The end of FreewareBB

[Joe Hone]

http://www.freewarebb.com/

Perhaps the site wasn't of great interest to DC members but I often found useful little programs browsing through the categories or reading recent reviews. Marko seemed to be carrying the load alone and his announcement is a bit of a downer - you can sense his fatigue in the words he writes. Honorable of him to refund the $1 anyone spent for a "verified membership" for one year. All the best to him in his next endeavor.

[Renegade]

Ouch. That's painful. I kind of understand where he's coming from though. I've shut down sites before, and will be shutting down a couple more. It's never fun, and especially when it's a larger ongoing effort, heartbreaking.

[mouser]

It's always a loss when an independent site like that dissapears.

[40hz]

Out of curiosity, where does that news come from?

If you go to their site, there isn't any mention of them shutting down. Nada. Zip.

A google search doesn't flag anything about it - except here.

[attachthumb=#]

I asked my GF to register right now and she was able to do so without a problem.

There was a post from alt.comp.freeware that mentioned it (by 1 author with 1 post) - but I don't put too much faith in that source.

So...what's the story?

[rgdot]

The message was there when I checked earlier (close to OP's post) but now the site seems alive and normal 

[Renegade]

That's odd. I checked the page before, saw the note, and it was clear that it was shut down.

Maybe he had a change of heart or was just having a bad day.

[40hz]

He did post something to that effect back in 2010. Link here.

Maybe somebody saw it and didn't notice the date?

[40hz]

That's odd. I checked the page before, saw the note, and it was clear that it was shut down.

Maybe he had a change of heart or was just having a bad day.

Weird.

So yeah. Maybe he was having a bad day...or something glitched? Hard to believe it was a glitch however since he's running on Invision PB which is about as bulletproof as they come.

Maybe he got his homepage vandalized?

[Renegade]

He did post something to that effect back in 2010. Link here.

Maybe somebody saw it and didn't notice the date?

Nope. It wasn't that. It was clearly the home page and a different letter entirely.

[PhilB66]

http://www.facebook.com/pages/FreewareBB/164092860308347

[Joe Hone]

Yup, his post on the website said it was closing and to refer to his facebook page for sporadic freeware news for the future. But he also had a line that said if the reader was interested in purchasing FreewareBB to please contact him. Perhaps there was interest, which would explain the site going back up so quickly - it is tough to keep an established user base when a site disappears, even for just a short while. I think we've all experienced that at one point or another.

[mahesh2k]

Sad to see when sites like this unable to survive because of fundings.

[40hz]

Yay! Looks like the site is now officially back!

Just received this in my mailbox:

40hz,

It would appear that FreewareBB just won't be allowed to close, this time thanks to Christopher from http://www.lo4d.com who has came to the rescue and offered FreewareBB a home.    We have taken Christopher up on his offer and will hopefully see improvements in visitor numbers over the coming months ... we will also be performing a lot of updates on our listings very shortly as a number of them are now outdated.

For more information, please see this thread: http://www.freewarebb.com/topic/98340-lifeline-for-freewarebb/


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So it's back. Or at least it is for now.

Here's from thread referenced in the e-mail above (emphasis added):

Well, for the second time in nearly as many years, it would appear that FreewareBB is still hanging on in there and the site has now been offered a new home by the owner of http://www.lo4d.com, another download site which shares the same ideals as us here at FreewareBB.

The site owner, Christopher, very kindly offered to host our site because of the difficulties we were having.   Initially, I felt our current host wasn't able to host our site comfortably and that spikes in traffic were resulting in lost visitors and a bad experience for regular visitors and despite many support requests to our host it seemed they still didn't manage to get to the bottom of what was going on.

This, I believe, led to the loss of revenue that was needed to pay for the monthly hosting which put us in a vicious circle ... I had to pay for the hosting from my own pocket, but with less and less people coming to the site (or able to get to the site), barely any revenue and frequent issues with the server I decided it was not possible to watch FreewareBB die slowly and made the decision to close.   Searching for another host was possible, but my past experiences tell me that for the amount I was able to pay each month, I would be looking at similar, substandard, hosting.

Christopher then came along and offered his help and now I'm thinking, let's give it another shot, let's see if a decent server and host makes the difference to FreewareBB and everyone finally manages to get to the site without any issues and it remains as fast as it should have always been !!.

So, for the next few months, and with Christopher's help, I hope we see an improvement in the visitor numbers to FreewareBB once again - thereafter I'll review the situation and see what position we are in so for now we're still alive and kicking - feels good again  :good:

Marko

Now can somebody maybe change this thread's subject line to read: Almost the end of FreewareBB?

[rgdot]

Cool Kind of ironic, I never heard of lo4d before

[Renegade]

Well, for the second time in nearly as many years, it would appear that FreewareBB is still hanging on in there and the site has now been offered a new home by the owner of http://www.lo4d.com, another download site which shares the same ideals as us here at FreewareBB.

The site owner, Christopher, very kindly offered to host our site because of the difficulties we were having.

That kind of stuff is good to see.

In the broad developer community, most developers have a very cynical and low opinion of download sites. But there are some good ones out there, and there are some good people behind some of these sites. Yes, they're a bit rare. Yes, there are lots of spammy download sites. But again, baby & bathwater situation here.

Just as an aside that tangentially related:

http://cynic.me/2011/04/02/blown-away-by-a-download-site-softoxi-com/

It's a blog post of mine about a site that I was impressed by. Not many out there, but they are there.

[40hz]

In the broad developer community, most developers have a very cynical and low opinion of download sites. But there are some good ones out there, and there are some good people behind some of these sites. Yes, they're a bit rare. Yes, there are lots of spammy download sites. But again, baby & bathwater situation here.

Agree.

This thread prompted me to visit FreewareBB. Something I hadn't done in a good long while.

While there I found four products I had no idea even existed. I'm now evaluating one of them for possible paid use by a client of mine since the authors also sell a "commercial" version. If it turns out to be a go, these authors stand to earn some very good licensing fees for it.

I never would have known this product existed if I hadn't seen it on FreewareBB.  

[Tuxman]

Never heard of FreewareBB, actually Techsupportalert is all I had known.

[Tinman57]

  I've downloaded a few programs from that site over the years, but it's been a while since I've been back.  Perhaps it's time for me to make another trip there, I still have their link in my bookmarks.