Stupid Guest Tricks

Greetings fellow SGTer's old and new,

As you may (or may not) have noticed the site is back up and running. We experienced an outage for about two weeks due to non-payment of service. This is my fault. My accounts were compromised and the new information was not updated with their bill center properly. I'm sorry that some of you could not access the site for a time.

This has brought into light the fact that not many people visit anymore. The site was down for about a week before anybody thought to contact me. None of the current Admins contacted me nor did any member until last Sunday. This makes me believe I am just throwing good money after bad keeping the site hosted.

To that end I intend to offer StupidGuestTricks to one of you. I will be accepting bids from now until the end of the calendar year. This is not a sale. Each bid must include your Legal name, SGT user name, and a statement of how you intend to improve the site and grow towards the future. I will not hand over the keys to the kingdom lightly. If by the end of the year no suitable bids are received I will shut down the site permanently.

Please email bids to [email protected]. If there are any questions you might have, feel free to contact me at this address as well.

Its been a long and strange journey these past 10+ years and I wouldn't trade a thing for a moment. I expect to be hearing from many of you soon.

All my love,
CujoSR

I check the site daily, except I was out of town and didn't really go on any website. I agree, the site has been quiet. I *might* be able to host the site for free, I need to see how my server is handling two other sites I host right now (both wordpress with a phpbb forum).

I wanted to contact you the moment I discovered the site was down, which was probably only a few hours later max, but as I only have your SGT email address I couldn't. I contacted Zazu asking him to contact you but he as well only had your SGT address. With the domain expired any emails we sent you would have bounced.

Though, you are right, the site is sadly dying. Not many Stupid Guest Tricks are posted anymore and there are never a lot of posts on any topic. I've met some wonderful people from here and have made some lasting friendships and I would be saddened to see the site close but closing the site may be the best option. I wish I could afford to even give a little to help the site but sadly money is very tight right now and will be for some time. I also just don't really have the time or skills necessary to grow the site.

Total bummer if SGT shuts down.

I visit a couple of times every day. I didn't know how to contact any admins so went through 3rd parties who I hoped had contact info.

I'm not pointing blame at anybody. I did assume Zazu had my other email but that's neither here nor there. There is the Facebook page as well as other admins that have my contact info. I never did institute a backup plan.

CujoSR wrote:I'm not pointing blame at anybody. I did assume Zazu had my other email....

No, but thanks for playing! Spent a lot of time cursing that lack this week.

There is the Facebook page....

... that has never, to my awareness, been publicized on the site. Plus, some of us aren't on Facebook.

... other admins that have my contact info.

Right, but I'm not even sure who the other admins are, and I don't have their emails, either.

I never did institute a backup plan.

Let's do! A list of admins with non-SGT email addresses sent to all the admins would be a good start. Granting "owner" privileges to at least one additional active admin would also be a good thing to cover when you're busy.

As I've written elsewhere, a request for each member to donate $1 would probably bring in enough to pay for the site for years. Just a donation button might be enough. (I'm guessing the CafePress link is not.) It's not hard to set up a PayPal acount for the site. Kthulu's offer is great (you rock, dude!), but even if the hosting is free, domain registration is not, nor are updates to VBulletin. A long-term source of funding is needed, small as that need may be.

* * *

Now, as to the level of activity, I agree that it's something that needs attention. I do write up what I see, but there's not that much publishable stupid in a hotel lobby, at least not compared to the parks. Others have left the parks or just stopped posting. I cannot believe that it's because the amount of stupid has decreased!

Perhaps what we need is a recruitment campaign among current cast members. Put out the call, perhaps on Facebook and other venues, and see if we can attract enough stupid to balance out the social posts -- which have become the majority of them. The more CMs online, the more stupid we should be able to gather.

The above should not be taken as a slight against non-CMs, just that we on the backside of the nametag have more opportunities to observe... unfortunately.

Zazu wrote:The above should not be taken as a slight against non-CMs, just that we on the backside of the nametag have more opportunities to observe... unfortunately.

No slight taken. I miss the stupid. If I hung out in the resort area I'd have more to report but it seems like every other time I do I end up with some imported plague a tourist has brought with them.

I visit almost every day, and noticed it was down last month, but had no idea what to do about it.

I do miss the amount of stupid that used to be posted. We're lucky to get a good story two weeks these days. Mostly the board has become a talk about Disney board. I've had to go to Notalwaysright for my daily dose of schadenfreude.

That being said, I'd miss this place if it went away, but short of donating money, I can't do much about it. I'm definitely not prepared to take it over.

I too log in now and then and saw that the site had gone. I was very sad and I spent many a day reading the funny things that people get up to.

I had no way of knowing who to contact and did not even know there was a facebook site. I had assumed that Disney HQ had finally found you made you guys shut it down.

I have no problem with donating a few £/$ if it will keep the site going. I am not a cast member so do not think I could take over the site. I do have time in the day to do some admin stuff if you want though.

Toni

Well, if I had wanted too, I wouldn't have known who to contact. That said, I didn't attempt because it was the end of the month, it has happened before that your space had run out. I never gave it another thought. I did get surprised when the 1st got here and no SGT. I figured something was up and didn't worry about it. I also tend to sign on the site at least two to three times a day, so just because I didn't panic when you disappeared for a brief time didn't mean that the sight isn't watched.

It appears that most of the reply's have stated that they had no way of getting in touch with you...I wouldn't read to much into the lack of immediate response.