It's pretty much perpetual. I have an account set up for the forum contributions and the host draws their payment right from it. Now if something happened to me it would need to be transferred to someone to carry on. I've thought about having a 3rd party do the back up and maintenance, but really feel uncomfortable with that. Plus I'm sure there is things they could manage better than me. Luke fixing the damn media page
Maybe you could make a forum backup/cache and share it with a few forum members so the forum could be revived in a scenario like that? What about a cloud storage with a shared password?
It's not the domain name, it's the content contained within the forum. That's where the real value is.
I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but the forum is running on a VPN that basically does its own back up to another area just in case. But I still down load it to my computer ( almost monthly ) just in case. But I have never tried to upload the download so that makes me a bit nervous and I'm afraid to go making alot of changes. It would really.suck if things went wrong.now with the content that's been generated.
But since the photobucket shit storm, how much value are those threads without images? Yea I know, most had come back, but for how long?? Ya want free?? That's what you get...
He used to live in NY, I'm not sure how I remember that! The whole thing is a shame but willing offers have been forthcoming many times to take over the forum with no response, to me it seems odd that someone would host and detail pages of their exploits then recluse and let the whole attached forum thing die. That said, I get described as odd almost daily so who knows.....
Anon took a big interest for while, you might get more luck contacting him through his promethious (sp?) website EDIT: http://prometheus-foundry.com/ Last updated 2014, may be not a good lead but I know he was in touch with Lionel
Now, this I did not know. With this info, then I do agree with Jason, Al 203, and Rocco. Maybe it blew up and got bigger than he ever expected, or he lost interest. (Life does get in the way at times.) Either way, passing the torch would have been the prudent thing to do. Jason, I apologize for the admonishment, even though I didn't know the owner's story. Let us all hope the right person gets in contact with the owner, and is successful at procuring the site. Roger
A little more background, Lionel's website is Backyardmetalcasting.com, the forums we know as Alloyavenue, started out as part of that site, while still part of the backyardmetalcasting site, the forums grew quite large there and a number of years ago Lionel had the forums moved off of his site over to their own domain i.e. Alloyavenue.com and ever since then, he's been AWOL but for some reason he chose to maintain exclusive control of the AA domain and is still the only person that I'm aware of, authorized to make whatever changes would be needed correct the problems we've been seeing for the last year or so.
I only showed up in 2013 and it had been alloyavenue for years already (I think) by that time. Does anyone know when the original forum on BYMC first began? Just trying to wrap my head around how many years of info we are losing. Jeff
I'm not sure, but I came on as Sandcrab in 2008 with the 1/3 scale smallblock thread and it was upgraded to a sticky later and had over 100,000 views before it shut down. A look on the Wayback Machine and we might be able to find the oldest thread.
I tried that and the oldest version of backyardmetalcasting I could find was Oct 2001, it included forums, the oldest version of Alloyavenue I could find was June 2011.
Rocco, try this one. That is where I got the 2008 thread start which I think was my first one. https://web.archive.org/web/20191005051806/http://www.alloyavenue.com:80/vb/forum.php That thread may have been started on backyardmetalcasting, and then brought forward when the name changed.
That would have started in the old forums and been carried forward. When the new forums were started, link to old threads went dead, Anon had a "Hall of Fame" thread, that thread was also started in the old forums in 2008, I remember helping to fix all of the dead links in that thread after it moved to AA.
I'm just hoping he sees this thread! Maybe he will decide not to be a lazy scumbag and archive the damn thing. https://archive.org/ He wasn't making any money off AA and I bet my left nut that's why he didn't give 2shits! What he didn't know, what he created grew bigger and more valuable than even he could imagine. Not everything is monetary and AA was a great example of this. It had immense resource value, but was pretty much worthless in terms of dollars.
Okay guys. here is what I can say. I am still the administrator of the Alloy Avenue forum, except, just like you, I can't get in. When Anon disappeared four or five years ago. Lionel appointed me as the administrator, but without the privileges necessary to fix the forum software. Anon did not have those privileges either. He was an engineering student at a university in Indiana. When he graduated he just disappeared from AA. I talked with him and what he said was that he had a new job and "was up to his eyeballs" in work." He has not logged on to AA since. I have never spoken with Lionel on the phone. (Anon said he never did either.) Lionel and I used to write e-mails to each other, very infrequently, but I have not received a word from him in at least four years. I write to him and he doesn't answer. His web page has not been updated for three years, and he has stopped selling foundry kits and books on his web site. He was always enigmatic, but before, whenever I wrote to him about a problem with the forum, he fixed it. Until this last problem. I have to assume that he is no longer with us, whatever that may mean. I think we need to give it up and accept the fact that AA is no more. Richard (Rasper)
Thanks for posting that Richard. You told me that long ago, but I couldn't get to the message because it was on AA. btw, How the hell are you? You still making art or are you retired off on a sailboat in the sun?
Even the domain registrant is hidden by Perfect Privacy LLC a company service designed to prevent any contact with the registrant. There is an generated email that may get forwarded to him: @networksolutionsprivateregistration.com