The Future Of E-budo.com

[Ken-Hawaii]

Cady, if you're referring to John Lindsey, he is who I've been trying to establish contact for the past month. No idea why he isn't interested in communicating, but I don't choose to let e-Budo die due to his lack of interest.

Do you have some way to ask him to give us permission to handle the data?

Ken

[Cady Goldfield]

Ken, I have no idea how to contact him. He used to post new items in the "News From Japan" forum regularly, but it appears he hasn't done that since February. But "E-Budo" is his property, and I don't see how anything can be done to or with the site without his approval.

[Anders Pettersson]

Ken, I have no idea how to contact him. He used to post new items in the "News From Japan" forum regularly, but it appears he hasn't done that since February. But "E-Budo" is his property, and I don't see how anything can be done to or with the site without his approval.

The news from Japan was automatically posted from a RSS feed, it is a setting on what account the posts should be made from and here it was John's since he is an admin. So those posts wasn't his really, they were done by the system.

I have had a short contact with John (through LinkedIn) in October last year, were he told me the reasons why e-budo was down. This is part of what he wrote, which sort of is what already has been said in this thread.

Anyhow, it appears that my previous hosting service changed to someone else and I was never told. I had previously had an automatic payment taken out each month. Then, I get a bill in the mail saying I owe them 600 for back payments. Right now, I can't afford that, so I don't know what to do right away.

Anyway, although I don't have as much time nowadays as I used to I would be happy to help out to keep e-budo up. There are many non-expensive web hosts that can provide what one need for less than 100 $ a year (might even find packages for less than half of that).

I do have some experience in running vbulletin and are relatively comfortable in installing/upgrade etc. Right now I even own a vbulletin license that I don't use for anything else that could be used to upgrade (to a later version which would be good for security reasons, i.e. less risk of getting hacked and better functions to keep spammers register).

So to sum it up, I am happy to help out with my share of the cost, and also some time to do technical stuff regarding vbulletin (I did the last upgrade of this site and fixed the theme/look so I have some experience in this).

/Anders

[Cady Goldfield]

That certainly clears up the mystery. Thanks, Anders. $600 is a lot to have to pony up; no wonder he had to just let E-Budo slide. Once a solid plan (and Plan B) is in place, it could be presented to John via LinkedIn, since that seems to be a site he checks on.

[Ken-Hawaii]

Glad to see we have the start of a cadre of people who are interested in keeping e-Budo alive.

We really have no choice but to proceed as if John will eventually buy into our keeping the site up & running. If he had simply asked for help from the thousands of users, I'm sure he would have gotten it.

Ken

[DDATFUS]

Ken, thanks for taking some action here. I'm definitely interested in helping out. I second what Nathan and Cady have been saying-- we've got to find some way to save the old conversations. I've tried to archive some of the threads most important to me, but that's more of a stopgap measure than a real solution.

I think that a good first step might be to see if the folks at Orionweb might be interested in taking payments over time instead of a $600 lump sum. That might at least buy us some time.

[Ken-Hawaii]

The good news is that Bill at Orionweb is more than willing to work with us, or at least with me. I approached him openly, asking what we can do to bring the site back up, & he did so without asking for anything in advance. So I'm sure we have some time to put things together.

I'm aware that there are less expensive hosting services, but I think we should stick with Bill until we can at least formulate a long-term plan of action. This would be a lot easier if we could get John to respond, but as I've left voice-mail at his home, messages with his secretary at work, & numerous e-mails, I'm not holding my breath that he's at all interested.

So it's up to us. Let's get a few hundred dollars from interested members, & I'll send Bill payment for part of the arrears to show our good faith.

Ken

[Cady Goldfield]

It probably would be easier if we could just keep the site as-is here. "Moving house" to another site would be painstaking. But we might have to do that if the original owner can't or won't continue to pay $20/month to keep this one going. Finding a lower-cost host (or becoming a non-profit in order to get free hosting) may be a necessity.
We should still look into archiving/databasing as well, perhaps as a separate thing even if the live forum does get to stay.
As I live on a shoestring budget, the amount of $ I can kick in is puny, but I will give what I can. In the meantime, it's nice to know that the Orion people are willing to work with us to keep the site afloat.

[elder999]

Shouldn't we have George try to get a hold of John?

[P Goldsbury]

Shouldn't we have George try to get a hold of John?

I have sent George a PM. Perhaps he is not aware of what has been happening with Orion.com.

I remember a time when E-Budo went down a few years ago. At that time there was talk of taking it over from John L, but nothing changed, as far as I know. I thought George had some financial involvement with the site.

[dirk.bruere]

Can someone give me some info on the database size of eBudo, and it's traffic?
Zero State is setting up its own server in Iceland and I have just posted a question on their mailing list concerning (free) hosting.

[Ken-Hawaii]

Dirk, I've already posed that question to Orionweb, but haven't received Bill's response. I'll post any info as I get it.

Ken

[cxt]

Ken

I would more than willing to pay my share of keeping the doors open.

I called Orion Web back in december and at the time they mentioned, perhaps, taking over the site themselves--but you likely have better and more up to date info.

I would be willing to kick in, to start $250, the archive alone would be worth that. Problem is that I do not have a PayPal account, so I would have to send somebody a check--maybe directly to OrionWeb?

Maybe they can keep the site up while we figure things out?

Please PM me here and I will do what I can.

I'm Stateside so maybe I can do some leg-work for the project?

[Ken-Hawaii]

Hi, Chris:

Your offer is by far the most generous I've received to date. I'm fairly sure that I can garner funds from a few more forumites so that you won't have to shell out $250, but it's nice to know there's someone else who considers e-Budo as very valuable.

Bill at Orionweb just sent me a note that we can drop to $15 a month for ongoing hosting, & that seems reasonable to me. I plan to collect checks & PayPal payments from users, & to then send him a check - that way I know that I have something in writing should we encounter future problems. But Bill really does want to keep the site up & running, & has offered to keep it up & running while I pull things together, so I'm sure he'll work with us.

Mahalo! (Thanks!)

Ken

[cxt]

Ken

Don't mean to jump the gun.

But when you get a chance, please PM here, the address I can mail/Fed Ex my share of the E-Budo fund.

Happy to help.

And thank you and and everyone else for getting things started.