News January 15, 2025: The day DSLReports died

[Amiga]

@RMerlin
Any chance we might see you at https://broadbandbulletin.com/d/2-welcome-to-broadband-bulletin ? Tons of DSLR Canadians lurking about already.

 

[RMerlin]

@RMerlin
Any chance we might see you at https://broadbandbulletin.com/d/2-welcome-to-broadband-bulletin ? Tons of DSLR Canadians lurking about already.

The UI makes my eyes bleed... Both dark and light themes have poor contrast which is too difficult for me to read.

And... their webapge doesn't even disclose who is running this, what information they are gathering from their subscribed users...

 

[sfx2000]

It seems the site's plug was pulled unannounced on DSLReports/BroadbandReports. Karl Bode is quoted as saying, "The owner has been completely checked out for years, I'm surprised it survived this long."

Sad to see them go... the forums had not only breadth, but also a fair amount of depth with technical folks from the carriers and vendors...

The DSLreports speedtest thing has been broken for some time - for A/B/C things, Waveform kind of does the same thing, but IMHO, Cloudflare is better...

Reddit will likely take most of the load, and perhaps Discord as well...

 

[sfx2000]

The UI makes my eyes bleed... Both dark and light themes have poor contrast which is too difficult for me to read.

I'm color vision impaired, so yes, it's really bad...

 

[Amiga]

It's only been up for less than two days, so we need to give them time to tweak the user interface. The admin seems pretty genuine with trying to keep the DSLR community together.

 

[mxxcon]

Karl Bode is quoted as saying, "The owner has been completely checked out for years, I'm surprised it survived this long."

Source?

 

[ATLga]

Source?

Found this https://bsky.app/profile/karlbode.com/post/3lgazl54rzk2h

 

[mxxcon]

Found this https://bsky.app/profile/karlbode.com/post/3lgazl54rzk2h

Australian owner?

I liked Karl's news posts but in that bluesky he seems bitter and almost happy that dslr is gone.

 

[Samir]

Just found out about this myself from a post on reddit of all things. And at first I was like no way. Until dslreports.com wouldn't load.

I did a quick whois and the domain is still registered for two more years. So this doesn't sounds like a planned shutdown to me.

 

[RMerlin]

So this doesn't sounds like a planned shutdown to me.

It only takes the owner to look at his expenses, think: "Why am I still paying this hosting server on a monthly basis?", and then decide to stop paying for the server. The hosting might also have been on a yearly basis, and he decided not to renew it anymore - this is totally separate from a domain name.

I don't think it was a coincidence than only a month ago, Ebox announced they were stopping both their Direct Forum support and their official presence on the forums.

 

[mxxcon]

It only takes the owner to look at his expenses, think: "Why am I still paying this hosting server on a monthly basis?", and then decide to stop paying for the server. The hosting might also have been on a yearly basis, and he decided not to renew it anymore - this is totally separate from a domain name.

It takes 5min to make a post saying that a site that's been running for close to 30 years is going to be shut down...

Also if it was intentionally shut down, we wouldn't be getting random 503s, but instead it would just permanently timeout/refuse to connect.

 

[Samir]

It takes 5min to make a post saying that a site that's been running for close to 30 years is going to be shut down...

Also if it was intentionally shut down, we wouldn't be getting random 503s, but instead it would just permanently timeout/refuse to connect.

Yep, that's my thinking as well.

 

[ATLga]

Something is going on with it...links had finally died out and now this

 

[RMerlin]

It takes 5min to make a post saying that a site that's been running for close to 30 years is going to be shut down...

Assuming you cared enough to do this. Remember, the owner hasn't been heard from in years.

 

[mxxcon]

Assuming you cared enough to do this. Remember, the owner hasn't been heard from in years.

Well, it now says

dslreports.com is currently on a vacation

So doesn't seem like it's dead for good.

 

[sfx2000]

It only takes the owner to look at his expenses, think: "Why am I still paying this hosting server on a monthly basis?", and then decide to stop paying for the server. The hosting might also have been on a yearly basis, and he decided not to renew it anymore - this is totally separate from a domain name.

Valid point - perhaps @thiggins might considering the same thing... e.g. "what's the point?" - we've already seen this with the main site...

@RMerlin - might consider moving the support forums at some point - what happens if Tim were to suddenly pull the plug?

 

[RMerlin]

Valid point - perhaps @thiggins might considering the same thing... e.g. "what's the point?" - we've already seen this with the main site...

@RMerlin - might consider moving the support forums at some point - what happens if Tim were to suddenly pull the plug?

Tim hasn't been MIA for years, and whenever I email him, I typically get an answer the same day. SNBForums is nowhere close to the DSLReports situation. If he were to shut down the forums in the near future, right now I have no reason to believe I wouldn't get advance warning.

 

[Clark Griswald]

Momma, where's DSLReports?
He's on Vacation.
Also, at my age I am afraid of the term Pull The Plug.

 

[Bobcat00]

@RMerlin
Any chance we might see you at https://broadbandbulletin.com/d/2-welcome-to-broadband-bulletin ? Tons of DSLR Canadians lurking about already.

They should have used XenForo instead of whatever barebones software they're using.

 

[RMerlin]

They should have used XenForo instead of whatever barebones software they're using.

Xenforo can be quite expensive tho, considering they said they want to avoid having ads on their site. But there are definitely better free alternatives, I agree. I think their platform doesn`t even offer DM support yet.