Future of Website

Will

Administrator
Staff member
Hello Team,

The odds section of this website has been a financial and operational burden since inception.

I got a somewhat working prototype operational and my plan was to fund the final version through affiliate payments, donations and membership dues.

I misjudged the amount of revenue I could generate from these streams considering we are a niche community.

Last week, after 1.5 years I received my first 5dimes affiliate payout. $247. With monthly hosting costs alone of $60+ it is apparent this website will never be self sufficient, and that's ok.

What is not ok is the odds section ( specifically the sql component ) is slowing the responsiveness of the website down.

If I knew I could pay a developer $5000 to complete this website once and for all. I gladly would. However history tells me this will not happen.

So I have decided to rebuild the website and make the website a forum only website. Once complete this will reduce the monthly overheads but also and much more importantly, the website itself will be fast and responsive.

I'd like to thank you all for being on this journey with me. The website is not going anywhere, I have said many times you all make me feel normal. There will just be some changes in the not too distant future.
 

ezflyer

Active Member
If nothing else we have a good community.. wish the odds tracking and odds alert had worked better and made you more $, tho
 

Mirinquads

Active Member
Staff member
Good hustle Will, it was gonna be tough with bestfightodds being the first mover etc - Appreciate your work dearly.

At least we made fat stacks betting tho
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
I might circle back to the front page at some time with something less resource hungry. I probably will but not for a couple of months.
 

mmaed

Member
Thanks for making the website and keeping things going Will. I appreciate that someone is doing this. Even if I don't post often I always check in.
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
Hello Team,

Fwiw, I have been hosting this server on a managed VPS package ($50USD a month) since 2016. Now that we do not have the odds section i am moving it over to a more streamlined shared cloud package. ($13USD a month).

If something breaks, i will fix it. Bear with me.
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
If you are reading this, you have successfully made it to the new web host.
We may have lost 1-2 posts over the previous couple of hours if you posted on the old website while we were transferring the DB to the new one.

We will be here for the foreseeable future.
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
I am a big fan of if its not broke dont fix it but the truth is, some things in the back end of the forum are broken. You cant tell, but i can. I cant change ad's, i cant change keyword replacement and those are just the ones i know about on the periphery.

Additional to that, we are running Xenforo 1.5.5 with the latest stable patch being 2.1.6. Are there vulnerabilities in the older Xenforo which we by chance have not succumbed to? I dont know but lets not find out the hard way.

So here we are, something i should have done over the dead time of no UFC for a month. The upgrade will probably happen over the next week or so. I will make sure there is a backup but if we do go black for a while. Dont worry, I will fix it.
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
This looks likes its happening tomorrow. At least initially, it looks like the theme will not be able to be cut across without employing a web dev to customize it for xenforo 2.1.

Im not against that, but lets see what the default skins look like first
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
And here we are.... pushed into the 21st century.

i will play with the styles a bit.

The interface and responsiveness feels a little slicker. That’s good.
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
Default style looks good and close to the previous custom odds beast style. I will move our logo into it and cut everyone over to it in a couple of hours.
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
Re the color properties / Styles. Give it one more day. I will have a selection for people to pick their preference.
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
It’s safe to do so Jim. Any style changes I make are purely cosmetic at this stage.

the hard work has been done.
 

Will

Administrator
Staff member
Wow.... Im a massive newb... For years ive had a re-direct on this site to force it to http as opposed to https.
That's now fixed. The SEO gods should smile upon us a little brighter than they once did.
 
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