Well, this is my second article, and one that I just had to write. It's about webmasters who close their sites down for petty reasons. Now, I'm not talking about EVERYONE here... not at all. If you want to close your site down because you went down by two hits than the previous day, fine by me. But just first stop and think before you do anything TOO drastic. Closing down a site can be more than than just removing some html... it can be the destruction of a close community. Just think how you'd feel if the owner of your local club came along and smashed it up and completely closed it down leaving a notice saying 'Thanks all for coming, but this is the end'. Not too happy, I'd rekon. You must think and consider these reasons before you close your site...

Why are you closing it?

Is it because your forum is getting spammed by idiots? Simple... have an email password to new signups feature enabled. If that doesn't work, close down the board for a while. If your getting email spam, remove your email addy. If your host is going down, relocate. There are so many things you can do, but so many webmasters choose to take the 'lets-make-this-the-most-dramatic-site-closing-in-all-history approach to everything.

I'll tell you a story of a site. It was under every search engine on the net, won loads of awards, was featured in NME (huge, UK newspaper), got 300 visits an hour, and I met most of my online friends thru there. The webmaster broke up with his 3 year girlfriend, told a forum member, to which the forum member posted it on the forum. This understandably upset the webmaster, to which he banned the poster. After that, he took the site down for maintenance, and claimed two weeks later the cd-r that had the site backed-up on was broken. In actual fact, he took the cd, and broke it in two. He flushed his 3 years work down the toilet, just because of one forum member, whom he was very good friends with. He then closed the site down entirely, aswell as EVERY other site he, and his freinds had made. A tad drastic don't you think? And seriously, this DID happen.

What I'm trying to get at is, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. The site was fine, but he let personal issues interfere with his website. If your going to make a site, ALWAYS keep it seperate to anything thats happening in your real life. The internet should be treated as a seperate subject entirely.

You should also only take a site down if the host is closing, or you can't afford domain/hosting charges. If you can't be arsed to do it anymore, leave it be!! People will come, people will leave. New visitors will enjoy the site just as much as old ones did when they first arrived. Again, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. Only take a site down if you can't afford financially to maintain it.

There's really not much else I can say on the matter, I just hope that I've inspired some webmasters to keep their sites alive and kicking. Just remember... visitors WILL come!

-- SteveWardale.