By Christ...

[Albannach]

It's quiet in here.

I realise I've not been active for a while and things may be on a downturn. But I've never, even in the forum's worst times, seen things as quiet as this. I'm curious as to why this is, given that right now, there are 130 visitors and 2 members online. 132 folk a couple of years ago would have generated a fair amount of traffic on the site.

I'd suggest the draconian restrictions on what can be done with a basic (free) membership has a lot to do with it. But that's just my thoughts...

[Albannach]

And almost 6 minutes to create a post is ridiculous...

[Admin]

Probably because many use the Facebook group.

As for 6 mins to create a post, yes that is ridiculous. It only takes me a sec but will take a look

You may have experienced slow posting when we were having server issues but it should be running quick now

[Admin]

Also note the site was down for over a week due to hacking issue. See the updates page

[Admin]

Right. Just following up. Created a topic. Then posted a few messages to it, then deleted the entire thing. Did the entire thing in 30 seconds.

It may have taken 6 minutes for a month or two whilst we were having server issues due to being hacked from China. But it is deffo resolved now. See the "updates" page for more info. Yes, taking 6 minutes to create a post and how slow it was is deffo crazy. But there were reasons for that, outside of our control, and those have been sorted and mitigated, after a huge amount of hard work. And I mean HUGE. I had one of my web developers spending over a week and a half on it, with several trips to the data centre, at a huge amount of cost.

As for the "draconian restrictions". I take strong objection to this. There are no "restrictions"; only "benefits" for those who choose to support the site. It costs money to run the site (a fortune recently with all the labour and cash we have had to put in) and it is only fair we give benefits to people who choose to support the site.

Furthermore, the benefits you get for being a premium member have been the same for many years and nothing has been taken away from free members since I took over the site.

I am also not going to debate how much it costs to run the site as I've had previous "nay sayers" tell me it costs nothing when I've seen significant money leave my company bank account to run it (I own and run the web design company that now owns this site).

I have no plans to take away "benefits" from premium members for their loyalty by giving them away to everyone. You'll find that the majority of other forums do the same thing.

You can find out more about premium membership at https://hiluxsurf.co.uk/premium-membership

I am a hugely dedicated Surf owner ( I have a gen 2 and gen 1 ) and massively dedicated to the community and keeping the site alive. Please join in on the POSITIVE community here, rather than introduce negativity.