Hamforum.com down for GOOD? :(

[KC9JIQ]

To all the members of HamForum the site is down and no idea if it will ever be back, a new site at http://www.hamradiotalk.com (http://www.hamradiotalk.com/) has been formed by KB1JCY, one of the HamForum Mods, to take it's place.

Again the site is http://www.hamradiotalk.com (http://www.hamradiotalk.com/)

What happened to Hamforum? There were some really good hams at hamforum as Pat and others.

Anyone heard from WZ5BC? Kinda strange a popular forum just goes QRT...:confused:

[n8yx]

What happened to Hamforum? Kinda strange a popular forum just goes QRT...:confused:

Someone didn't pay the hosting bill or the domain registrar's fee?

[KD0BIK]

HamForum was a great forum. It was the first forum site I discovered when I was starting out. I joined the site in June or July of 2007. The site was like a yo-yo (up and down). It would go down for 24-48 hours and then be back up for a while.

When the site went down for a week or two I sent WZ5BC "Big Country" emails (which bounced because his other site also was down) and also actually wrote a letter and sent it USPS. Didn't hear anything from him.

The site came back up for a few weeks and then it flatlined and has been DOA ever since.

Unfortunately I've seen this sort of thing happen with other types of forums. People create them, they attract members and then the owner loses interest and the members are the losers.

Jerry

[KB1JCY]

My best guess is that WZ5BC is bogged down with getting a life and HamForum has taken a distant back seat to more important priorities like starting a career and buying a house.

HamForum was hosted by WZ5BC's brother. His brother's server had a hardware meltdown last September. The site went back up for a few weeks then the server crashed again. I tried to get in touch with WZ5BC a few times during the outage. He was getting settled into a new job after graduating college and I figured he was flat out busy. Time passed and I offered to host HamForum on my servers in addition to providing any support. Darren did take interest but told me that he was unable to move HamForum because the server was down and he did not have a back up of the database.

I had a serious moral debate with myself regarding starting Ham Radio Talk. I felt that I didn't want to be disrespectful to WZ5BC by competing with HamForum. I tried really hard to get the message out to him that I was here to support him and HamForum. But after weeks of slogging through the constant trolling on QRZ, I had to take matters into my own hands. Also the Bloggy-Poo was getting at least two messages a day inquiring about the status of HamForum. I did not have many answers at the time. Eventually I caved in and created Ham Radio Talk because a community was without their home.

As long as the MySQL tables are locked on a downed server at Nebulabs, HamForum will be QRT until the server is back on the air. If Darren or one of his friends is reading this, please reply. I would gladly work out an arrangement where Ham Radio Talk and HamForum can combine resources to be a bigger, better forum for the amateur radio community.

Thankfully Ham Radio Talk is a team effort and isn't completely reliant on my efforts. I have implemented a disaster recovery plan and a succession plan in the event that I get hit by a bus (or decide to pop another wheelie on a mountain bike again) the forum will carry on without me.

[VE7DCW]

I was a member of Hamforum and posted a few times there...I was never sure why it it had simply vanished.This actually explains a lot :confused:

73