[marko]

Despite the best efforts of all concerned, it is with regret and frustration that I have to announce we will be closing down FreewareBB at the end of this month. The decision has not been an easy one for me to make, but it's the only one available to me.

Lack of funds, despite recent appeals, a recent upgrade to the site which I believe to have caused us some issues with the search engines and the loss of an extremely important modification (CSEO) as a result of the upgrade have all contributed to the demise of FreewareBB.

Advertising revenue for the site has plummeted as a result of loosing much of our search engine traffic, yet sites rated negatively by WOT and SiteAdvisor and who are known for the distribution of spyware and viruses rank high by Google and other search engines - despite our efforts to provide a safe, secure and family friendly environment it is clear we are not winning the battle and so will bow out gracefully and allow these sites to continue on with their agenda of misleading "free" downloads and infesting the web and people's computers with all manner of bugs and viruses.

To those who have supported FreewareBB in some way throughout it's short existance, I thank you sincerely and in particular I thank Jim Hillier for all his hard work and efforts in bringing you some of the best in promotions and becoming a good friend of the site and me personally - it was certainly fun while it lasted :)

Kind Regards
Marko

[Conn10]

marko, on 12 October 2010 - 08:52 PM, said:

Despite the best efforts of all concerned, it is with regret and frustration that I have to announce we will be closing down FreewareBB at the end of this month. The decision has not been an easy one for me to make, but it's the only one available to me.

I may not sign in with my account often but i do visit :(

I feel sorry for you, it's a shame top see a good site go down like this, especially when , as you say, many malicious sites live on. I hope you can rebuild the site again, maybe in a few years :'( it's sad to see it go.

Thankyou for all the great content and giveaways,

and it is with true sincerity that i say goodbye and good luck in whatever else you do :),

Conn

[gregorycartoon]

I've only recently discovered ypour site and thought it to be excellent. I wish you all the best for your future and thanks for providing this service whilst you could.

Regards


gregorycartoon :(

[DaComboMan]

All the best to Marko!

So much time and effort to make things work on the web...
Hopefully it will have been a good experience for you as you continue your journey through life.

Many thanks for the giveaways and occasions to exhange a few thoughts and needs!

[John T]

Really sad to hear this news. Is it purely a financial problem or are there any other underlying issues?

John

[EjGippy]

I would like to thank all the people involved with FreewareBB for their past work and continual attempts to keep this great site up and running , it must be frustrating to put in so much effort only to have the impossible task of keeping the site clean from parasites ! I would like to thank Jim Hillier for his untiring input so as to bring us previously unknown Software !
May the best be with all of the FreewareBB staff and Contributors . E.j.Gippy. Gippsland .Victoria. Australia.

[grr]

It is a sad news, but I support you in your decision, Marko.

Unfortunately too many bad things happened..

It was a nice opportunity to meet you and Jim. I'll always remember you guys.

Thanks,
Grr

[Power Bank]

It is really sad news to hear of closure of this site. FreewareBB has offered me legendary wealth of fun, knowledge and information. Thank you Marko and all the people behind the scenes for your hard work to make it happen.

My regards,
Power Bank

[saniismail]

It is a sad news. Although I'm not sign in with my account often, but i still visit this site. Actually I don't trust WOT ( sorry for that ) or SiteAdvisor ( more sorry for that ). They don't actually give good rating for A GOOD SITE. Always a BAD site still got a good rating from them. What ever you do, I hope is the best for you. KEEP MOVING.

[MerleOne]

Sorry to hear that. I was not a frequent visitor but I do appreciated FreewareBB. Best of luck with you next projects !

.merle1.

[marko]

Thanks to everyone for their kind words.
Marko

[PCRacer]

Dear Marko

I am so sad to hear of the sites closure. :empathy2: :cray: I hope you find something else to inspire you forward into the future. :good:

Good luck with your next venture. :)

Kind regards

Henk van Loo

Another great site bites the dust :dash2:

[James (Jim) Hillier]

Hi Everyone - This really is a crying shame!! Mark's vision (for FreewareBB) of providing a genuinely safe avenue for freeware downloads plus an open medium for interaction and discussion is quite unique and, in my opinion, extremely worthwhile.

Unfortunately, the main goal of all that, to build an active FreewareBB community, has never quite eventuated. It seems 'active' participation is very difficult to achieve and 'passive' participation does not help all that much. Even now, in response to this message, many are admitting they do not often log-on to the site.

We have tried many varied strategies to help encourage more visitors to join us... and encourage more existing members to 'join in' but alas, all that has been in vain. The promotions (giveaways) we have run have not attracted the response we had hoped for. In fact, the response has been very poor. I, for one, will never understand why people have not been interested in some of the very good commercial products we have offered to members for free.

Take the latest Promotion for example; WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is very useful and highly regarded software. We offer 50 licenses to our members, absolutely free, and receive a dismal 22 responses out of a total membership of over 2500. That sort of response (or lack of it) does not give one heart nor offer much hope.

FreewareBB has never been guilty of 'bombarding' members with emails. In fact, Mark's policy has always been to keep emails to an absolute minimum. Yet significant numbers of emails to our members remain unopened. Which means they are unread either because they are being deleted immediately on arrival or have been deliberately filtered out via anti-spam software. Again, very disappointing!

Is this meant as a wrap on the knuckles? No, not really...more an explanation of the reasons behind FreewareBB's demise. Mark has been most magnanimous in his announcement by not mentioning any of this. Yes, the site update has impacted negatively on traffic and there have been other contributing factors but the overriding element has been lack of interest. A site such as FreewareBB relies largely on the active participation of its members, we cannot force people to join in we can only provide the services and platforms to encourage involvement...the rest is up to you.

To the loyal members who have helped along the way...a big thank you!! Your involvement has been much appreciated and highly valued.

To Mark, who I know has devoted so much time and hard work (not to mention finances) maintaining and supporting the site; I feel for you mate!! Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be a part of your dream and, at the same time, become your friend.

Cheers all.....Jim

[marko]

Thanks again everyone, hearing these words of support makes it even more difficult for me to close the doors at the end of the month but alas I really don't have any choice. As for starting another site, well, I doubt I would, running a download site is a very labour intensive process, especially when trying to keep it clean, you wouldn't believe some of the submissions we receive and each one is checked and double checked before approving, it does take a lot of time each day to get round to this and it's obvious our visitor numbers are falling each day and member participation has also went down considerably.

With the increase in people sending us spam mail, while at the same time some of our mails are rejected as spam from certain mail providers it all add's up to a great deal more work which is only costing me more money each month, add this to the fact that Invision produced an upgrade which changed just about everything on the site which meant modifications we had custom coded on the site and paid a considerable amount of money for had all became useless and we were back to a basic site with few useful features. The new search facility was also changed beyond recognition upon the upgrade with many of it's previous useful features removed for some reason, and despite having told Invision my concerns for our site and other sites using the Invision Software it's almost as though they listen for a while but nothing actually ever gets done!. Basically, we didn't stand a chance, the makers of Invision Software have produced and released this upgrade and broken a lot of websites which will be left with no choice like us, and when the search engines begin to realise things have changed on a site they often don't like it and it can take a long time to recover with them.

Again, I regret having to make the decision I've made, yet when we receive $0.30 per day in advertising revenue from Google Adsense and are then faced with a $115 bill for hosting each month the figures just don't add up and something has to give.

Marko