Communications are the weak area, Slug

[unclefrank]

The current outage highlights a problem that needs addressing. It was at least 36 hours before I had a clue about what was going on. For all I knew, you had gone on vacation for 2 weeks and forgot to pay the power bill. Personally, I don't have have mission critical requirements, but it would be reassuring to know what the problems are, and that they are being addressed.

PBase has been the hosting site of choice for those of us on the dpreview forums, and we always recommend it to newcomers. Recently I had the following exchange with a dpr member:

Q: > I still have no idea why you folks mess around with PBase.
> Are they "really nice people" or something? I don't know the
> background, I just know that it's down quite often.


A: The guy who runs pbase, Slug, is one of us, a photo-hobbyist. He started the site to host his own and his friends pictures, and didn't charge for years, just accepted donations from people who wanted to support him. He refused to accept advertising, because he thought blinking ads, like the one at the top of this page, would interfere with the visual enjoyment of our photos. People kept flooding in, and the cost of upkeep finally caused him to go to a pay scheme, but many of us feel very loyal to this guy. And when it's working, which is most of the time, his site displays pics as well as any place I've seen on the web.

The gang has gotten a little impatient with the current outage, and someone has come up with a free hosting site that a number of members have signed up for. I hope you get us back online before it becomes a trend, Slug.