Why doesn't somebody buy GFY?

[cordoba]

Whoever owns it clearly doesn't spend much effort on it.

Even if not for a business investment POV, there must be one or two regular posters here who have money to burn and are sick of having constant cloudflare time out error messages every other time they post etc.

And why doesn't GFY have a news homepage alongside the forum, as xbiz does? It's not exactly difficult to do now with AI.

[Publisher Bucks]

I think people underestimate how hard it is to make an old school industry forum profitable these days.

Back in the day, webmaster and affiliate forums were one of the main places companies advertised. Sponsors would spend decent money on banners, sticky threads, promos etc because that’s where affiliates actually hung out. But the whole market has changed now. A lot of that ad spend has moved to X, Reddit, Discord, Telegram, YouTube and private groups, so there’s just less money floating around forums in general.

So even if somebody bought the site tomorrow, they’d still be dealing with the same problem, declining traffic and less advertiser interest. It’s easy to say “just fix the servers and modernise it”, but all that stuff costs money. Old forums usually run on ancient codebases too, so even small upgrades can turn into a headache.

The Cloudflare errors and downtime are frustrating, but if revenue has dropped a lot over the years, owners tend to switch into maintenance mode rather than pouring more money into it.

As for adding a news homepage like XBIZ, technically that part is easy enough now. AI can help churn out articles all day long. The harder part is getting people to actually read it and making enough ad revenue from it to justify the effort. Media traffic everywhere is down compared to years ago, especially with Google traffic being less reliable now.

I honestly think a lot of these old forums survive more because of the loyal community and history behind them than because they’re still massively profitable businesses.

Nobody is going to throw money at something and *hope* they make a return on investment, that just isnt *good* business.

[NALEM]

From a strategic standpoint, maintaining this platform as an adult industry B2B forum offers negligible monetary value.

The asset's true worth resides strictly in the domain name itself, rather than any existing brand goodwill. To unlock its financial potential, a developer would need to pivot the business model to target adult consumers directly.

[Spicy Wraith]

From a strategic standpoint, maintaining this platform as an adult industry B2B forum offers negligible monetary value.

The asset's true worth resides strictly in the domain name itself, rather than any existing brand goodwill. To unlock its financial potential, a developer would need to pivot the business model to target adult consumers directly.

Letting it run like it currently does is not helping anything. I sure hope the advertising here is cheap. How mad would you be if you paid for an ad here and then half the time the site loads as a cloudflare error? Fixing the loading issues would be a great start, and then maybe people would come more often.

[Mahadeva]

Wasn't the site just given to Klen and others? Or did they pay? Either way, I think it's fine as it is. Why does it have to change?

[INever]

Wasn't the site just given to Klen and others? Or did they pay? Either way, I think it's fine as it is. Why does it have to change?

because dynamic html and recaptcha puzzles are what's in and cool!

agree. leave it as is. in fact, place it on the national register of historic websites.

[AmeliaG]

If GFY ever wants a new home that cares about legacy, hit me up.

[INever]

[VikingMan]

The amount of money they would ask for the pair of domain names has to be astronomic . And to have both domains is fantastic. I would say the only way to buy the pair of domains would be in an a distressed sale.

[Forest]

This board cost nothing to run and has paid advertising even though it’s useless. The domains are worth a fortune. Why would anybody ever wanna sell it?

[adultinnovation]

because its worthless just like the adult industry

[CaptainHowdy]

Is it for sale ? ?

[Tasty1]

I know some people who wanted to buy and renew.
Or would support buying it to keep it running and improving.

But never got answer about price and if it was possible to buy.
But old/new owners didn't even know there where admins in the end.
No communication at all. No plan that i know off. No motivating to stay on board

But it keeps floating

[Spicy Wraith]

If GFY ever wants a new home that cares about legacy, hit me up.

Why would we care about TheLegacy is he sick or something? Hope he gets well soon.

[Spicy Wraith]

I know some people who wanted to buy and renew.
Or would support buying it to keep it running and improving.

But never got answer about price and if it was possible to buy.
But old/new owners didn't even know there where admins in the end.
No communication at all. No plan that i know off. No motivating to stay on board

But it keeps floating

It sounds like the owner may be sick or off on a long vacation. Why not just call and say hey what is going on.

[Huggles]

If GFY ever wants a new home that cares about legacy, hit me up.

Why do I get the feeling that the first thing Amelia would do is ban me....

[Zuzana Designs]

I know some people who wanted to buy and renew.
Or would support buying it to keep it running and improving.

But never got answer about price and if it was possible to buy.
But old/new owners didn't even know there where admins in the end.
No communication at all. No plan that i know off. No motivating to stay on board

But it keeps floating

I let them know I knew someone else who was very interested as well. After that, I never heard anything back, and they removed my mod status without any email or communication. I was only doing it to help Panos out, so I wasn’t expecting any thanks or recognition, but a simple email letting me know would have been the professional thing to do as I did put a lot of my personal time into it.

[12clicks]

because its worthless to anyone with the money to buy it

[CaptainHowdy]

because its worthless just like the adult industry

because its worthless to anyone with the money to buy it

Log-out already . . .

[Tasty1]

I let them know I knew someone else who was very interested as well. After that, I never heard anything back, and they removed my mod status without any email or communication. I was only doing it to help Panos out, so I wasn’t expecting any thanks or recognition, but a simple email letting me know would have been the professional thing to do as I did put a lot of my personal time into it.

Yes, that is the story. Tried to contact them also cause software is out of date. Bot attacks, hacks, hard to look up/ban scammers, no communication. Also people wanted to buy banner space, that never heard back.

Klen also wanted to help renewing and make everything better and keep the community running and update everything. There was a group motivated people.

I was at TES last year. There i asked AVN what the plan was cause they are back in charge i understood. But there was no no plan. For them also little chaos after Panos left. And i think only than she realized that there where still admins active. And deleted them all.
Mixed feeling, wanted to renew and update. But spending your time on a ghostship isn't a good idea either.

So we have to wait where this forum will be going. It is GFY, everything is possible.

[1215]

it really is an epic domain tho...

[12clicks]

Log-out already . . .

who are you?

[DemonitizedPorn]

I think people underestimate how hard it is to make an old school industry forum profitable these days..

They could start by ditching this pre-2010 forum script for something newer.

[1215]

They could start by ditching this pre-2010 forum script for something newer.

Xenforo is amazing software. Use it all the time and would be easy to migrate this to it.

but at the end of the day, having readers/posters on it daily is what matters the most.

but yeah, I'd definitely upgrade to something more modern.

[Publisher Bucks]

They could start by ditching this pre-2010 forum script for something newer.

That in and of itself, wont make it profitable.

There is a ton of 'behind the scenes' stuff forum owners and mod team need to do in order to keep it active, profitable and saleable.

[1215]

That in and of itself, wont make it profitable.

There is a ton of 'behind the scenes' stuff forum owners and mod team need to do in order to keep it active, profitable and saleable.

so true. however, there's a really good ads plugin on xenforo where users can purchase their own ads directly - or an admin could manage it better.

It won't be an overnight thing, but could definitely help out.

If the admins/owners ever need help, they could hit me up and I'd gladly help them with Xenforo stuff.

[INever]

They could start by ditching this pre-2010 forum script for something newer.

no. it fucking works. dynamic reloading pages and all the rest SUCK.


it's a forum. keep it simple.

wanna be "creative"? get crayons.

[Evil Chris]

Xenforo is amazing software. Use it all the time and would be easy to migrate this to it.

but at the end of the day, having readers/posters on it daily is what matters the most.

but yeah, I'd definitely upgrade to something more modern.

I seem to remember Panos was (at some point) planning to migrate GFY to Xenforo, but I haven't heard about that in a very long time, likely an abandoned project.

I hear good things about Discourse too.

[CurrentlySober]

I seem to remember Panos was (at some point) planning to migrate GFY to Xenforo, but I haven't heard about that in a very long time, likely an abandoned project.

Yes, I remember that - I was one of the testers, asked to try out the features etc - It was very good - Pretty much the same look and feel as GFY but with a lot of bells and whistles - And a working search!

Shame it never got deployed. It was absolutely in 'final stages' when I saw it

[Rochard]

GFY used to make A LOT of money back in the day - well over a million dollars a year. It was managed by Captain Tender Thighs and administered by Texas Dreams and a few other people. It really cost very little to run.

It was created by Lensman, owned by ICS, and eventually Playboy purchased ICS. Why Playboy sold it I will never understand.

[Mahadeva]

GFY used to make A LOT of money back in the day - well over a million dollars a year. It was managed by Captain Tender Thighs and administered by Texas Dreams and a few other people. It really cost very little to run.

It was created by Lensman, owned by ICS, and eventually Playboy purchased ICS. Why Playboy sold it I will never understand.

Liability, probably. Someone here is bound to eventually go postal.

[Evil Chris]

GFY load times are pretty bad right now.

[DemonitizedPorn]

Xenforo is amazing software. .

I looked at Xenforo and it's a truly great setup. But one of our projects called for a more flat solution. We tried flarum but it was too buggy. Now we're using nodebb and it's proving to be very stable.

no. it fucking works. dynamic reloading pages and all the rest SUCK.


it's a forum. keep it simple.

wanna be "creative"? get crayons.

Translation:
"You fucking young punks with all your fancy gadgets! If that flashing 12:00 bothered me I would have covered it with electric tape."