The Demise of EZBoard

For years, EZBoard turned into a network that supplied fairly cheap and clean to maintain forums for managers. Virtually everyone should sign in, layout, and format a domain and invite their friends to participate. Indeed, a number of the most important boards on the net are built upon EZBoard. Unfortunately, a current system-wide hacking assault has destroyed the corporation's popularity and sent many managers packing. Let's study the venerable community and the fatal flaw that has toppled the company from its perch.

At one time EZBoard boasted over 14,000 web communities. Many had been started via individuals seeking a discussion discussion board for their favored topics, while others have been started by means of business human beings along with myself. The motives businesses were interested in EZBoard had been two-fold:

1. We have been not informed enough about PHP to create and manage a domain for ourselves, and

2. We did no longer need to go through the cost of web hosting our website online on a dedicated server and, alternatively, used EZBoard's full-size bank of computers to residence our communities.

Admittedly, purpose #1 turned into a large a part of why I caught with EZBoard. Sure, I knew approximately vBulletin and related forums however buying a license from them and managing the website online on a committed server became a highly-priced alternative, in particular in view that at one time I was dealing with more than a dozen boards! I could cope with the variable prices incurred from being with EZBoard by way of paying my subscription costs on either a quarterly, semi-yearly or even yearly foundation. I doubt that I dished out greater than $500-600 in any given 12 months, so it changed into cost powerful for my business.

I need to have acknowledged that EZBoard changed into not pretty up to the challenge whilst their machine close down for numerous days in Spring 2004 after  what turned into imagined to be a easy gadget-wide replace of the boards. A few hours of down time changed into prolonged to several days and discussion board administrators were left inside the darkish for all of that time. More importantly, many discussion board participants assumed the worst and peppered many an administrator's inbox with queries. Those days were no longer amusing; EZBoard did recover and gave managers credit exceeding the number of days they had been down. Still, in case you trusted AdSense sales  like I do, you lost large time.

History become to copy itself on May 30, 2005, while a mentioned outside assault via hackers delivered down EZBoard altogether. Yes, the boards were nevertheless working, however most of the people of messages have been long gone and any new ones also began to disappear. EZBoard admitted almost right now they were hacked and have been operating diligently to repair the 9000 forums affected. Soon, but, the information came out that a whole lot of their backup files were hacked as properly. Forum managers puzzled if EZBoard kept all their files on susceptible servers or if the assault become accomplished internally. Messages from EZBoard control have been vague "inside the hobby of protection" so nobody knew for positive.

As the times exceeded and forum managers found out that the restoral method would best be partial and take weeks to accomplish, a consistent circulate of managers began to hit the personal home page web sites to look about shifting their boards. With trepidation I visited the PHPBB2 web page knowing that my skillsets had been confined in this region. However, I quickly found out that this precise program become open source -- in impact, loose -- and the Flash tutorials explained the entirety surely and efficiently. So, in one evening I set up the brand new site, transferred some files, and gave it a release.

The best part? In the 2 years considering I was with EZBoard my web hosting organisation for web pages had upgraded their site sufficient a good way to residence my message boards. So, rather of having internet pages on one server and my boards on any other, I ought to house them together. Most importantly, I would not ought to depend on EZBoard's mistaken backup plans and could backup all the documents myself.

I still have one EZBoard network and I may also preserve it, for now. It  is a small, however very well set up where it's far "sitting" and I misplaced handiest 4 or 5 documents below the assault. Two of my websites I transferred to PHP and  others I determined to delete as they have been slower performers. Fortunately, I had gotten rid of numerous smaller, no performing web sites in advance. Still, I felt the pain of EZBoard's hacking incident and decided the time to move was now.

So, what's the future of EZBoard? That is tough to tell. They are promising a prime improve which might encompass the ability allowing managers to returned up their personal sites. That might be a very good pass. However, the administrative fees with EZBoard now exceed what managers pay with many fashionable net hosting agencies. Few sites are big sufficient to require a dedicated server, therefore many managers will likely keep in mind making the move away.

I become two times bitten from EZBoard and did not have fun with a third hit, hence my  largest websites are actually with PHPBB2. The flow turned into time consuming, but the new board has many more advanced capabilities as compared to EZBoard. Sure, I actually have more administrative activities

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