Chris Leckness is a Geek

SECTalk.com Sale Complete - 1 week later, work destroyed

So, I really felt like I didn’t have time to maintain SEC Talk anymore, so I figured I would sell it to someone passionate about the site. I turned down a couple higher offers to keep the site as is and protect the users from massive change. I guess I was wrong.

A little history about the site. I started it back in 2004 with the idea of offering a place for all SEC Sports fans to chit chat, to have civil arguments, and to just have fun. I planned to have original news on the front page and make the site something great. It did become something great, but never really got it where I “really” wanted it.

One of the things I always stressed to staff and the members was the rules. I was strict on cussing, flaming, etc. We banned a lot of members over the years to protect this goal and keep it clean. A few years ago, we banned a couple members that caused a revolt and ultimately resulted in another site being born. Many of these disgruntled members left and started recruiting from my site resulting in even more bans. We moved on and didn’t waver on our stance. Some of these members that left snuck back in, but we let that slide as long as they followed the rules. So of them never came back. Good for them.

Fast forward to the site sale. In the process of selling, I spent 4-5 hours of my time helping the buyers by transferring the site off my server and on to a cheap server that a) I thought would work and b) they wanted because it was inexpensive. This server wasn’t that great. It was slow and the site suffered a bit while I waited and paid my server guy to check it out. He said it should be fine, but it wasn’t. The buyers decided to go ahead and spend the money and got a server with the company I suggested initially. They moved the site this time and the site spent 48 hours on/offline. When the site came back up, man was I surprised….

100’s of hours of hacking, custom work, and fine tuning was thrown out the window in one clean sweep. The new owners decided to hire the previously banned member of the site that created the other site that the disgruntled members went to. It seems as if they hired him to help with vBulletin, the software the site runs on. Well, he decided to upgrade the version. There was a reason why I had not, I’ll get to that. They also completely wiped the logo style that had been in place for 4 years and had tshirts made in its likeness.

Now, before I tell about all the things that are broken because they didn’t think this through, let me tell you what this formerly banned “new admin” did. He resurrected many of the banned members. This is a slap in the face to all the mods I’ve supported over the years. Their decisions to ban any particular user was discussed and supported. There are reasons users get banned.

The site might grow with the type atmosphere that they seem to be ok with, but is it going to be good growth? If it pads pockets, I am sure some don’t care, but I would rather make no money and have a clean environment than have cussing, flaming, and all that other crap and make money. Anyhow, its not my site anymore and I shouldn’t care so much, but it’s human nature to be attached to something you spent so much time nurturing.

The hasty move that they made changing the software version is fine if they return all the features in time. There are a couple features that I don’t think they will be able to fix or reinstall though. Pick’ em, one of the biggest draws during the football season, may not ever work again. It may, but it’s not a readily accessible script that is free to download. It was a custom script written for a friend of mine. He kept it up for a couple versions and helped me keep my copy up to date too. That is one of the reasons we had not upgraded to the newest version of vBulletin. I don’t think anyone really knows how much backend work the site had to make things “cool” for the users.

Anyhow. Bringing back the banned, slap in the face. Ripping apart all my hard work, a kick to the groin. Patting themselves on the back for “fixing” the site that wasn’t broken, well… not that bad, but not something that I am happy about.

Last night, I logged into the site and made a post asking for my username and IP to be banned. Someone deleted that post and didn’t ban me. I will answer basic questions that are cordial to assistance a site sale, but that’s it. I will have nothing more to do with that site. Good luck to the new owners. Hopefully they will take note of some of the issues that are going to pop up as a result of some of their actions and do the right thing.

I could have posted this on the site, but I really don’t want to cause any hate or discontent on their new site. I posted it here because I need to vent to feel better about all this. I guess the moral of the story is… If you want to sell a site, don’t expect things to stay the same. Expect massive changes. Don’t sell unless you are comfortable with this. 

Sorry for the long post. I do feel better though. Good Luck Sectalk.com…