THANKS BILL and my last email to a poor run site

[Kurt L]

Hi.
I would like to say again, thanks for the wonderfull site Bill!
I was looking around yesterday am and found what I thought would also be a nice site predator masters web site well I have tried over 24 hrs to get signed up and join and emails and I still have not got a reply.

Like the old saying :don't know what ya had till it's gone!

Makes me more thankfull for this great site Bill made and hard work he puts into it.I have NEVER sent a pm or email to Bill or Tim or ANYONE on this site that has not got back to me.plus it was only minutes not days to get a reply.

THANK YOU BILL AND EVERONE BEHIND THE SHOW

Also my last email to them I just sent.

Hi.
Well it has been over 24 hours that I have working on getting logged in.
I have sent emails to different people etc to try to get signed in.
Not one email of concern or help has been sent back to me.
I keep getting a not approved yet message,but also noticed it said if it has been over 24hrs since you started a new account and sign in it will be deleted.
I was exited to find your site and get logged in but that's gone now after 24 hours of emails and trying to log in and not one reply back of help.
If it takes that long to get approved  it must be to high tech and to high classed for me.thanks anyway but I have no use to belong with a bunch of snobs that can not reply to help emails,and I will be the better man and
Say sorry for wasting everyone's time for my emails and trying to join your site.
I will stay with the nice people at greybeard outdoors. You should come over some time and see how a great web site is run http://www.gboreloaded.com/

Kurt.

[Matt]

Kurt, just to let you know what it takes...

It takes Tim and myself to keep the forums running smooth...
It takes GB, Tim and myself to keep the spammers at bay...
It takes Tim and myself to keep the server ticking along in the background...
It takes ALL GBO moderators to keep the forums clean of BS...
And it takes ALL the GBO members to make GBO the Great Hangout it is...

Oh did I mention it takes GB to keep me in line... 

After 12 years at this GB and I have about got it figured out now and I think time makes all the difference in the world when it comes to a forum site... the longer you are at it the better it becomes... If you got good people running the site and great members posting on it...

Thanks for your Support
Matt

[Graybeard]

So far as I know I've never visited Predator Masters site and have no clue who owns or runs it. I have heard several positive comments regarding it over the years posted here but how easy or difficult it is to get registered and authorized to use a site sure can make a difference in how a prospective new member feels about one.

These days for some reason the spammers are hitting all forum sites with an intensity I've never before seen. Even our small Bigfoot Study forum site gets from eight to fifteen such bogus registrations per day often more than even GBO gets. Site owners really can't just toss the site open to such folks and expect legitimate members to hang around. Some how you MUST weed them out and the faster the better.

These spammers post offers to sell various drugs, electronics, tickets of all sorts and yeah even porn so if you are trying to run a clean site as we do here at GBO catching them early is imperative. Still I can't always be online watching so I've chosen to let new members complete the registration them selves if they get the e-mail which now some can't as at least a couple of major ISPs have banned e-mails from us due to the hackers that hit us awhile back.

So I review and manually complete registrations continuously when I'm online as does Tim. Each day we have to either ban or just delete several such spammers. Some times they'll get in on their own and post before we catch them but thanks to members watching and notifying us and moderators deleting such posts we're able to keep a pretty good handle on it.

Smaller sites with less support staff might feel a need to manually review and approve all registrations to prevent the spammers antics. I tried to register at such a small site last year and it did seem to take forever to get approval and like you I gave up before the registration was approved. It just furthered my goal and determination to keep GBO as it is. Now at BigfootStudy.com I do manually approve each but do so at least two to three times daily. It's rare we get a genuine new member there however and for the most part I'm just deleting spammer registrations.

Running a site is a LOT of work and the larger the site the more work. I'm glad you find GBO to be as good as you do. I can feel for folks trying to keep up a site these days as it's a real chore.

[Kurt L]

Like I said Thanks!
I have no real clue about the work to run a site for sure.
But if your are not logged in by 24 hours your entry is dumped=I never got a reply or anything to get logged in.

IT took about half an hour and Bill and Matt both jumped on my post.
not 24 + hours.
That's the difference between a good site that people care and one that don't.
Yes we have smart a$$ people that don't care on this site from time to time and I would say 99% of everyone will bend over backwards to help you on this site.
I now value my time hear and the privilege to use this site much more,it is not just any site it is a great site.Thanks to Bill and everyone that keeps it going right down to all the great members.

[Glanceblamm]

So far as I know I've never visited Predator Masters site and have no clue who owns or runs it. I have heard several positive comments regarding it over the years posted here but how easy or difficult it is to get registered and authorized to use a site sure can make a difference in how a prospective new member feels about one.

Sounds like a site that I should know about but it is not really needed (for myself) with the Predator & Varmint hunters forum right here at Graybeard Outdoors.
Kurt We can & do move a little slow at this site but I believe that we are much more seasoned than the much younger crowd say at nodakoutdoors.com
I will also check out varmintal.com now & again for some tips...gotta admire this guy as he hands out buisness cards (free predator control) to the farmers & ranchers in his area

I see that you have got a start here on the Foxpro file conversion thread & hope that you will continue to post as you can probably teach us some new variations for sure.

[dw06]

.

Oh did I mention it takes GB to keep me in line... 

Thats the part that really keeps GB busy, we still don't know how he does it!!

[Matt]

Cattle Prod most of the time...    The rest of the time he just slaps me around like a red headed step child... figuratively speaking of course... as I can run faster than he can... 

Matt

[Moss88hunter]

I think I signed up for predator masters a couple of years ago. Then I found this site and completely forgot about the site until this post! Currently I only post on this site and tnducks.com. And like everyone else has said thanks GB, Matt, and Tim for everything that you do to keep this site running like a well oiled machine!!! It is a little off topic but how did yall meet and get the idea to set up the site?

Evan

[williamlayton]

GB didn't meet with nobody. He had nothing too do and Faye was constantly nippin at him to keep him from underfoot.
She enlisted the help of her son, Matt, too help out.
The rest just fell into place.
It is a great success story, born of boredom and zeal, and really far thinking.
Now, I am sure we will hear the rest of the story and I hope Faye gets her story in too.
Blessings

[Kurt L]

That would be neat to read how it all began

[Graybeard]

Faye may or may not comment dunno.

Who met who? I met Faye at Kroger Grocery Store where I was working as a bagger carrying out groceries for income. The year was 1964 I believe. She was washing windows on vehicles in the parking lot for a school trip.

She asked if she could wash my car windows and I asked her for a date. We both responded with a yes. On September 3, 1965 were were married. So that's the who met who when where part.

Matt is number two of these sons from the marriage.

When he was still in single digits of age he seemed to develop some interest in electronics and computers which were just beginning to be available. We got him a Radio Shack computer for Christmas I think then the following Christmas bought him a PC XT. That started him on a path that has become his livlihood all his life.

I was working at Anniston Army Depot as Chief of the Supply Quality Control Division and they were pushing computers on me big time and I was resisting about as much as they were pushing them on me. I eventually retired at the end of September 1995 with that as one of several reasons I had to take an early retirement at age 50.

Not too long after that Matt began pushing me to let him build me a computer which he finally did. He then got to pushing me to go online which I also resisted. Finally I asked him what the heck is on the internet that would interest me. The whole world was his response. I said SHOW ME.

All I had seen him do to that point was chat which held no interest to me. He found the websites for Remington and Winchester I think and another site or two that held at least some interest to me so I agreed to give it a try. He installed a really slow modem in my computer and set it up for me to use his online account to see what I thought of the internet.

I messed around and found a few sites with links to other sites and eventually found my way to such early forum sites as: The Coffee Shop, Hunt Info, Shooters and SPAV. I'm sure others existed even then but those seemed to be the largest and most visited of the day. I became active on all of them.

At some point along the line I think perhaps after viewing Varmint Al's site I decided I should have a site of my own.

Matt's question to me was what do you want on "your site". I said I dunno perhaps a bit about who I am and what my interests are and maybe some forums if you can manage that. He said who the hell cares who you are or what your interests are? I said dunno really but my posts seem to be pretty well read on the sites I visit so perhaps someone cares.

He set the site up and that basically is what it was in the early days. There was a page that introduced me and told what my interests were and what sites I hung out at when online. I then wrote up some stories and posted them to the Campfire Tales section on the Home Page which then really was all there was to the site. Several other things were added as time past.

Matt found an outfit called Brave Net that offered free forums on their site using their software. We set up the inintial forum using that but it was very limiting in that it gave us a maximum of 200 posts I think it was or maybe it was 200 threads but I think it was posts. They clipped the oldes when we reached or exceeded that. It caused the starting post of threads to be deleted and follow on posts to remain. Clearly that was not gonna fly.

At that time we were operating on free space provided by my ISP which was WWISP in B'ham. We bought our own domain Graybeardoutdoors.com and rented space on a shared server with who I don't even remember. Matt wrote some software to operate our forums on and GBO was launched for real some time in 1997.

To enter the site you clicked on the front door of a photo of my home taken on rare snowy day in Alabama. When you clicked it and went to the Home Page Amazing Grace played on your speakers. Folks loved it and came in droves. We've been growning exponetially ever since. That was the beginning of the rules you must live with today. By clicking that door of my actual home you entered my "home on the internet" so to speak and just as if you entered my actual home I expect of you certain behavior and adherence to the rules I establish. Just as I'd kick you from my home here if you didn't agree to my house rules I run the site the same way you follow my rules or you don't stay at this site. The rules established then are basically the rules today tho they have evolved and expaned a bit as time and circumstances have dictated.

This month already we've had almost 82,000 UNIQUE visitors to the forums alone. Over a quarter million visitors have come to the forums tho we can't verify more than that 82,000 or so are unique different visitors. We've delivered over 105 gigs of data transfer already this month.

We now own our own servers two of them in fact both have the capability to run around 1000 different sites should we wish to have that many. We host several other sites on our servers and offer free forums to others with basically unlimited data useage if they wish. I think we currently own 50 or more domains and I've lost count really of how many different sites we are running at this time and more are in the works as we speak.

Matt and Heather are branching out and building sites and hosting them on our servers and selling the content to others or at least are trying to.

Today we have individual forums on this site that probably get more traffic than all the general hunting forum sites combined had when I first went online. That's the story as I see it.

[DalesCarpentry]

Great story GB. I kind of thought Matt was related to you some how. I kind of thought Heather might of been your daughter and Matt was your son in law. Now I know he is your son. I sure hope he got your wife's looks. This really is a great site and thanks for it. Dale

[Kurt L]

great story G.B. thanks for the time to share it with us.

[Matt]

Yep that is pretty much how it all got started... of course when I put that first site together for him it was more or less a joke to me. I never thought that "Graybeards Home Page" would have become the "GBO" it is today. I guess it was just ignorance due to age seeing as I was only 24 or 25 and just could not fathom that so many people would visit such a site. At that time the internet was still a "young geek" based medium so you can see why I was sceptical.

After setting up the Bravenet forums I saw that there was some interest so became more serious about it and I wrote a BBS system like WWW threads to handle our forums which for years worked great for the most part. The software went through many changes over the years and towards the end we implemented a member registration system and a database to store the posts instead of storing each one as a statice file. But at the same time Graybeard Outdoors was mostly visited for "Graybeards Links List" and not the forums. The traffic breakdown was around 50% links traffic 25% campfire tales traffic and 25% forums traffic. The links list was huge and covered many many categories from guns to cars and a little bit of everything in between.

Also towards the end of days for my software we implemented banners on the site. At first we added a few for companies that GB liked in hopes that they would see we were sending them traffic and take paying ads. Soon after that GB started our "Product Testing/Review Program" and in what seemed like no time at all GB was getting products from all the big boys to test and publish his reviews. That was pretty much the end of "Graybeards Links List" as it took a lot of time to maintain and GB and I did not have it to spare.

The forums were well on their way and we had around 30 or so I think but after losing our entire forums I talked GB into letting me switch the software to phpBB and the format we have now. Over the last 12 years we have gone from a small personal site with a few stories and handgun info hosted on GB's ISP webspace to owning our own collocated servers and running 30+ other sites as well as hosting quite a few sites for other people not affiliated with GBO. I used to track the time I spent on this venture as my time was valuable seeing as I was self employed running a computer sales and repair shop. I quit counting some where around 30k hours. That was a good 5 or 6 years ago now and I am sure I am up to 50k or more now. I can even remember a time when GB read every single post that was made but those days have long since past too.

For years now I have wanted GBO to evolve into more but have just not found the right combinations to make it work. We have tried Auctions and at one time we even owned our own google like search engine... that was before google and was geared towards outdoor activities and related information thus the name "OutdoorSearch.com". It was dropped a year or so later as people liked the links list better and used it more.

Our auctions have never got off the ground any of the times we tried them nor did a Classifieds System we tried for a few days. We tried a GBO eZine but never manged to release our first issue due to me not being able to make time to compile and publish it. We had a staff of editors, writers, researchers and I think still have the member group even today. I would love to bring that back along with the product testing and review programs as I had a lot of fun working on those programs. I am sure with our member base now we could pull it off... at that time I think we only had a few thousand members and so much of the workload fell on me to bring it all together. We might even try it again some day...

For those who have been around since the early days I know you can remember the growth and change... did any of you ever think we would grow into the GBO of today? It has been a long and wild journey over the years and I hope it will continue for many more God and government willing... GB and I have agreed for years it is not us that make GBO it is our members... Just remember we have close to 30k and of them a hundred or so are the mods who help keep this site clean and family friendly. So often they are overlooked but with out them GB, Tim and myself could not maintain GBO as it is today... So to all GBO members Thank You for your support of GBO by means of posts and donations and to all GBO Mods Thank You for your help in making GBO what it is today as without EVERYONE collectively GBO would not be this great site we have today.

Matt

[dw06]

Wow, what a great story, thanks for GB and Matt taking the time to tell it!! And I hope Faye shares her comments also 

[Moss88hunter]

Wow that is a great story. Has anyone ever told yall that you are geniuses???

Evan