30 Years!
 

I have to note that 30 years ago today I registered the name winnipesaukee.com and began to build a crude site as I learned HTML and the workings of the WWW. I had just sold our house in Moultonboro (a big mistake) and thought working on a Lakes Region webpage would keep me connected to the area. It sure did. The first feature was a series of aerial pictures that are still available here. A few years later I figured out how to add a forum and other interactive features that are still available today. For 24 years the WeirsCAM provided live views from its perch on the Winnipesaukee Pier. Our Forumfests around the lake were great fun.

It has been a great hobby for 30 years and has created many ups and downs for me. Mostly ups. Unfortunately, for financial and technical reasons I have some decisions to make about its future.

A sincere thanks to everyone that participates and contributes to the site. Some of you have been regular visitors for 25 years or more!

Don

It must take a ton of time but I hope you keep it going. I would miss it. Thanks for all your hard work for all those years!!

Oh come on ........ you will have NO PROBLEM keep'n this forum going for another THIRTY YEARS ....... no problem ...... you can do it ...... ho-ho-ho!... :D

Thanks Don I have been on for over 21 years and got the pleasure of meeting you at Peppers

Thank you....I've been on this forum a very long time. It's a very helpful web site. Again, thank you!!!

I pray that the forum doesn’t go away. I totally get, Don, that you can’t do it forever but I hope there are good options to keep it going. Perhaps a current forum member would be interested in picking it up with training and transition under you??? Only when you are ready of course 20 or so years from now :liplick:

Such an enjoyable and helpful resource. I hope you can keep us updated on plans/options moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you
 

For everything you've done and continue to do for us. If circumstances dictate you need to stop this then so be it and best of luck going forward.

Thanks for all you do.
 

Webmaster, thanks for all you have done and continue to do for all of us.

I have 22.5 years and counting on this wonderful website.

Dave

If you could use some financial assistance to keep things running just let us know.Many would be happy to support this site

Finding this forum when we purchased at the lake was priceless—I've received so much great information!

Thanks for all you've done.

Sent from my SM-S931U using Tapatalk

Way to go Don! Thanks for the years of hard work moderating some hot topics!

Woodsy

Thank you
 

We bought our island property in 2010 and I became a member of the forum in 2011 and it has become a site that I visit almost daily. This site helps get us through the long New England winters where we can, for a minute, forget about the snow and cold outside and count the days to ice out and warmer weather. (Don't get me wrong, I like winter too).

So much great content on here for everyone

Sincere thanks to you for your vision

Good idea.

Don: I have used the top banner "Donate" button in the past that uses Pay Pal. Recently, however, I get a can not process message and the donation does not go through even though I get a thanks.

Alan

Hi Don,

Wow that was a great investment and learning experience back then. The .com craze and bubble investments.

Well now we are in a growing bubble and everyone is learning LLM
https://github.com/rasbt/LLMs-from-scratch/tree/main

Life just keep getting more interesting and things evolve as history repeats itself.

To many more years of learning something new !!
:)

Lake Forum means so much to us all
 

Let us know what is needed to support this.

A lake visitor all my life, and all my parents' and my grandparents' and my great grandmother's life... I check the website everyday. I look for weather, for stories, for interesting wild life reports, for those glorious pictures. Even when I can't physically get to NH, I am planning for it! I want to be on top of lake and NH issues. I love everything Winnipesaukee.com represents.

Thank you for 30 years! I hope there can be more.:)

Donate not working
 

I get the same message. It thanks me for my donation, but Paypal gives an error message saying the donation cannot be processed.

Thank you…
 

…..for all you’ve done. I smile every time I see the old threads about the Forum Fests.

It’s been a large, happy part of my life for over 20 years.

Webmaster
 

Many thanks!!

I too found this place and have enjoyed tons of great interactions! I'd really hate to see it go, it is one of the few remaining true forums left that I visit regularly! I enjoy these so much better than the groups on the other social media platforms and it brings me back to memories of being on my various car forums over the years. I made friends from those that have now been in my life for over 20 years and our kids have become friends!

Hopefully we can come together and keep this alive for a while longer, let us know what we can do!!

Thank you for everything you do.

Thanks
 

Thank you for creating a great site!!

Don, I'm sure you can find a buyer for this fantastic forum you have created and maintained. Although i don't post as much as I used to, i have actively followed threads both new and old here. Thank you for all your hard work, not only for the technical stuff but keeping this a place that encouraged debate but most always knew when to put the lid on things before they boiled over.

Best Wishes my friend,

Pineedles
Jeff

30 Years
 

Incredible. It is such a wealth of information about the lake for us people who are situated in Mass. My association with the site has been like an addiction for 18 years, as the family property vaporized in West Alton this keeps me attached. Don you have done an outstanding with the site, thank you.

Thanks, Don. "Lake.cc" has been a much-needed lifeline to the Lake for us for years, and your efforts have been greatly appreciated.

Don't all yell at me at the same time but.....would it be worthwhile recreating a "group page" on Facebook. There already are plenty Lakes Region groups on there now, as many of you know. However, this group is unique for getting good, quality information. I'd be willing to create the group and start it on FB if there is interest.

Not a bad idea….Winnisquam has one

Those Fakebook groups are littered with bots and trolls!

I'm on here because I want nothing to do with facebook. I hope things get better it is a great place to get good information.

They have one Winni Fakebook group that's just for complaints, I'm sure that's very popular! :laugh:

FB Groups
 

NO NO NO! As one example, I Boat has been taken over by a couple of photographers who don't even post pictures of boats to push their sales efforts. There is no control. The FB format and FB groups are overloaded with irrelevant ads and postings. FB should stick to their original business: cute pictures of cats. On this Forum, I can track info and easily search, or find postings that are a bit in the past. Hope we can keep this format. Thanks for a great job, Don.

Fact. Facebook groups have killed a lot of special interest forums like this one but it's a horribly worse experience. There is no way to search for specific topics and even if it's members only huge amounts of posting are off topic and the whole thing becomes a mess.

Double agree. Bots, Facebook AI, etc. have all interfered with the core goals of social media.

Those Facebook groups almost always devolve over time—as Descant pointed out, the iBoat Facebook page is crap these days. Over 20k members with a handful of photo posts a day. It's "jumped the shark," for sure.

As a Facebook group admin myself, it's really difficult to maintain control—this forum always seemed to do a solid job of self-regulation.

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Enough on this topic! I'm glad everyone didn't yell at me at the same time...you all took turns LOL

Maybe Don is like Mark Twain in that the rumors of my demise is greatly exaggerated

Thank you Don! I have been addicted to this page for over 25 years! Easily my fix for everything Lake Winn, which I need mentally, hundreds of times per year. Thank you for your creativity and hard work keeping this page humming.
All the best!

I am unsure of what is needed to host a site like this, but willing to learn if it means keeping it alive! I am sure that we could get some people together to keep it going!

Has Don actually said that this is the end of the forum? Or does he just need some extra help and financial aid? I’m sure we could figure something out.

I've been on this forum since 2002!!! I'm all in for helping manage the site but I'm not sure how or what I can do.

I do volunteer admin on a couple other forums. 90% of it is just deleting spam and banning spammers. There is a little bit of referee if members get in a tiff, but not much of that.

Running the actual site is pretty simple once it's going, normally they are hosted on a commercial platform that takes care of the server updates and such. It is not a huge amount of work but the problem is it never lets up since it's a 24/7 operation

the amount of spam that can show up on a site like this is astounding.

You're hired.......

no thanks. I'm retiring in a couple months and not taking on anything with any time commitment. I have been 24/7 IT for many years and had my fill. Happy to give opinions and tips though