I hate to say it, but I've got bad news for the SPS fans

[Serval]

Hello,

I'm sad to say that today became clear that the curtain will fall for Simmers Paint Shop.
There are two reasons for this.
One: it is becoming too expensive to run this site (I'll go into this later in this post)
Two: I have too little time to manage the site. Even though moderation doesn't take much time, and most in the communition behave themselves well. The reason is that half of my time I work outside the country and anyway far (especially measured in time) from home. This adds some 60% of time to my working week.

Why is it too expensive? SPS is hosted on one server with Nederlandseluchtvaart.nl both are sites which contain many images and other big files, and thus generate quite some data. So. the cheapest hosting solutions are not an option. To make up for the costs, I use Google ads and donations. The software I used bevcame older and older. Some parts were no longer supported and blocked security updates of the forum software. So, the site lost some popular parts, but also the friendly URL's we used had to be disabled. This meant a drop of 60% of the visitors for both sites. Simply because people were no longer landing on the proper page or even at the site.
Updating the software (as I recently did) requires new licenses and a new server, which increased the costs even more.

But SPS is allready updated right?
True, and the effects of this effort do look positive. But I also need to be carefull, because holidays and recent publicity also generate temporary traffic.
And nederlandseluchtvaart.nl has not been updated yet. And to cover the costs of the server, both sites need one another, since each generates about half of the income and half of the traffic, measured over the last eight years.
And still this income of both sites is only good to cover 35% of the costs I have to make to maintain them. The upgrade plans, and connection to Facebook and Twitter were meant to increase this by drawing more visitors and to lift penalties Google makes.

But a series of incidents over at nederlandseluchtvaart.nl made me decide to close down the site today. This means that the income from that site has gone per immediately. And this also means that even less of the costs to maintain the site are covered.
This leaves me no other choice then to ask the ISP to cancel the contract for the server. And this means that SPS also needs to close down.

I cannot tell when the server will be switched off, but I will leave SPS open until that day has come. I assume it will be within a month. This leaves you the chance to pickup the resources of the site, which you like to have for yourself.

Leaves me to thank you all for supporting this site for over ten years. A
nd I like to invite you to join the SPS community over at Facebook. At least this givves you the chance to stay in touch with eachother. The link for the community is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/simmerspaintshop/

[adlabs6]

Sorry to hear this.

Thanks Serval, for the past 10 years of providing and maintaining Simmers Paint Shop. And thanks to the many members here at SPS who I have come to know over those years. Thanks for the comments and suggestions many of you have posted on my projects. While lately I have not posted as many of my graphics projects here on SPS, it's not because of inactivity! I've been working hard to focus my graphics and art projects into my own small business for the past three years.

My current ongoing hobby project thread here at SPS is still my 1967 GT350. You who are interested can follow the progress here:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...0_build#UNREAD

I was just about to post my latest progress update (from the past few weekends of work) here at SPS, when I saw this thread.

Thanks again to everyone, and hope to keep in touch.

[Clint Mitchell]

Sorry to hear that. I suppose that I am not alone when I state that it was SPS that almost single handedly set me on my current career path in historical aviation related technical illustrations. Sadly these things happen. I run my own forum myself and no matter how cheap storage solutions become, these prices are rarely reflected in server storage costs. Perhaps this might be an opportunity to shift the most popular areas of the site and resources to a dedicated Facebook page? I know you already have one, but much of the colour resources etc and tutorials could perhaps be compiled into downloadable pdf's or simply copied and pasted to FB posts?

Sadly that takes work and it's difficult to find the time. Many enjoy using a forum, but rarely have a clue about the politics, expense and time involved behind the scenes.

Thank you for your time served thus far and I hope that Simmers may continue in one way, shape or form in the future for others to learn and develope from.

[Baron]

Oh, that is very sad to hear! When I found Simmers some years ago, I was very lucky to find a platform where I could learn such a lot!

I will miss it. Thank you for the past years!

Cheers, Simon

[BLOWHARD]

Yes, very sad. But it was a LONG good run, and everything comes to an end. There is a good group of us on Facebook, we can still carry on a presence there.
Thank you Serval for giving us such a great place for learning for so long!!!

I will miss it!

[inkworm]

Have to agree with everyone it's been invaluable and made some good friends through here. Not going to be the same without it.

Thanks for all the hard work over the years.

[Skyraider3D]

Very sorry to hear, especially seeing as so much time went into revamping the site!

I've met a lot of good folks here, thanks very much for making it possible all these years.

Let's indeed unite on the simmers Facebook page, best we can do for now.

[Dutcheeseblend]

Hi Serval,

Sorry to hear, but understandable. Thanks for hosting this place and in particular thanks for doing the NLV all those years.

Please, @Serval, can you contact me? Via PM, or something the like, or via my blog? dutcheeseblend.blogspot.nl or at dutcheeseblend | at | gmail | dot| com

Thank you,

Daan Kaasjager

[GiantFlyingRobots]

I just want to reiterate what everybody else has said by saying that although its understandable, its a shame that it has come to this and to thank everybody that has been responsible for making this the invaluable resource that it has been. One that in its prime was an immense help in getting my work from what initially was a pretty feeble place to where it is today.

[Serval]

Thanks for the kind words and support

After the suggestion of Clint I spoke to some people who wrote tutorials hosted here.
I will place their tutorials and the colorcharts on my small personal blog, which can be hosted much cheaper. So, not all resources are lost. And like said, we can keep discussing at the Facebook group. I'll keep you updated about everything.