I have been deliberating and looking at various ways of keeping the forum going for some time, but am unable to find a suitable solution as any income is not enough or on going!
The forum cost "Just Caddys" £7-800 per year to keep online, and that's without any personal commitment from myself or Jim. The problem is that only 2% of sales are generated through the forum, and the same cost buys half a page in a very well known VW magazine for a year!
Therefore I am about to start the process of giving the hosting company notice to carry out a backup of the database and then to close the account.
This decision has not been taken lightly as we have been online 14 years this very month! But this decision has been gaining momentum for a while now.
There are several factors involved in the decision on top of the cost's outlined above including:
1. Only a handful of the same people are engaged in posting on the site.
2. We use a massive amount of bandwidth due to casual browsers using the site as a resource
3. Social media has killed forums outright, which you are all guilty of using instead of posting on the forum!
So for those reasons we will join the rest on Facebook, which is a SHIT platform, but its a FREE one!
I will advise the date of closure as as I pay for hosting 3 months in advance, and im not quite sure where we are with that as I need to check
THE END
Al