Officially Dead

[Peo]

My point is that many hosts like you and deeplist would likely not have joined if you would not have been allowed to post ads for your host. Let's say 10 % of those who join to post ads end up later participating in other forum discussions. It's like when a grocery store has a sale on some item to lure customers in to buy other things. Most will not buy other things, but some of them will. That's the basic idea. As an incentive for web hosts to join.

 

[deeplist]

But what's the point in having those new members, if all they're going to do is copy and paste ads once a week? I'm not 100% sure that having people who simply post ads every week and do nothing else really add anything to the forum. What exactly are they contributing to the forum?

^ Yes... exactly this.

My point is that many hosts like you and deeplist would likely not have joined if you would not have been allowed to post ads for your host.

Not really true... if you go back through my very first threads/posts, they weren't ads. They were mainly questions, comments and discussions... The ads came later, and even then, I didn't post very many. When I did some heavy advertising, I also participated in the other threads going on at the time... it was never just ads.

 

[Peo]

That may be the case for you, but not others.

I think it's reasonable to assume that many hosts join to promote their business, no?

 

[deeplist]

Right now? Yes... but that's not how it used to be. There used to be a very good mix of hosts AND clients on the site. The threads posted were a good mix of ads, questions, tech and general discussions. It was sort of a mini-WHT, but with a more personal atmosphere. Now it's just ads and that personal connection is gone. We need to figure out how to direct the site, or where we want it to go, and then create some policies/restrictions to align with that because it's apparent that what's going on right now isn't working.

 

[wswd]

My point is that many hosts like you and deeplist would likely not have joined if you would not have been allowed to post ads for your host.

That's not true at all. Acquired 2 free hosts from someone who was a member here. I never even knew the forum existed. So came here to discuss free hosting. Out of my 1400 posts, I doubt even 30 of them are ads. Heck, I've been over at WHT for almost 10 years and have never posted a single ad. Not one.

My point above was that why would any paid host come here, other than to post ads? They aren't going to join the discussion. They aren't going to do anything here except spam their companies. Why would they participate, when they don't offer free hosting? So why have them here? What are they adding to the forum?

That's the difference with Deeplist and me. Yes, we run paid hosts as well, but that isn't why I'm here. I'm here on behalf of the free hosts I run.

 

[Sitebee]

Could I suggest a revamp on the main website, the content is stagnant. It`s hardly changed since 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20090803110046/http://www.freewebspace.net/

I think if the main website was updated frequently enough with lot`s of good readable content, blogs, news, etc! The traffic would increase and forum interactions would increase.

 

[Peo]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm in the process of creating a new main site based on Wordpress, but it will take a while until it's ready to go live. Currently it's based on Joomla.

My point above was that why would any paid host come here, other than to post ads? They aren't going to join the discussion. They aren't going to do anything here except spam their companies. Why would they participate, when they don't offer free hosting? So why have them here? What are they adding to the forum?

That's the difference with Deeplist and me. Yes, we run paid hosts as well, but that isn't why I'm here. I'm here on behalf of the free hosts I run.

That's a good reason why some paid hosts would not participate here - the site is mainly focused on free. Going forward though - should we continue to focus mainly on free hosting despite the fact that free hosting is declining? Then we also have to accept that it's unlikely that the forum will grow and get very active again.

 

[Richard]

I've been saying this for a long time, but its not only the fall of free hosting, but the fall of forums.

People are used to having mass amounts of information thrown at them directly, quickly, easily. Forums do not provide that when it comes to information about offers, reviews, etc.
People need information in an easy to read format, in a single place.

The market for hosting is shifting away from personal users - and more to Business, SaaS etc is becoming very popular in the business marketplace, something hardly any hosting companies around these parts have monopolized on yet (And FWS does not have a defined forum to talk about it...?). Yes, FWS needs a rebrand. Yes, FWS need a lick of paint. But more importantly, if FWS wants to come out the other side, it needs to evolve. Its needs to become the self service website consumers / business want (need) & the active forum / social area hosts and ex-hosts want!

In my eyes - FWS needs expand away from the traditional forum, It needs an integrated website - with host information, offers, reviews, uptime, the works. It needs to provide the users with what they want to see when researching a host - it needs to separate the hosting talk & questions into two different but integrated system & give hosts a REASON to post on the forum.. Be that a namepros/ebay style points & reputation system - with rewards such as promoting their offers, or trading points for bold offers, etc.

The above all needs time, money & buy in. But from the discussions on the other thread, it does not appear as if anyone wants to invest the time or money into FWS to make it great. the problem with the internet these days is that there can't be any half-assed attempts. You are either the market leader, or 100* better than the market leader - there is no in the middle.

I guess the next 6 months will show how serious you are about this website Peo myself and many others have offered our services, its time for you to make a decision.

 

[Peo]

The market for hosting is shifting away from personal users - and more to Business, SaaS etc is becoming very popular in the business marketplace, something hardly any hosting companies around these parts have monopolized on yet (And FWS does not have a defined forum to talk about it...?).

That's a good suggestion. Maybe this can be discussed within the Dedicated hosting section of the forum though? Or maybe we need a new name for that section. Or just mention SaaS in that section description.

In my eyes - FWS needs expand away from the traditional forum, It needs an integrated website - with host information, offers, reviews, uptime, the works. It needs to provide the users with what they want to see when researching a host - it needs to separate the hosting talk & questions into two different but integrated system & give hosts a REASON to post on the forum.. Be that a namepros/ebay style points & reputation system - with rewards such as promoting their offers, or trading points for bold offers, etc.

The above all needs time, money & buy in. But from the discussions on the other thread, it does not appear as if anyone wants to invest the time or money into FWS to make it great. the problem with the internet these days is that there can't be any half-assed attempts. You are either the market leader, or 100* better than the market leader - there is no in the middle.

I guess the next 6 months will show how serious you are about this website Peo myself and many others have offered our services, its time for you to make a decision.

We have always been a host directory + forum and this will continue when the new version of the host directory is launched.

I don't think it's about being the #1 web hosting site with everything you mentioned on it. But I do agree that we need to be market leader within a niche. We need to find our own niche within hosting sites when free hosting is declining. That's the tricky part.

Anyone who wish to be part of a team to develop, beta test and/or give feedback on the new hosting directory or any new features/plugins etc for the forum, let me know. Thanks.

 

[wswd]

The market for hosting is shifting away from personal users - and more to Business ...

It goes back and forth. This is how the market started. When I got into hosting almost 19 years ago, it was pretty much nothing but businesses. In fact, that's all we did until a few years ago...huge-scale networking and hosting setups for businesses. There was no Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, etc. Then those came along and all of the sudden, people were hosting websites.

Now we are in the part of the cycle where free hosting/personal hosting has largely become irrelevant. Personal hosting will come back.

 

[deeplist]

Personal hosting will come back.

I severely doubt it. ^

You have to remember back in the day the "home internet user" was a rare commodity. (Think usenet, IRC, the early days of AOL and the like.) The Internet was an entirely different animal all together because the only people that had access to the internet were business professionals, wealthy people, and students at school. That's it. In the late 90s and early 2000s, access to the Internet was readily available, but people still didn't have access like they do now. Mobile browsing was still in its infancy as well as the concept of WiFi. Fast forward 10 years. Now every Tom, D!ck, and Harry has a smartphone or tablet with wireless Internet access at their fingertips no matter where they're at. You're probably wondering what that has to do with anything... well, it has a lot to do with it because the days of learning code and building your own sites are gone and will never be back. People are just too stupid. I've often wondered if people online were progressively getting more dumb as time goes on, but I've realized that the smart people are still out there, but they're drown out by the overwhelming majority of stupid people online now who simply did not have readily available access to the Internet previously.

I've noticed this in other arenas as well, like eBay for instance. I've been buying and selling on eBay for 12 years now. People used to be so much more patient, courteous, understanding of the processes and how eBay works. It wasn't uncommon for a transaction to take 3 weeks while money orders and checks were mailed, and we waited for banks to clear funds, etc... and that was all okay. Now, eBay is filled with idiots on their smartphones buying stuff. They're rude, impatient, and just downright dumb. Correspondence are unprofessional and it's only getting worse. ex/ Somebody purchased an item and the VERY NEXT DAY opens a case with eBay for "item not received" and the reason he put in the comments box, "Not cool bro. lol Where's my item at?" ... ARE YOU F^CKING KIDDING ME?!?!

PEOPLE ARE DUMB!! And businesses understand this and they're developing platforms and applications to cater to the idiots because that's just how it is now, and that's the only way to make money. The days of giving people an account on your server, sending over their FTP username and password and turning them loose are over. It'll never be back. Technology costs are so cheap now compared to what they were 20, 15 and even 10 years ago. Even WYSIWYG editors and point-click website development applications will die off and disappear. Looking at the general overview, people have no desire to run personal sites anymore and I HIGHLY doubt the market for that segment of the user base will ever be large enough again to justify any significant developments contrary to the direction that things have been headed in the last 8-ish years.

 

[wswd]

I wouldn't be so sure. It's not so much that people have no desire to run personal sites, rather they don't need to. It's sites like Facebook and such that have killed free hosting, but what happens when people want to host more, and customize more than Facebook will allow? How about people who want to use their own domain name so their stuff is easy to find? Can't use Facebook for that.

I don't think free hosting is ever going to be what it once was, but the pendulum will sway back again at some point, when people get tired of Facebook, etc. Look at businesses, for example. There was a time when all you would see on TV were facebook.com/businessnamehere addresses on commercials. Don't see that anymore. Why? Businesses realize they need actual websites...more than Facebook allows. I can't tell you the last time I've seen a commercial with a Facebook URL. Eventually that's going to happen in the personal market as well...just nowhere near the extent it did back in the day when free hosting was at its prime.