Many have asked me to make an introduction post outlining my RBV and my other rides, some have asked for updates on R/F and why the current changes and modifications.

Aprox 6 months ago R/F was purchased from Christian. After aprox a lengthy (months) negotiation process the site was sold. Some of the terms Christian had in place were:

- Zach continues to run the site as an admin providing he gels with new owner
- Site doesnt stray from its intention, providing solid content for its members
- Enjoy the site and make it good for the members.

Obviously, what some of you may or may not understand is cash did leave one set of hands and landed in the next. Ranger-Forums is an investment to some degree and a hobby as well. I enjoy forums, I enjoy the people and I enjoy the discussion. But it wasn't free.

Naturally, people have vested interest in a forum, people even pay to support the site. I added decals back into rotation at an additional $3 cost. In most cases more decals were stuffed in envelopes because hey, we do enjoy this and it is for fun, even for me. And shipping the decals does cost $1+, the other 2 makes up for the decals...and if you know about decals shops generally dont sell you them for a buck each, atleast not in my town.

Naturally, RF needs to recoup some money. If the site only breaks even in 5 years, that is fine. There is no intention to sell the site and I have already turned down offers from the community and anonymous solicitors. R/F is not for sale and if it were, Zach & staff would get first dibs along with the community. My obligation to Christian is to not pump and dump the site, and for as long as I can stand by that I will. To date I have never sold any web properties, ever.

There have been personal questions as to why Christian sold the site and for how much etc. Those questions are better answered by Christian. We do both carry contractual obligations which I wont break, but a substantial amount of money was invested by me (not a corporation) to support the site and help Zach. Yes, I do carry an INC branding, this alleviates some liabilities from those people who want to sue me for getting banned. LOL, yes, that really happens.

To Zachs defense there are times I do things when he is not around because we do live in different worlds. LOL, he has steady job with good hours and Im up when i need to be up dealing with sites. Zach remains the goto guy for everything R/F. For the last 6 months I have only dealt with technical aspects of the site, including coding, hosting and features. I would love to be a part of the community but sadly there are people who would prefer I dont and make it more of hassle, so I haven't joined in. Why post now? It is unfair for Zach to take the heat for everything I do, and when at times I leave him and others in the dark its not right, though its not done intentionally. It is easier I am here to answer the questions of some members without the left field question of, who are you.

R/Fs future. R/F with the current staff IMO is a monster. This site will continue to prosper with amazing information. There are amazing technical assets on this site, it is awesome to read through some of the threads.

The site at times gets 30 new users a day. REAL users, not spam anymore. I stopped that in the first few weeks with custom coding, not some off the shelf 'hack'.

The current staff run the site, I support Zach 100% in his decisions to ban, unban users, make changes etc. I personally will not tolerate people belittling him or the staff here or elsewhere. If i see it with my own eyes you are gone. This is Zach house as much as everyone elses, people should enjoy the site, I have seen a ton of crap in the past here already.

I have banned 3 people in 6 months. I removed 1 staff member on his request.

I am not sure there is much else to say other than I truly hope people continue to enjoy the site, enjoy the extra 1 off features we add and understand that as we grow as a community things will need to adjust. Not all is bad, there is good in all of this.

Oh, and to touch on the advertisements. Subscribers only see the current authorized site vendors. As I said in the past in PM to the 2 who complained, if the subscribers would like to NOT see those 2 authorized site vendors and the majority of subs vote against seeing them, I will remove them. No problem with that.

No vendor pays $200 here despite the rumors and none were EVER asked to pay $200. I do not take parts for my truck, but I offered to let vendors submit parts for giveaways for the members. Perhaps when the timing is right parts will come in or they will feel there is a benefit of joining the community as a vendor.

To the people who have already threatened to kidnap my kid, come to my house and kill me, DOS the site, steal all the members, deal with me when they see me, shoot me, for me to come to the USA etc etc. People, it was an added template that is optional to use.
You dont need to use the template. I see no reason why you would post my information and have people call all hours of the night threatening me to change it back or be killed. This may be news to some of you, but Zach has been in the loop for the majority. People really take stuff too far considering for 6 months all that has happened is we have tried to grow and better R/F.

R/F is to be fun, if you aren't having fun here then likely this isn't the place for you.

Anyhow, I will leave this thread open and try to answer everything within reason. Constructive criticism is welcome and I will try and answer all questions once.

PS, i am all booked for being killed till mid next year

 

Thanks for finally bringing all this info out into the open, sounds good to me!

 

cool, some people take things to seriously, I mean really.

"If you change the forums, I'm coming after you" haha wow, people are crazy

goodluck and stay safe I guess

 

thanks Rick. I appreciate you taking the time to explain this.

As for the members, I expect everyone to respect Rick, he puts a ton of time into the site to make it work well.

Hope everyone continues to enjoy the site.

 

new members... sure... we have lots all the time... the problem is all the experienced members that those new members would be asking questions are leaving because of the bull...

Not what he told me...

 

I cannot believe your closing statements. The things people will do and say because of discontent with an internet forum amazes me.

 

Can I have my $15 back that I paid to be a subscriber? I paid to not see ad's, have a large avatar, and enjoy this site and see it grow positively.


Now I see ads, I have a smaller avatar and I am not seeing the site grow positively. I see that the site is now a revenue source for an individual and it is no longer a place that is supported by the contributors just to pay for the day to day operations (non-profit so to speak).

I guess my only benefit in being a contributor now is that I can edit this post for 30 days!

And another thing. What happened to the link to the rules that was posted on the top of each sub forum? Why can contributors post classifieds in any sub-forum they choose?

 

I'm going to poison your goldfish.

 

LMAO WTF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE!!! is that true?? I ant believe people actually say that crap! seriously that is so F'd up I'm sorry that you have to deal with that crap man! R/F is awesome, I like the change and if we need a couple advertisements to keep up the forum, we can deal with it. Other forums are absoulutely SWARMED with ads, even in between posts in threads.
Good Job man keep up the good work RF staff!

 

Thanks for the info Rick. I love the changes to the site.

 

Are you referring to the decals that come with paying for the contributor status? If so, is there a way for us to buy the decals outright? I'd like to get some, but my contributor status is not up for another 6 months or so.

 

Thanks for the clarification, things have cleared up a little bit. RF FTW!

 

Zach wanted me to post an intro, I told him to wait for the right moment. That moment never came so here's this

LOL

Dustin, there are a lot of members here on R/F. I find it hard to believe that every member with a keystroke and a brain has left.

Again, I am not sure what the bull is exactly. The new theme and template that can be changed in the bottom left?

Well, there will always be multiple sides to the story. Reality is the current staff is still here, he is not. That is not something that is going to change from here on in. His contributions to the site were appreciated, we have moved on. I suggest that he enjoys where ever he ends up and don't get so worked up over the internet.


Yea, there are some unhappy people out there. A forum should be enjoyable, a group of them want to take that away from people. They slowly are being purged.


Shoot me PM

R/F has never been a non for profit entity, before me or now.
We try to make it a value for people to support the site. If people do not want to do so I cannot force them. The site 6 months ago was good to use, it should be good to use now.
The site is handled and treated as a business, you are right again. I don't want it to be offline, I want people to be able to hang out here and enjoy the site without slow page loads and 99% up time.

I am sure I cannot make you change your mind which is a real shame.

As for the end part, not sure, would need to look into it. I will chat with Zack. In the meantime I assure you there are no ***** modifying your avatar.

they've already been whacked.

Thanks for the positive support Ross!

Thanks, we put a lot of time into it. We know not all the happy people will speak up, we do know most of the upset people will. LOL

It can be disheartening at times, thanks for reply!

I didn't want to sell decals for the very reason I wanted them to be special for those who support the site. :)

KLC, you are a contrib. Shoot me your details and Ill send you some out.

It did take some time, but here it is :)

 

there was nothing wrong with it before hand, and since showing your face, the site has gone down hill. no way to argue against that

 

Nice to see you speaking up...

somethings i like.. some i do not like lately. but shoot we dont have to much of a say sooooo.. oh well...

enjoy.

 

i agree with the advertising. is there anyway that it can be reformated so there is like three or four sponsor links that are 3" wide by and 1" tall instead of the two huge squares?

this
I::::::I:::::::I::::::I:::::::I

instead of this

_________________
I I I
I I I
I I I
I________I________I
(didn't work the way i wanted it to, but you get the idea)
to me a link is a link no matter how big. it does one thing. links us to the sponsor.

 

they have a brain... just not as much of one as the ones who have left... lol

 

I never heard of this site as an investment before. I never saw ad's on every page. This is obviously a revenue source for you. Why is it that as soon as the site gets a new owner, we have companies paying to list their goods here. Why is it that we get this new owner and now all of a sudden the owner needs all this money to "keep it running". As it becomes a bigger and bigger revenue source for you, we will continue to see more and more ad's and more of company sponsors doing what ever they want here.

 

 

I strongly disagree with that and I believe others out there would as well.

I will do my best to make it better than what it is though. Thanks for chiming in.


Thanks Redneckstone. Zach and I have certainly tried to keep open dialogue between staff and members happening, but it's not always easy as not everyone is always happy and its easy to find yourself dealing with gripes rather than moving in a positive direction.

I would say most things are open for discussion with the site. If Zach hears about it and it makes sense we are trying to accomplish them.

It is something I can look into. But this is a standard format being used.

Damn, well. I would like to believe there are still smart people lurking R/F


There are people and companies that invest in sites. Internet Brands, Verticalscope, EM. I am not even in the same realm as those guys. As I said, hobby / investment. I enjoy the site but I treat it like a business to ensure its always running mechanically sound.

They paid inderectly before. I believe they were to donate product for giveaways, they just stopped.

There were costs as I explained with the sale from Christian. Obviously there was a monetary value in the site to him. Ads for unregistered or regular members do help foot hosting, licensing, design etc.
The site doesn't exist for free.

I would love to get more authorized vendors here offering deals to the community. I think that would be awesome.

The companies have to adhere to rules too, there isnt free reign.

LOL,

 

you need any Graphic Design work you know who to call :-)

 

chill out man... it takes money to host a forum. I think its great that the people that put all this time in to maintain the site get a little revenue from it. How does that negatively affect your experience here? adds on the top of the page? get real, that is NOT a big deal! lol, especially when its from great companies like ORW... Im really happy they are here supporting the Ranger community. Did you miss the SWEET deal they gave us on Fox Shocks?

Get over yourself... seriously

 

of course you disagree, your a fool. others that would agree with your are doing so because theyre too afraid of getting banned for standing up. you banned matt, and tried to lie to everybody and say he quit. we all know the truth, hell you even had beard lieing to people about it.

if you want to make it better, hand it back over to christian and quit being a punk

now we cant edit posts that are 30 days old? i dont call that a plus. and with all your so called "improvements" there have been threads against them, thus using more bandwidth. if you hadnt changed anything wed still have some good members and much less drama

 

x2 wish I had hoped on the Fox Shocks bandwagon :-(

 

Christian does not want the site... reason why he sold and hasnt come back