Nic Barnes
Member
Registered: 5th Apr 04
Location: nowhere near ginger people
User status: Offline
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browsing is good
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Steve
Premium Member
Registered: 30th Mar 02
Location: Worcestershire Drives: Defender
User status: Offline
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JbozZ6wvAc&feature=related
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Matt H
Member
Registered: 11th Sep 01
Location: South Yorkshire
User status: Offline
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Back to scoobynet, wonder how much membership will go up by!?
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jr
Member
Registered: 20th May 02
Location: Kent
User status: Offline
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[quote="Stu @ M Developments"]Be terminated as of Midnight on December 31st 2007. :eek:
This action will include all members, be they gold or not. The new owners are moving the site over to america and it will be re organised and full of mustangs etc. They are not at all interested in the comparitively tiny Uk domestic market. 
There is nothing i can do about it chaps, i didnt know anything about this until today and i had already stepped down as admin when i found out, although i am kind of glad i jumped before i was pushed.
Really Sorry people...
Now, the above of course is absolute bollox, but anyone reading the fuss on here today would think that was the case wouldnt they?!! :eek: :roll:
So after a discussion with Pet today, i now know exactly what has Really happened, so if you are interested, read on:
I had a long chat with Julien (Petrucci) this afternoon on the phone and have indeed only just got off it and have now pretty much learned all i need to know to fill you in on it... so read on.
Some months ago, a large American company Called Internet Brands (IB) approached Julien about the possibility of purchasing PassionFord from him. IB own leading websites in the automotice sector such as CarsDirect.com, GreenHybrid.com, NewCarTestDrive and Wikicars.com and more recently, Scoobynet.com.
Upon agreeing to discuss options further Julien agreed to sign an IDS which basically forbid him to mention what had been discussed with any 3rd parties, and, knowing how stressed i was over the wedding and other things in recent months found solace in the fact he couldnt tell me legally anyway. So, they have discussed taking his whole internet hosting side as he hosts quite a few forums too, and this discussion has not yet come to total fruition due to the fact the takeover time of L-tech is supposed to be January 2008, before which of course Pet would have come on here and made an announcement, with Me as would be expected of Him/us.
Lets face it, How else would anyone find out? Should be simple... Nope, somehow or other the WWW has found out and the result is what you see on the forums today. mass hysetria about absolutely sod all. :cry:
So, the future.
Julien is likely to sell the lot to IB and they will then own Passionford as an entity. However, they dont actuially want to change anything except to move its hosting over to London and to give it bandwidth and connections we we have only ever dreamed of and its own cluster of servers.  D: That will be the end of speed problems. period. That too is likely to happen in January.
The plan was that i would stay around and keep things running but of course i scuppered that when i called it a day yesterday, so that has to be re-discussed, but for now, nothing has changed bar my stepping down from admin roles.
As most of you will know, back in 2003 i started this site with pet and brought over all the new blood, advertised it in the magazines, arranged the meets and sanctioned some official car shows. I have lived and breathed passionford since then and love it like a child even when it proved to become a labour of love in recent times, so even though i have stepped out of the day to day running of the forum, it doesnt mean i dont have its interests at heart, and after seeing what IB tend to do with the Forums that they aquire, i am quitely confident that this is a positive move for PF, and certainly NOT a negative one.
If i thought Julien had pulled a fast one i would tell you all straight and I dont. Its as simple as that, but for now, theres little else i can tell you Due to the secrecy form he has signed but he will talk to them tomorrow about how they ended up advertising the site as theirs before the deal was closed and ultimately leading to this mess we have now.
Onwards and upwards folks, nothing has changed, everything you pay for is still here for you to acces and there are no reasons for you to worry and many reasons for you to be excited. :top:
What do they gain?
They are very good with advertising and will likely re-arrange some of the google ads to be more nicely integrated with the site so as to generate revenue that way and start to recoup their investment. For anyone interested in another webmasters view of their running of a similar forum after purchase, read here:
Finally,
Anyone wondering why Julien isnt posting this, its for the same reason he hasnt been around for many months now, complications with his newborn child back in August that led to the very near death of his wife, still has his child in a quite critical condition, and he is not spending any time worrying about things like this internet malarky. This was one of the reasons IB are announcing nothing until early next year, because Julien has bigger priorities at the moment. Due to this, i agreed to step back into the admin role just for tonight so i can take care of this topic on his behalf. 
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ed
Member
Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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Somone delete that stupid fuckin gpost by Paul_J. I'm actually interested in reading that and even with a 22" widescreen monitor I can't be arsed.
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Jamie H
Banned
Registered: 23rd Nov 07
Location: Ascot
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by ed
Somone delete that stupid fuckin gpost by Paul_J. I'm actually interested in reading that and even with a 22" widescreen monitor I can't be arsed.
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Paul_J
Member
Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Jamie H
quote:
Originally posted by ed
Somone delete that stupid fuckin gpost by Paul_J. I'm actually interested in reading that and even with a 22" widescreen monitor I can't be arsed.
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Ian
Site Administrator
Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
User status: Offline
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Interesting development. Only just noticed this thread.
Most curious for me is that fact that both SN and PF cite moving to faster servers as the reason to sell up. I can appreciate the economy of scale of buying servers and bandwidth in bulk and doing better deals, but throughout the growth of CS I've never yet seen a point at which the income doesn't cover it anyway.
We had enough money to buy a server and hosting six years ago when prem opened.
We had enough money to buy another server and move the first to backup duties three years ago. In the mean while we had enough money to pay for hosting every month.
Currently we have enough to either invest more in hardware or go even flasher at shows, and I'm undecided which 
Perhaps five years down the line when we're doing 1.3m queries per hour we'll need to spend more on hardware than can be returned by lots of people paying, but we're doing 250k ph now on a three year old server and its hardly troubled. I wouldn't imagine 1.3m being so much more expensive if I'm honest.
I might be entirely wrong but I've never really seen the reasons for other web sites to be so close to the wire. I might have a moan about bandwidth and complain about how complex search queries might cause a bit of lag once in a while, but I don't think I would ever be so stuck that I would need to sell out.
Obviously CS benefits greatly from a raft of technical expertise and I don't want to get too lovely-dovey now but Tim knows a thing or two about keeping computers healthy. Its also a priority of mine to be fairly efficient in what we do, but these are other places are not run by newbies.
See what the future brings I suppose.
[Edited on 01-12-2007 by Ian]
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SVM 286
Member
Registered: 13th Feb 05
Location: pain
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by JM_16v
need to be a member
Need to be a gold member accordind to the page
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SVM 286
Member
Registered: 13th Feb 05
Location: pain
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by jr
quote:
Originally posted by Fad
I personally think a load of people are crying over nothing.
Its been sold to Internet Brands and in all fairness I dont think they would interupting the general running of the site just squeezing some more advertising here and there.
At the moment they mods seem more concerned with loosing their user names and power rather than the welfare of the site.
Scoobynet's been sold and its still all running fine.
yeah but stu at MSD was the senior admin, has written all of the tech features on there out of his own time for fellow enthisisats, to make the site big and have alot of info, only for the owner to take advantage of all the info on the site and sell it off for what id imagine is a profit
My thoughts precisely James.
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SVM 286
Member
Registered: 13th Feb 05
Location: pain
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by jr
if i was stuart from PF i would be going mental, as he basically made the forum what it is, as it was a french forum, which he got the people involved today on to when the RSOC went tits up
Wondered why it had such an odd name.
Btw... RSOC tits up? 
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SVM 286
Member
Registered: 13th Feb 05
Location: pain
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Steve
scottishvag
That's actually Eck's nickname for his little black book Steve.
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SVM 286
Member
Registered: 13th Feb 05
Location: pain
User status: Offline
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WTF is oxfordedition?
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jr
Member
Registered: 20th May 02
Location: Kent
User status: Offline
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its a vw site/show
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SVM 286
Member
Registered: 13th Feb 05
Location: pain
User status: Offline
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Is there a volkswagen factory in Oxford?
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jr
Member
Registered: 20th May 02
Location: Kent
User status: Offline
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ues, they make the vases for beatles
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SVM 286
Member
Registered: 13th Feb 05
Location: pain
User status: Offline
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JAMES!
You made me cry 
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SVM 286
Member
Registered: 13th Feb 05
Location: pain
User status: Offline
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Btw, exactly HOW hard is it to spell 'yes' and 'beetle'? 
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jr
Member
Registered: 20th May 02
Location: Kent
User status: Offline
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SVM 286
Member
Registered: 13th Feb 05
Location: pain
User status: Offline
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Robin
Premium Member
Registered: 7th Jan 04
Location: Northants Drives: Clio 182 Cup
User status: Offline
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Speaking of Beetles, I found one of those little vents from an early split/oval window on at my sister's new house earlier
edit - spelt 'lol' wrong
[Edited on 01-12-2007 by Robin]
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