I hear ya, and I know the website has been ridiculously slow for a while now. Thank you to everyone for sticking around and your willingness to deal with this temporary, albeit lengthy, transition phase to something better.
I'm writing today to provide you with an update on things. After talking with a few experts and scheduling them to help me, I've developed a plan of action. We are currently getting our ducks in a row and hope to act on that plan within the next couple of weeks. I was hoping we could get something done sooner, but I'd also rather focus on quality versus speed. Normally, I try to get things done as quickly as possible, but then have to deal with some aftermath to recover from the hastiness. This current situation is basically a more severe version of that.
Still, the forums have grown FAR and away more than I could have ever imagined they would. This is essentially just growing pains, and we are growing faster than ever (despite the current slowness). Just looking at the Advertise page, you can see how sharply we are growing, and 2023 has already proven to be an even steeper slope than previous years.
Some of you might remember the early days, when I never expected this website to be more than a hundred or two members. Once we got into the thousands, the forum software just couldn't handle it. So, we had to make some big changes to accommodate the growth. This time, the changes we are making are different, and more intimidating than before, especially with all the traffic and registered members we now have. It's not just about software, it's about hardware, policies, features, and other aspects, too.
Hang on, it WILL get better. But not until a bunch of money changes hands. I'm seriously considering some kind of fundraiser, at the request of many of our regular members (more of you have come out of the woodwork to suggest this than ever before). I haven't really done anything like that since I had a partner in this venture (which didn't work out too well for other reasons, as many of you might remember). I'm still not sure I want to do a fundraiser, but I'm seriously considering it.
Some folks have reached out to ask if I've considered using some sort of cloud-hosted SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform -- I've looked at those, but they concern me greatly, much in the same way that I dislike Facebook Groups. We would be at their mercy in pretty much everything we do, plus the privacy issues make it no-go for me -- I'm a huge advocate for protecting your/our privacy, so I really don't want some big corporation taking advantage of you and selling your personal information (like POB used to do and Facebook still does). I will NEVER sell or give away your personal information.
Thanks again for everyone who has ever donated, subscribed or supported us in any way. Several folks have recently signed up for BeerLeggers Club or sent one-time donations. Let me just say that every penny counts and goes right back into keeping this website online, not into my pocket. My time is still 100% volunteer at this point.
