit up week after week.
Just like my friend Mr. Spock said, "Live long and prosper."
For the record, I don't care if they're making money. What I care about is the fact that, rather than straight up admitting that's what they're doing, the blame is being shifted to the past owner of the site as if he's the true villain everyone should be hating on, whereas they're just continuing the tradition like helpless sheep as if there's absolutely no other option available to them.
I don't see @jbiloh or @mpkossen denying it's not about business or indeed not "straight up admitting" that this site is about money as much as anything. Aside from anything they are right, it was essentially @chief who was to blame although the jury is out on whether he was in collusion with CC from the start knowing that LEA would never give CC or anyone the site who was intent on monetizing it.
LEA passed the site to Chief for no payment and in good faith to continue what was already there, he immediately moved to monetize it for sale and told regular lies about it all, he was a complete arsehole at the best of times. When he sold it he cut and run never to be seen again. Says it all in terms of his commitment or interest in the site.
And aside from anything else, why should you care about it at all? Does it affect your ability to post or participate? No. Are you in some way invested other than being a member like the rest of us? No.
Don't forget that CC was a pussy and took a couple of months to disclose that they were running the show.
During that time, which we don't know exactly how much it was, chief could be acting just as a CC proxy.
Did you even read @mpkossen's replies to this thread? Like you said, I am not invested in any way in this whole situation, but even as an observer I can tell he's deflecting the responsibility that CC holds in how the site is being run and consequently the changes being made. Not only that, he even flat out states: "If you want to blame someone, blame @Chief." Someone who is long gone and has nothing to do with how the site operates now, as if the fact that he started off a cycle of money making means they're helpless to do anything except keep the cycle going. Just because he started it doesn't mean it always has to be that way, and since they've opted to keep monetizing the site the "well we didn't start it and we can't help the way it is now" argument is flimsy at best.
Let me ask you this: why do you care enough about my opinion to reply to me? Your answer to this question is likely my answer to yours.
No, don't try and put me in the same phase of thinking you are in, I only care enough to reply because you are stirring the discussion towards drama than fact.
Whether you like it or not this site was going commercial once Chief got his hands on it. The ad revenue was such that a high $xx,xxx figure meant only certain people/organizations would get their hands on it and the only reason people would pay it would be to make money.
If it had not been CC it would have been another provider who may have taken it further, I could have seen charging for a listing on LEB for a start. It is all well and good taking it out on CC whilst we all know how shady they are however this is the way it was going to go no matter who chief sold it to.
Nobody was going to buy this site and not do what CC is doing, if you believe that well that's up to you.
@W1V_Lee said:
...right.
I don't think we're going to go anywhere except in circles because you're consistently missing the point I've been making in my comments. If you can't see that I have nothing against monetization regardless of who does it, and that what I'm iffy with is placing the blame on the predecessor when they're the ones who are perpetuating the cycle and should just own up to it if they have no plans to change it, then there's really nothing else I can say.
If you want to believe I'm just trying to stir up drama, that's also up to you.
Will ColoCrossing let me buy LET/B for $7?
Hello everyone, it's time for another story time with Francisco. This time it won't be about crazy spammer datacenters in Portland, though.
I'm going to ring in on this all since I was involved in all of this more so than even CC was.
LEA never sold the site. He wanted to pass down the site to me but since I was totally against a host owning it (even myself), I worked with him to find someone to help run it. I mean, @Maounique would crap enough bricks to rebuild post-war London if it was legit true that I operated the place.
Originally, LEA had talked to me in late November/early December saying he was looking to part ways with the site because it was a drain on him and even with the little money he made on ads, it wasn't worth his time. It went from being an interesting hobby to being a job.
Instead, the site was given to Joel as well as Kujoe to operate. KuJoe took his roll and sacrificed SecureDragon from posting on the site (out of the sake of anyone thinking he was giving his own brand preference in postings). I brought their names up while talking to LEA since KuJoe was always a standup guy on LEB with tracking down jackasses and was very supportive & helpful in the old forums. Joel was very interested in VPS', hosting, & all that and since he had his head on straight he was a decent pick.
Now, in either late December or early January, CC had contacted LEA (again?) about selling the site. He wasn't interested in selling it, nor it being operated by a host. In comes the DDOS. Site starts to transfer hands and gets wacked a few times. Nothing huge, about ~1gbit/sec in DDOS but Linode wanted none of it.
At this point Joel & Joe were in control of the site and were looking for DDOS protected options. Putting it with BuyVM was an option but they wanted to try to keep it LE* provider neutral as it had been for the past 1 1/2 years. Biloh tries to swoop in at this point promising all the ddos protection the sites could ever have in their Chicago location. The server was promised to be an E3 w/ a full blown RAID, 4 x 1gbit ports bonded (a lie, this was never setup), and full ACL's that I had come up with (also a lie, the ACL's were never in place). The server itself was given free of charge for a few months to feel it out (this is important later on).
How do I know those things were never in place? I was asked to migrate the sites from Linode to this box. I was provided full root to setup the OVZ containers for the projects (one CT per site for the sake of keeping things clean/organized). When I connected in, I pulled ifconfig -a and saw only 2 NIC's on an X9SCL/X9SCM motherboard. Only 1 port was wired up. On top of this, a quick UDP.PL test showed that UDP still came in without issue.
Anyway. The site operated there fine with a handful of downtimes due to DDOS. I'm not sure if they ever got around to applying ACL's or if the floods stopped, all I know is the site did go down multiple times and later got cloudflare to try to ride things out.
Remember where I bolded that part above? I figure by the time things were already shuffled in, that discussions to move the site were already taking place. Remember after a month or two there was suddenly a banner on the front of the site saying hosted by ColoCrossing? Well, I figure right at that moment is when the site was cut over.
There's an unconfirmed rumor (like 99% of the ones that go around this community) that the reason Joel stayed on was to make sure the site didn't go tits up. He was to help grow profits (the sudden slapping of ads all over LET), keep the sites in check (picked up Liam), and things like that.
The rumor goes on to say that Joel was never paid out in full for the sites because there's a dispute over if he really fulfilled the entire contract.
SySAdmin confirmed on eithere here or WHT that they had owned the site for the better part of a year at the time of the hacking, putting things right in line with what I figure went on.
The people looking to tinker, write guides, & are all around truely interested in technology, hosting, etc, still exist. Many of them moved entirely to vpsboard or now have dual citizenship. I don't even think there's a rivalry between the sites and hasn't been since the great divide. VPSB aims for a completely different user base and while it has offer threads and such, that's a secondary thing to the usually great content & people there.
LE has their share of good content creators but the current admins should really talk to @Spirit and get an opinion of how LEB was before the great divide. There used to be real discussions about providers, digging up obvious scams, etc. It used to be a really really strong community of people that watched out for each other. Now? The contents are made up of hate on house brands and people making fun of poorly researched posting.
EDIT (Tacking this on)
There was none of this crap where a provider that obviously can't fill orders or keep node online and **countless* comments about people being down for months on end, tickets not getting answered, etc, still getting posted. Any time a provider couldn't handle themselves LEA put them on cooldown to get their shit together and rolling again.
I'll just straight up say it. How many times has BlueVM been put up on LEB when every single time that happens, there's 50+ comments about how they don't handle tickets, give BS/copy-pastes "we are turning over a new leaf", nodes down/dead for very very long periods of time, etc, yet they're still getting posted and linked to the single positive review back in 2012?
To me it just feels like there's no pride of work or the site. It's just "we need to fill nodes". The fact the site had no more than a small handful of cybermonday/thanksgiving offers speaks volumes of companies opinions of the site.
Its been going on for far too long and I think it's done.
Francisco