The End Is Near?

I want to give everyone a heads up that all signs are pointing to the end of this website some time within the next year. Without going into too many details, this is based on a combination of issues: 1) lower traffic (due to competing community forums experiences such as Facebook groups, Discord, reddit, etc.), 2) significantly reduced ad revenues, and 3) unsupported legacy technology that is getting harder and harder to update. On top of that, it's probably no secret that I have had "theremin fatigue" for years and thus haven't been a great steward of the site.

This is not a cry for help, but more of a warning that after nearly 30 years, it is highly likely this grand experiment will come to an end. 

I am investigating ways to make an archive of the forums available in some manner... perhaps even just a huge .zip file of text files. It might not be well formatted, but at least the raw information we've built up over the years would be available for someone to clean up and process further.

Please let me know if you have any other thoughts/ideas/requests while I ponder the next steps.

Jason,

For 20 years you contributed a wonderful service for individuals sharing music, technology & personalities. It saddens me we are losing touch with the actual Theremin Phenomenon to modern day imitation. My focus now is beating the Stock Market, where too many people are gullible, willing to pay big money for make-believe or to just be taken advantage of. My own stock approach after 20 years is private.

My theremin website is 1 gig in size so Theremin World must be over 100 gigs?

Jason, I thank you for your years of service, remember the TW T-Shirt give-away long ago?

Christopher
RS Theremin
oldtemecula

Jason,
   I don’t do Facebook, or any other sites, but go to Theremin World everyday.  Would really hate to see it disappear.  If there is a way to help you in anyway to keep the site up please let the community know.  I don’t have extensive experience but would help if I can in any way.  The sense of community this site has would be impossible to replicate and I believe would be worth a great deal to maintain.  Thanks for all you have done.  I just came to the Theremin 3 or 4 years ago and missed out on the early years of the site, but Theremin World was a big part of what made me come to love the Theremin.  
     Thanks again and let me know if I can assist you in any way to keep Theremin World going.  Your efforts are greatly appreciated.  Thanks again

Thanks for the kind words, and it's always great to hear feedback from people who enjoy the site and use it regularly!

As an experiment, I have created a Patreon link with 2 tiers. I cannot offer gifts/benefits other than my deepest thanks just yet, but perhaps if enough people join we can make something happen such as another run of t-shirts or other merch. I'm not going to advertise this broadly on the site at this point because I don't want to come across as panhandling, but since a few people have reached out privately and suggested this, I'll drop this here for them. 

If enough people sign up, I will investigate adding thank you benefits and merch to the tiers. For now, there are just 2 tiers: Good Vibrations at $5/month and Great Vibrations at $10/month.

https://patreon.com/thereminworld

As always, thank you for visiting Theremin World and being a part of our community!

Hi Jason,

Like the others, I'm also coming here everyday and I would hate to see Theremin World disappear.

Thanks a lot for your work. Just subscribed ! This is my humming bird contribution.

"On top of that, it's probably no secret that I have had "theremin fatigue" for years and thus haven't been a great steward of the site."  - Jason

I really don't want this site to disappear.  Social media sites are a really poor substitute for long term conversation / information storage and retrieval.  FB for instance is a clunky and baffling scrolling off the edge of the world.  Kinda showing my age, but Discord isn't much better, with an infantile interface to boot.  I don't trust any of the commercial sites to not misuse / lose my data.

But the last thing I want to do is encourage anyone to continue doing something they're burned out on.  Jason, you must feel like you've got a tiger by the tail, and you have my deepest sympathy.  Web hosting is rather thankless, and weirdly rather expensive.

Maybe freeze it or archive it in a way that allows access to the old material but doesn't allow new posts?  I suppose the Internet Archive does this automatically, but it doesn't seem to archive the fora.  Any chance you could hand it off to someone else who might do as excellent a job as you have done, lo all of these years?

Thank you for all you've done to keep interest in Theremins alive!  World Thereminization or bust!

Thank you for subscribing André!

Dewster, thanks for understanding, and I agree most social media sites are terrible as long-term historical records. I think the vast majority of people probably just want a quick answer to their question and don't need/care for the long-term record though. That doesn't make it worthless, just worth less to more people.

I'm keen to try to find a cheaper web host and solution for the forums that will survive longer. If anyone reading this has experience setting up forums on any of the current blogging/forum platforms, please let me know because I'd love to pick your brain on options.

Another way folks can help out is to give some love to our affiliates by clicking through to shop on their sites. Per their requirements I'm not really supposed to call that out specifically, but it does help the site a bit and helps them even more.

Thank you, Jason, very much for the years of hosting and support for the site and the forum! I found a lot of technical and historical background, inspiration, ideas. There are lot of accesses on posts here.

But today, web hosting is an almost impossible task for a private individual. Since the beginning of the www part of the internet, there has been a constant struggle to attract unique users, overcome limitations and fulfill more and more legal requirements. At some point the admins and supporters are exhausted, an end is inevitable. Hope an archive of this unique site will remain available.

I tried the HTTrack Website Copier software. So desired posts with links and graphics can be stored locally.

Not a single message during the last 10 days.
Jason, I'm afraid you killed this forum !

If anyone reading this has experience setting up forums on any of the current blogging/forum platforms, please let me know

Yes I do have the experience of setting up and running a forum.
It is about electric cars and specifically the Renault Zoé.
It has been running for 11 years and I have been an admin for the last 7 years.
https://renault-zoe.forumpro.fr/

We have about 7 000 members who posted about 430 000 messages.
An unlimited number of images can be hosted. I don't know how many images are hosted since the principle is that each member has an individual illimited storage space.

This platform is totally free and easy to run.
You just have a stripe of advertisement on top of each page, which is not annoying at all.
After some time, you just dont pay attention to it.

I'm sure there are similar services in the USA that could be used.
The problem is to migrate the present forum to the new one.
I do not think it's even possible at all, or probably with a lot of work and time.

Please contact me for any further details.

(Edit : Oops, dewster made me lie ! )

How did I miss this thread?
Even though other media are talking about Theremin these days, Thereminworld is like a house we keep coming back to.

It must be a lot of administrative work and I can only understand that at some point you want to move on.
I just hope that TW can continue in another form.

Anyway, thank you Jason for maintaining this site for so many years.