Site’s been down all week; Florida Sportsman, too. I wonder if they forget to pay their ISP or if they finally went under?; FFM’s been going downhill since the format change a couple years ago, although it didn’t seem to effect the FS site much. Sad.
Regards,
Scott
Scott- the FF board there died a slow death after they changed formats. Sometimes days would pass between posts. To add to the problem, FFM then allowed ads that would cover the menu page, without an “X” out. Apparently they didn’t care much for the members. Thank you, FAOL! Long may you/we prosper.
Chuck
Sorry to hear it, FF has brought a lot of folks to fly fishing - unfortunately money got in the way to doing the right thing. Appreciate the kind words Chuck, we’re not going anywhere <G>
LF (your fearless leader)
All kudos are well deserved, our dear F.L. This is like a community. One only has to check out the long-running thread where we are asked to show what we look like. Kinda embarrassing for some of us, but fun. Keep up the good work, LadyFisher.
Chuck
LF,
Just to corroborate. Are you saying that you know for sure that FFM is, in fact, gone? Or at least their website?
Thanks,
Steven
If you go to www.flyfisherman.com you get a “Flyfisherman Is Undergoing Maintenance” notice and then are re-directed to a page with a few articles; forums are still down. Same deal with Florida Sportsman.
Regards,
Scott
Yep. Just saw this.
Wasn’t the case when I originally put the query to LF.
Steven,
I think it was late last night when they came back. It’ll be interesting to see if they’ve “improved” the site again; the last upgrade wasn’t too good.
Regards,
Scott
I don’t disagree but I believe the “slow death” of the board began long before the last update
A couple of years ago they had a series of excellent fly swaps going on. They just dropped them all. When asked why? the response was “they don’t make us any money.” We weren’t doing them at that time and several of our readers asked if we would. I did a little research and found out the swaps had a terrific following, so we started doing them here as a service to our readers. They have been VERY popular.
Steven,
One instance comes to mind that, to me, really illustrated the change in philosophy there. Hans Weilenmann posted a series of pics of new flies that were, as usual, outstanding; however, the pictures couldn’t display properly because the new page format they were using obscured parts of the flies with text and advertising. Despite repeated complaints from a number of members (me included), nothing was done and Hans stopped posting; tell me that’s not a tragic loss?
Regards,
Scott
Hans did post here at one time, I think he thought he would get more exposure over there - which is not true, we get several times the readers plus I believe from more countries (127 at last count). Maybe he will come back here S
Which means they didn’t care about the Forum members, only money. So, they lost legions of members, couldn’t get as much ad revenue, and went belly-up. Not exactly good business decisions.
Chuck
I won’t speak for Hans, but I once wrote that I’d join any board where Hans posted.
Funny you should mention that; just saw that Hans started posting over on the Rocky Mountain Fly board: http://rockymtnfly.com/forums/index.php?act=idx
Hadn’t seen much from him in a while.
Regards,
Scott
It was more than the format change that cost them a lot of active users, and is a good example of why FAOL is wise to forbid posts on politics. They had an off topic board that had liberals and conservatives fairly equally represented. Then one or more of the moderators started banning conservatives for the slightest of reason while letting the liberals go unpunished for similar things. That led to the creation of another board and a lot of hard feelings.
Hey Oldfrat,
I thought about it, but I wasn’t going to go there. 
I refer to this in my head as the “Great Schism.”
How you doing?
If I was doing any better, I’d have to be twins! Thanks, Steven.