After almost 7 years, I have decided to close OSForums.net. This site was created back in 2017 as a place for people enthusiastic about computer software. And it was also intended to be a supplement to my vintage tech YouTube channel, Michael MJD. And while there was an initial burst of interest, the active user base gradually began to decrease to the point of almost no activity. In fact, the vast majority of user accounts created within the past couple years have all been from bots who mass spam the forums with links to scam sites and other unwanted junk. I do have administration tools in place to prevent stuff like this, but some accounts do slip through. So most of my time spent managing this site consists of removing these accounts. And with the forums being pretty much dead at this point, its something that I don't think is worth doing anymore. So I have decided to close new user registration and prevent new posts from being created by already registered users. This way, posts that have already been made can still be viewed by those who desire to do so. And the site can just kinda sit as it is and won't require any more moderation. I debated canceling my plan with the VPS that I use to host OSForums, but the costs are pretty minimal and I also use the server space to host other stuff anyways. So this seemed like the best option.
Thank you to everybody who was active on this site and helped get it off the ground. I think if I started this thing 10 or 15 years earlier when forums were much more popular, it would've been more successful. But in the modern age of Discord servers and social media platforms, sites like these kinda went by the wayside. Sure, you can still find some pretty active forums out there... but this certainly wasn't one of them
That's pretty much it. I appreciate you reading this and for your time spent on OSForums over the years.
- Michael
