Old Rinker Boat Owners Forum Starting Up again?

MarkB

I'm communicating on a thread on the Rinker Boat Owners Facebook page. Fellow by the name of Walter Macallen has bought the rights to the old Rinker Boat Owners Forum, and may be relaunching it.

It would be great if this forum and that forum can be integrated.

rasbury

that would be sweet! I was not a part of the old and I'm sure there is tons of great info in there- who owns this site, Rinker correct? The new owners may not want anything to do with it and if you think about it, it could be shut down at any time. We need to start a list of email addresses so if that does happen we can all re connect on what ever site we come up with- if we could get a little advertising going, it would not be hard to pay for a site, they just don't cost that much and I'd bet someone in the group could develop the web site- this should be a priority and we need to reach out to everyone that is a member!

raybo3

Walter was the guy that owned the old site. He went by the name "Talon". He disappeared and the site was shut down. IMO and only my opinion I would not be in favor in integrating the sites. A lot of info and a lot of hard work and money was lost when that site closed. Believe me I know. Rinker owns this site and they have not in any way censored or interfere with it. I am in the process of getting in touch with them to see if the mod's can get more control. As long as things keep going the way they are now, I say leave it alone......... Just say'n

LaRea

Out of curiosity, how much does it cost to run a site like this?  Also, because Rinker is sponsoring the site, do they own the posts as intellectual property? 

Black_Diamond

The cost is pretty low. The work is in the maintenance, keeping spam out, etc. 

Michael T

IMO, Rinker has ben an amazing sponsor. They have not (to my knowledge) censored any comments and from time to time among all of the accolades have been some stiff criticisms. For Rinker to treat us so well is truly fantastic. BTW, I would be severely remiss if I did not thank our moderators. I probably have no idea how much work it is and all the thanks is well deserved! BTW - IMO I would not tinker with this site nor would I risk merging it with a privately held site (even our old one) - and I bet Rinker/Bennington won't either.

DanD2

Yeah, what he said ^^^^^^

rasbury

Well I hope but if the plug is pulled it's kind of like letting the air out of a balloon, you go to log on and you see site for sale, just sayin...

Michael T

Ras, with Kim Slocum at the helm I'm sure we'll be all right!

Dream_Inn

Russ was the old Rinker site owner.  So not sure who Walter is. I'm very happy with this site, although it'd be nice to have a little more authority to do a few more things.  I just don't want to lose all the good info we have finally gathered and got going on this site.  There was so much lost from the last one that I'd hate to see it happen again.

raybo3

Dream Walter McCallum (spelling) was the owner of the old site. He went by the name of Talon. It was his site. I tried to reach out to him before and trust me its a long story. I would highly doubt Rinker would change anything with this site. IMO as long as Rinker is making boats we are safe. 

Cableguy Greg

I thought that it was Russ as well. Russ was involved in some way, maybe the admin? If Walter wants to start it back up, then let him. If he has all of the old posts from the final data backup, then it could be a great resource for all of us. I understand being weary, but it can't hurt to have an extra site.

mvn

Walter=Russ (Russ is his real name).  I'm not interested in going down that road again.

Mark

MarkB

Hay Ray. His surname is definitely listed as MacCallum on FB. Just checked.

raybo3

Yeah I have seen his FB page and went through a lot of research and stuff trying to keep the old site going. I am not going down that path again. I wasted too much time and money for that. I think this forum has turned into a great forum and its not going anywhere. 

212rowboat

I own and operate several websites... It isn't that expensive to do at all.. like.. chump change.. building in functions and appearance is time consuming, but most the tools are freely available...  I just finished this one: 

www.ski-brule-lodging.com for my shack up there, as well as several others that I haven't added yet.  I run a mt.biking forum that used to be very active, not so much anymore since Facebook got popular, a biker club for specific model bike, a fishing site for the Crystal coast that is now dead, three cigar shops, a cabinet handles and pulls wholesale site.... And I've rarely made a red cent off any of them except when I ran my own cigar shop as an extension of my bricks and morter one... 

Fwiw, vanilla is a service, and an expensive one so far as forums go... They are clean and easy to customize, but aren't worth the squeeze in my opinion... And they have issues with Trojans viruses and bugs entering one site and infecting them all... Or they used to at least... 

Babyboomer

Me neither been there I don't even own a Rinker any longer It's Houseboat and Pontoon for me.