Today is hey.nu's tenth anniversary. I've been running the place for a whole decade now. It started when I was in high school. So many people have come and gone. In its heyday, it was a highly ranked site according to Alexa. It was the #1 free webhosting provider on many free hosting ranking sites. At one point, we were getting more than a million pageviews a month.
And today is the last day of hosting. After today, all hosting (not otherwise arranged with Megagram) will be shut off. The board and IRC will live on, but hosting will not.
The cost of running the place greatly exceeds the donations and advertising revenue (what revenue?). I've put in tens of thousands of dollars into the community over the years.
And with the greatly reduced community activity, it doesn't make sense to continue to pay for the service. The board is infrequently used and IRC is much less active than it had been in the past.
My inaction is partly to blame, but as a community, others must step up to keep it alive. I posted a call to action at the end of last year that didn't produce any results. To me, it only makes sense to halt a failing project than to suffer through it through its eleventh year.
It's been a great experience for me. I've learned so much about so many things, especially about hosting a large number of accounts and maintaining the systems and automations that are involved. It has been a highly valuable experience for me and am grateful for the chance to be part of it.
I've met many great people in the community and have even got together in person with a few of them.
It is indirectly because of hey.nu that I ended up living with John (a former admin), meeting Aimee, and moving to Washington. It is because of hey.nu that I met Kosta (a current admin) and through him met Anna, who I met in Seattle several years ago (and had quite a crush on her, which I'm amazed to be admitting here). I also met Oren (who had met and dated Anna because of hey.nu) when he was interviewing with Microsoft. If I had my crap in order, I would have met Kosta in Vancouver a few years ago, which I regret to this day. And of course there's Nina, my favorite hey.nu'er who I wish I could have met, but she lives so far away it was pretty much impossible.
One of our former users created SnapperMail, a highly popular email client for Palm OS, during the time they were hosted at hey.nu. We also hosted a mirror for Trillian during their early days (for which we only got a free one-year license to Trillian Pro.. pfft).
So much has happened at hey.nu. So much has happened because of hey.nu. My life and so many other lives would have been drastically different had it not been for hey.nu and the hey.nu community. I have so much to thank hey.nu for.
It greatly saddens me to see hey.nu's end, but I'm quite happy with the experiences I'll cherish forever.
And today is the last day of hosting. After today, all hosting (not otherwise arranged with Megagram) will be shut off. The board and IRC will live on, but hosting will not.
The cost of running the place greatly exceeds the donations and advertising revenue (what revenue?). I've put in tens of thousands of dollars into the community over the years.
And with the greatly reduced community activity, it doesn't make sense to continue to pay for the service. The board is infrequently used and IRC is much less active than it had been in the past.
My inaction is partly to blame, but as a community, others must step up to keep it alive. I posted a call to action at the end of last year that didn't produce any results. To me, it only makes sense to halt a failing project than to suffer through it through its eleventh year.
It's been a great experience for me. I've learned so much about so many things, especially about hosting a large number of accounts and maintaining the systems and automations that are involved. It has been a highly valuable experience for me and am grateful for the chance to be part of it.
I've met many great people in the community and have even got together in person with a few of them.
It is indirectly because of hey.nu that I ended up living with John (a former admin), meeting Aimee, and moving to Washington. It is because of hey.nu that I met Kosta (a current admin) and through him met Anna, who I met in Seattle several years ago (and had quite a crush on her, which I'm amazed to be admitting here). I also met Oren (who had met and dated Anna because of hey.nu) when he was interviewing with Microsoft. If I had my crap in order, I would have met Kosta in Vancouver a few years ago, which I regret to this day. And of course there's Nina, my favorite hey.nu'er who I wish I could have met, but she lives so far away it was pretty much impossible.
One of our former users created SnapperMail, a highly popular email client for Palm OS, during the time they were hosted at hey.nu. We also hosted a mirror for Trillian during their early days (for which we only got a free one-year license to Trillian Pro.. pfft).
So much has happened at hey.nu. So much has happened because of hey.nu. My life and so many other lives would have been drastically different had it not been for hey.nu and the hey.nu community. I have so much to thank hey.nu for.
It greatly saddens me to see hey.nu's end, but I'm quite happy with the experiences I'll cherish forever.
