# Fate of the MrColumbia web site



## MrColumbia (Jan 28, 2018)

It's been over 10 years that I have had my MrColumbia web site. It has brought me much enjoyment and I've made a lot of friends and found some great bikes over these years, most possible because of the site.

 Now things are changing and it is time to move on *or* bring it to an end. I am looking for opinions and suggestions to help me decide what to do with it.

 A couple of things are making me think this way. One is the cost of hosting the site has gone up dramatically       this year. Another is my web hosting site will no longer support the web building software that it is constructed with. This brings up the obvious, the site is starting to look very dated. What I thought was pretty decent looking 10 years ago is pretty primitive by todays standards. Back then everybody looked at the internet on a PC with a large screen, today on a cell phone is standard. I see web sites today that are pretty slick and eye catching. Lots of cool animation and and other things that catch the eye of todays faster paced, lower attention span viewer.

 At the time of me writing this my counter is at 1,122,661 and I am pretty proud of that. As I have stated, there have been many benefits for me but the work of answering the thousands of emails annually for what I am getting out of it is starting to get old as well.

 Please don't misunderstand, I am not quitting the hobby or selling off all my stuff. What I am looking for is good practical ideas on how to proceed with the MrColumbia web site. It's fate is in your hands.

 Thanks in advance for everybody's consideration in this matter.


----------



## kreika (Jan 28, 2018)

@Dave Stromberger


----------



## CWCMAN (Jan 28, 2018)

Pass the torch to someone who is motivated and willing to bring it to the next level.


----------



## bike (Jan 28, 2018)

Dave may be able to find you a better host at a lesser price. Some ads may pay for hosting.
I think it is just fine, but your point on phones is well taken (personally the phone is too small-images hard to see  and my fat fingers cannot punch the keys)

http://www.vintagecolumbiabikes.com/


----------



## Dave Stromberger (Jan 28, 2018)

PM sent.


----------



## tryder (Jan 28, 2018)

Some of us are not particularly fond of "smartphones" or s... 
Due to the fact that Pope/Westfield/Columbia is oldest and perhaps most historically important American Bicycle Manufacturing Company in the history of the world I would like to see The Mr. Columbia website either modernized or folded into the Cabe.
I certainly have enjoyed your website over the years and appreciate everything you have done.


----------



## bikiba (Jan 28, 2018)

1. You can get a free blogspot account with google. If you were willing to modify the way you create the site. It also looks good on the phone. http://www.blogger.com. With every google account you create you get 15GB of space and if you upload optimized images you get unlimited storage. You can store files and link from google drive. etc etc

2. you could turn it in to a FB page. I think FB has unlimited storage... you can still use the google account to store/youtube for videos etc. Looks great on a phone.

im sure there are a lot more options


----------



## catfish (Jan 28, 2018)

Say it aint so! Very sorry to hear this. Ken you have done the hobby a great service and your site will be missed. Hopefully someone will take the site over and keep it alive. Thank you for all you have done,
                                                                                      Catfish


----------



## Shawn Michael (Jan 29, 2018)

I too am great full for all you have done. Your site has been a great resource for many of us in the hobby, and I would like to see someone take the torch. The majority of the time I do just use my cell phone too, but I know lots of people that only have a pc or no data package for a phone.  
Best of luck, 
Shawn


----------



## Saving Tempest (Jan 29, 2018)

tryder said:


> Some of us are not particularly fond of "smartphones" or s...
> Due to the fact that Pope/Westfield/Columbia is oldest and perhaps most historically important American Bicycle Manufacturing Company in the history of the world I would like to see The Mr. Columbia website either modernized or folded into the Cabe.
> I certainly have enjoyed your website over the years and appreciate everything you have done.




At Phoenix Audio Community Forums we archived the Sound Thinking forums when they closed. This is a great way to preserve a site, even if as read-only. And since our owner already has a few sites under his belt (and he does operate Bicycles Inc. for Pete's sake) I would hope to see the site under the wing of Nostalgic.net perhaps.

And how old is your platform? I'm a member of a small forums group that still uses a rather old version of phpBB, and that was the second of those I've been part of. I was also part of a forums site still using vBulletin 3.8x and have been in groups using JELSOFT as of 15 years ago. Your host is probably a bigger problem.


----------



## Saving Tempest (Jan 29, 2018)

And don't send it to Facebook hell?


----------



## Freqman1 (Jan 29, 2018)

If it goes to FB I will never see it...


----------



## MrColumbia (Jan 29, 2018)

I've had a lot of positive responses so far and some good and varied ideas. Some have suggested some how folding it into the CABE and I am going to look into that. I know facebook is also put out there but if it went that route it would be without me involved, I have no desire to get involved with facebook. There have been other ideas as well to look into including an entire rebuild. 

Let me ask you all this, what is the most important parts of the site that you would want preserved and what could you do without? In whatever form it takes going forward it no doubt will not be 50 pages long with as many pictures as it has now. I'm sure the serial number page will stay as it seems to be the most commonly accessed page by far but what other features would people like to see?


----------



## bikiba (Jan 29, 2018)

MrColumbia said:


> I've had a lot of positive responses so far and some good and varied ideas. Some have suggested some how folding it into the CABE and I am going to look into that. I know facebook is also put out there but if it went that route it would be without me involved, I have no desire to get involved with facebook. There have been other ideas as well to look into including an entire rebuild.
> 
> Let me ask you all this, what is the most important parts of the site that you would want preserved and what could you do without? In whatever form it takes going forward it no doubt will not be 50 pages long with as many pictures as it has now. I'm sure the serial number page will stay as it seems to be the most commonly accessed page by far but what other features would people like to see?




Mr C

i just looked through your site and it is just text and pics. Someone could port that to blogspot in a day. Probably like 3 hours honestly. Updated format and would be free and make the old folks happy by not being on FB as well as nice looking on a mobile.

I took literally 5 mins and created an account for you and copy and pasted your welcome page.

Here is the site: http://vintagecolumbiabikes.blogspot.com

If ya want it, let me know and ill send you the username and password, I would even port it all for you tonight and you can take it from there. No charge 

If you dont want it, I will delete it no problemo. 

-Steve


----------



## catfish (Jan 29, 2018)

Just start making photo albums here on the CABE. Bikes, Catalogs, Info.


----------



## Saving Tempest (Jan 29, 2018)

So far that BlogSpot site looks very good!

'Website' is spelled webSTIE toward the middle tho


----------



## bikiba (Jan 30, 2018)

Saving Tempest said:


> So far that BlogSpot site looks very good!
> 
> 'Website' is spelled webSTIE toward the middle tho




and that was with 0 formatting or time. I just copied and pasted. With a few mins, he can be up and running at no cost....forever, and have the same type of control and flexibility he had before.


----------



## MrColumbia (Jan 31, 2018)

catfish said:


> Just start making photo albums here on the CABE. Bikes, Catalogs, Info.




I like the idea of putting my catalog's here on the CABE for every one to access for free. I have about 370 titles with some of the older catalgs being over 50 pages each all in high resolution scans. This is a massive amount of data to download. Anyone have an idea of how to go about it? They are in both pdf (entire catalog in one file, searchable) and jpg (each page sepereate file) formats. 

There have been a lot of ideas on how to proceed with the web site itself. Some are under consideration and others are not the direction that I want to go but the catalogs here on the Cabe is a definate go if there is space to do it.


----------



## KingSized HD (Sep 14, 2018)

The website seems to be down. I was trying to research a Columbia I just bought and got this response at the @MrColumbia site. It’s been a few days now, anyone know if this is permanent?
Thanks much.


----------



## MrColumbia (Sep 14, 2018)

It is gone for good. I have all the information on my computer of course but the web site is no more and cannot be retrieved. 

I Still would like to put much of the info here on the CABE but am not sure how to proceed.


----------



## MrColumbia (Sep 14, 2018)

I have ruled out Facebook and doing another website as possible options.


----------



## Dave Stromberger (Sep 14, 2018)

MrColumbia said:


> It is gone for good. I have all the information on my computer of course but the web site is no more and cannot be retrieved.
> 
> I Still would like to put much of the info here on the CABE but am not sure how to proceed.




Private message sent


----------



## Jay81 (Sep 14, 2018)

Sad to hear it's gone, it was a valuable resource to the hobby. I hope it can all be incorporated into the CABE. 
It would be cool to have a separate CABE forum dedicated to the information from your site, if that is possible.


----------



## cyclingday (Sep 14, 2018)

I'm sorry to hear that it was no longer possible to keep the site up and running.
There is strength in numbers, and it would be fantastic for both, your archive and the Cabe, if the two could join forces.


----------



## KingSized HD (Sep 14, 2018)

MrColumbia said:


> It is gone for good. I have all the information on my computer of course but the web site is no more and cannot be retrieved.
> 
> I Still would like to put much of the info here on the CABE but am not sure how to proceed.



I'm sorry that's happened but I also understand that you can't support a free site forever. I don't have the technical skills to help you out or I would but hopefully someone here on the CABE who does have the skills can get involved to save the info.  Hope it works out.


----------



## catfish (Sep 14, 2018)

Very sad news.


----------



## bikiba (Sep 14, 2018)

KingSized HD said:


> I'm sorry that's happened but I also understand that you can't support a free site forever. I don't have the technical skills to help you out or I would but hopefully someone here on the CABE who does have the skills can get involved to save the info.  Hope it works out.




there was definitely and still are multiple free options that could have been done using google. I dont know why he didnt want to go for the google / blogspot version. There is absolutely no cost and he could have monetized it with ads that google slaps on there.


----------



## MrColumbia (Sep 14, 2018)

Stay tuned folks. I will be working with Dave S. in the near future to put mutch of the site here on the CABE. Hopefully this will include scans of every year Catalog in my collection.


----------



## catfish (Sep 14, 2018)

MrColumbia said:


> Stay tuned folks. I will be working with Dave S. in the near future to put mutch of the site here on the CABE. Hopefully this will include scans of every year Catalog in my collection.




Great News !!!


----------



## cyclingday (Sep 14, 2018)

That's awesome!
Thank you, for your generosity.


----------



## vincev (Sep 14, 2018)

That will be a great addition to the Cabe.Hope there is a Columbia Forum started.


----------



## Bozman (Sep 18, 2018)

What Catfish said! Mr. Columbia's site was my go to research site. 







catfish said:


> Great News !!!




Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk


----------



## mrpedromedina (Sep 25, 2018)

MrColumbia said:


> I've had a lot of positive responses so far and some good and varied ideas. Some have suggested some how folding it into the CABE and I am going to look into that. I know facebook is also put out there but if it went that route it would be without me involved, I have no desire to get involved with facebook. There have been other ideas as well to look into including an entire rebuild.
> 
> Let me ask you all this, what is the most important parts of the site that you would want preserved and what could you do without? In whatever form it takes going forward it no doubt will not be 50 pages long with as many pictures as it has now. I'm sure the serial number page will stay as it seems to be the most commonly accessed page by far but what other features would people like to see?



Catalog references so as to help researching models and their period correct options. Serial numbers of course too!






Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk


----------



## alecburns (Sep 25, 2018)

MrColumbia said:


> I like the idea of putting my catalog's here on the CABE for every one to access for free. I have about 370 titles with some of the older catalgs being over 50 pages each all in high resolution scans. This is a massive amount of data to download. Anyone have an idea of how to go about it? They are in both pdf (entire catalog in one file, searchable) and jpg (each page sepereate file) formats.
> 
> There have been a lot of ideas on how to proceed with the web site itself. Some are under consideration and others are not the direction that I want to go but the catalogs here on the Cabe is a definate go if there is space to do it.




That kind of access and data, might be a great book!


----------



## KingSized HD (Jun 16, 2020)

MrColumbia said:


> Stay tuned folks. I will be working with Dave S. in the near future to put mutch of the site here on the CABE. Hopefully this will include scans of every year Catalog in my collection.



Anything ever happen here? I, for one, am still missing the MrColumbia site. I’d throw a few bucks in each year to keep it available for 24/7 research, it was an awesome resource!
@MrColumbia @Dave Stromberger


----------



## MrColumbia (Jun 17, 2020)

Nothing yet. I'm still willing to work with the CABE to get parts of my old site on here. I don't see me doing an independent web site anymore.


----------



## KingSized HD (Jun 17, 2020)

MrColumbia said:


> Nothing yet. I'm still willing to work with the CABE to get parts of my old site on here. I don't see me doing an independent web site anymore.



Thanks for your reply...I'm hoping something works out, the info was a great resource.


----------

