Current state of the Boards

[tarheelhockey]

I don’t get it, who is forcing HF to use bad servers? HF has had a massive history of crashing regardless of servers. People pay for premium accounts or free users get hit with the most aggressive ad placements that you only find with sketchy low budget sites that are desperate to sell their ad space. Like it or not, HF is ran like a cheap website historically, and still is. I’ll never understand why HF takes itself so seriously when they not only have aggressive ad placements to strong arm people into premium accounts and the ads that get their ad space have some extremely questionable content. If I crashed my clients site for days I’d 100% be out of a job. That’s a fact. I have pulled up HF on SemRush before and they get good traffic, I don’t know why they run it the way they do.

I don’t know much about this stuff, but superficially — this is a pretty extensive forum with a massive archive, compared to your average business landing page. Just on the main board you’ve got 1785 pages of threads, at 30 threads per page, so something like 53,500 threads on this board alone. And there are like 50 other boards. So when it breaks, it really breaks.

From a business standpoint, I’m guessing the amount of data being held here is not proportionate to the amount of traffic it gets. In layman’s terms, they’re running a big operation on small revenue. It’s almost entirely staffed by volunteers. I doubt anyone’s raking in big-time cash off this place, so the infrastructure is going to reflect that. It would probably have died a long time ago if the “product” was something other than a community that a lot of people really care about.

 

[ucanthanzalthetruth]

I feel like there should be a stickied post in here, don't get me wrong I was waiting for the ability to bump more than 1 year old threads to be returned before the site exploded but there's so much to fix. Just like a PSA "we're aware shit's broken, we're not doing much to fix things because it may break again, the hamster is running for it's life just to keep the boards operational as is"

 

[Sol]

View attachment 994851

I’m not trying to start a fight or anything. It’s just frustrating that the same memes and sentiments about the most prolific hockey forum still rings true today. It should be better at this point.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I’m not trying to start a fight or anything. It’s just frustrating that the same memes and sentiments about the most prolific hockey forum still rings true today. It should be better at this point.

I'm sorry.

 

[Sol]

I don’t know much about this stuff, but superficially — this is a pretty extensive forum with a massive archive, compared to your average business landing page. Just on the main board you’ve got 1785 pages of threads, at 30 threads per page, so something like 53,500 threads on this board alone. And there are like 50 other boards. So when it breaks, it really breaks.

From a business standpoint, I’m guessing the amount of data being held here is not proportionate to the amount of traffic it gets. In layman’s terms, they’re running a big operation on small revenue. It’s almost entirely staffed by volunteers. I doubt anyone’s raking in big-time cash off this place, so the infrastructure is going to reflect that. It would probably have died a long time ago if the “product” was something other than a community that a lot of people really care about.

I don’t know who runs this place personally. I don’t know if the admins are actually part of the business structure of this site or if they’re just some random rule enforcers. I don’t know that. But to put it into layman’s terms, with the amount of traffic this site gets, they should have improved their business structure or made some exclusive content that is paywalled. Or something of that nature to capitalize on their traffic. Running shoddy ad practices is not the way to do it. And yes, there’s a lot of pages and it’s messed up. However there is a reason why they only lost content from 2025, because they didn’t back up their information this year which is why they lost 2025 data. When you are doing migration, regardless, you have to be fully backed up your data to its most recent state. Some businesses back up their data annually, and some back it up in real time. It can be expensive to back up data but with the traffic HF pulls they can afford it no doubt either.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I don’t know who runs this place personally. I don’t know if the admins are actually part of the business structure of this site or if they’re just some random rule enforcers. I don’t know that. But to put it into layman’s terms, with the amount of traffic this site gets, they should have improved their business structure or made some exclusive content that is paywalled. Or something of that nature to capitalize on their traffic. Running shoddy ad practices is not the way to do it. And yes, there’s a lot of pages and it’s messed up. However there is a reason why they only lost content from 2025, because they didn’t back up their information this year which is why they lost 2025 data. It can be expensive to back up data but with the traffic HF pulls they can afford it no doubt either.

I'm sorry.

 

[Summer Rose]

@Bear of Bad News has two modes:

1) I’m sorry.
2) You’ll be sorry.

 

[koyvoo]

This wasn’t an upgrade. The server crashed.

I understand that. What I’m saying is that things have been wonky since the “upgrade”. Everything was smoother before the “upgrade”. I’m not sure the crash would’ve happened before the “upgrade” It should’ve been beta tested, all kinks fixed, before rolling it out.

How necessary is it to fix something that isn’t broken? The site and its features worked better before the “upgrade”.

 

[5 Minute Major]

Hopefully this gets cleared up soon. I paid for a sponsorship just so I didn’t have to deal with all these ads I’m having to deal with once again.

 

[Kane One]

I understand that. What I’m saying is that things have been wonky since the “upgrade”. Everything was smoother before the “upgrade”. I’m not sure the crash would’ve happened before the “upgrade” It should’ve been beta tested, all kinks fixed, before rolling it out.

How necessary is it to fix something that isn’t broken? The site and its features worked better before the “upgrade”.

You and I have no idea what was upgraded. Maybe there were security fixes? Who the hell knows. Why do people here pretend they know everything going on behind the scenes?

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Hopefully this gets cleared up soon. I paid for a sponsorship just so I didn’t have to deal with all these ads I’m having to deal with once again.

Send me a PM with your receipt; I'll take care of it,

 

[bossram]

I don’t know much about this stuff, but superficially — this is a pretty extensive forum with a massive archive, compared to your average business landing page. Just on the main board you’ve got 1785 pages of threads, at 30 threads per page, so something like 53,500 threads on this board alone. And there are like 50 other boards. So when it breaks, it really breaks.

From a business standpoint, I’m guessing the amount of data being held here is not proportionate to the amount of traffic it gets. In layman’s terms, they’re running a big operation on small revenue. It’s almost entirely staffed by volunteers. I doubt anyone’s raking in big-time cash off this place, so the infrastructure is going to reflect that. It would probably have died a long time ago if the “product” was something other than a community that a lot of people really care about.

This is what I imagine is the issue. No one is making money from this and there is no financial incentive to keep HFboards running. It only exists really as a hobby horse from a few individuals and that there is a dedicated community. Most non-reddit independent forums and discussion boards have already died.

If someone wants to be a generous benefactor and pay for everything to run smoothly, by all means they can volunteer.

 

[koyvoo]

Hopefully this gets cleared up soon. I paid for a sponsorship just so I didn’t have to deal with all these ads I’m having to deal with once again.

My ad blocker worked like a charm before, and is working great still. Haven’t seen an ad through all of this. There are websites I do support, and I did pay for sponsorship here once, but I refuse to do it for a site that crashes as soon as the traffic spikes. Any eventful thing happens on the hockey world happens, the servers turn into pudding.

Btw, the ad blocker I use is free.

 

[BigDaddyLurch]

@Bear of Bad News has two modes:

1) I’m sorry.
2) You’ll be sorry.

...some of us have the scars to prove it...

 

[Sol]

This is what I imagine is the issue. No one is making money from this and there is no financial incentive to keep HFboards running. It only exists really as a hobby horse from a few individuals and that there is a dedicated community. Most non-reddit independent forums and discussion boards have already died.

If someone wants to be a generous benefactor and pay for everything to run smoothly, by all means they can volunteer.

Their data is public. There is definitely a good financial incentive to keep this site running. They are owned by Crave Media. And if you pull up the site numbers they have a really good reason to keep the site running. They just aren’t good at the business part of the business.

I don’t know if it’s against the rules to post their traffic but it is public. They have a looooot of traffic.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I don’t know who runs this place personally. I don’t know if the admins are actually part of the business structure of this site or if they’re just some random rule enforcers. I don’t know that. But to put it into layman’s terms, with the amount of traffic this site gets, they should have improved their business structure or made some exclusive content that is paywalled. Or something of that nature to capitalize on their traffic. Running shoddy ad practices is not the way to do it. And yes, there’s a lot of pages and it’s messed up. However there is a reason why they only lost content from 2025, because they didn’t back up their information this year which is why they lost 2025 data. When you are doing migration, regardless, you have to be fully backed up your data to its most recent state. Some businesses back up their data annually, and some back it up in real time. It can be expensive to back up data but with the traffic HF pulls they can afford it no doubt either.

I know they have looked at other business structures in the past, some of which have been rolled out (like adding the pop-up ads, then the sponsorships to avoid them) and others never went to prime time.

By and large, those kinds of changes also degrade the user experience, just differently. Look how people feel about the ads. Personally I would feel the same way about paywalled content.

There’s probably a way to make this place make REAL money and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to experience it. Even with the stupid crashes, the forum still has its soul which is what keeps the traffic here and why it’s outlived almost all other forums on the internet.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Send me a PM with your receipt; I'll take care of it,

You might have to sticky that at the top of each page, the number of times you’ve had to type that.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

You might have to sticky that at the top of each page, the number of times you’ve had to type that.

I get paid by the word.

 

[missionAvs]

This has probably been asked a million times but I had recently renewed my forum sponsorship thing but I no longer seem to have it. How do I get it back or are we just waiting on the servers to recover fully?

PS: I will NOT accept an answer from @forsbergavs32 as he treats me very poorly on HFAvs and has had me on forum waivers for like 3 years now.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

This has probably been asked a million times but I had recently renewed my forum sponsorship thing but I no longer seem to have it. How do I get it back or are we just waiting on the servers to recover fully?

PS: I will NOT accept an answer from @forsbergavs32 as he treats me very poorly on HFAvs and has had me on forum waivers for like 3 years now.

Send me a PM with your receipt; I'll take care of it,

 

[Sol]

I know they have looked at other business structures in the past, some of which have been rolled out (like adding the pop-up ads, then the sponsorships to avoid them) and others never went to prime time.

By and large, those kinds of changes also degrade the user experience, just differently. Look how people feel about the ads. Personally I would feel the same way about paywalled content.

There’s probably a way to make this place make REAL money and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to experience it. Even with the stupid crashes, the forum still has its soul which is what keeps the traffic here and why it’s outlived almost all other forums on the internet.

When we audit businesses digitally we have to pull up all their numbers, they are mostly accurate, and we are able to determine what they're doing right vs wrong. That's how we land their contracts.

HF's practice of having awful ad placements is already ruining user experience on Mobile especially. The difference between paywalling exclusive branded content is that there is no form of strongarming in it. People are sponsors for the most part because they hate the ads. There is no other real incentive. Or they could even have different tiers of sponsorship to make better content that people feel inclined to get access to it. Or even then, when you have the traffic they do, so many companies just launch a mobile app and get better access to consumer data vs online browsing information. So many businesses have apps because they are able to sell your data more efficiently for targeted advertising. Ruining your user mobile interface for ads is possibly the worst way to do it. If you took the time to see how much traffic they're pulling in, there should be no real reason that they haven't found a good business model to capitalize on it. Only time I've ever seen this kind of business model is when a bad business is trying to make money so they forgo UI/UX for short term capital.

 

[tarheelhockey]

When we audit businesses digitally we have to pull up all their numbers, they are mostly accurate, and we are able to determine what they're doing right vs wrong. That's how we land their contracts.

HF's practice of having awful ad placements is already ruining user experience on Mobile especially. The difference between paywalling exclusive branded content is that there is no form of strongarming in it. People are sponsors for the most part because they hate the ads. There is no other real incentive. Or they could even have different tiers of sponsorship to make better content that people feel inclined to get access to it. Or even then, when you have the traffic they do, so many companies just launch a mobile app and get better access to consumer data vs online browsing information. So many businesses have apps because they are able to sell your data more efficiently for targeted advertising. Ruining your user mobile interface for ads is possibly the worst way to do it. If you took the time to see how much traffic they're pulling in, there should be no real reason that they haven't found a good business model to capitalize on it. Only time I've ever seen this kind of business model is when a bad business is trying to make money so they forgo UI/UX for short term capital.

I’m sure you’re right about all this, it’s really not my area of expertise. I just don’t know that I need HF to be a sports car. I’m really OK with it being a 1994 Camry with different colored doors. But then again, it’s not my money on the line.

The one thing that bothers me is the loss of archival threads.

 

[5 Minute Major]

Send me a PM with your receipt; I'll take care of it,

I’m good with what is going on if it’s temporary. I’m not looking for a refund, either. I just won’t re-up when the time comes if it’s long term.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I’m good with what is going on if it’s temporary. I’m not looking for a refund, either. I just won’t re-up when the time comes if it’s long term.

What I'm telling you is that if you should currently have an active sponsorship, PM me (or another admin) and we will get it reinstated.

 

[forsbergavs32]

This has probably been asked a million times but I had recently renewed my forum sponsorship thing but I no longer seem to have it. How do I get it back or are we just waiting on the servers to recover fully?

PS: I will NOT accept an answer from @forsbergavs32 as he treats me very poorly on HFAvs and has had me on forum waivers for like 3 years now.

That attitude right there is why you’re on waivers, since we’re out here in the open…whichever fanbase claims @missionAvs will also receive a signed puck from Joe Sakic and a liter of cola