iRev Network Status (original) (raw)

This is just a filler until I can talk to people individually over the next few days and weeks.

Free image hosting is closing. Its closing down because that services uses two thirds of iRev's resources: Bandwidth, hard disk usage, sanity. I started the free image hosting service for friends of iRev to host their webcam shots and forum signatures. Battle Forum, ClanBOB, and other iRev forum users were welcome. It was expected it would be abused and grow, and I secretly hoped that people would see how great the server was and want to go ahead and put down the $5/month for a real website. Kinda like, "first one is always free" and then get people hooked on being able to have websites.

Sure, that failed, and I kinda knew it wouldn't ever work, but I also didn't expect it would be such a drain of resources. It has to go, and it has to go soon. Sorry to all my friends in the Forums that enjoy its simplicity, but really, there's many other places out there that can provide the same free service, too.

Now, about the rest of the iRev pay service: There's about 200 users, of which 25 pay for service. The others include friends whom I don't want them to pay, people who once paid, but I didn't keep up on, people who I didn't support completely and had to refund, and even more reasons and failures. Regardless, the co-location fees added up and too little money came in to keep iRev self-sufficient.

After much depressing soul searching, it became clear that what was once a fun hobby and joy became more stress and time than I can invest, and Sarah and I could really use the money for growing our house and family. Gizmo and I are investing into a new smaller tighter hobby server for us and a couple of iRev's core users. iRev.net itself will close up shop end of October. Most people will move onto other web and email hosting providers, some won't bother with their websites anymore, and those remaining few friends who enjoy hacking and playing computers will join us on the new server.

I wish I had the energy and creativity to figure out a way to make this work for everyone and keep my beloved wife sane, but I have to keep grounded and realize that my hobby needs to be put on the back burner for a while. I also have to figure out how to pay off the last four months of iRev colocation bills, $1,200.

iRev will close its services to most users on October 31st. Case by case basis I'll be able to help some users and friends out with their domain names, websites, and emails and help migrate people's stuff to new internet service providers.

Thanks for your understanding and support.