Hi!

As you all know, I started Abandonia as a hobby project, something that I developed and maintained in my free time. Over the years the site has grown exponentially and has reached a point when I started struggling coming up with and developng new features, concepts and server platforms, especially parallel to the university work.

You've probably noticed that during the few years behind us, design and features have really remained pretty much the same. I've also tried to do some work on improving the hosting but that ended up with questionable results as you might have noticed during the past weeks. All my efforts in developing an improved feature set and layout failed because maintaining the content and site proved to be too demanding by itself. I felt that this wasn't fair towards the site and the people in the community and that it deserves more.

This is where Studentis group comes into picture. They deal with big community sites, concentrating on student portals. I got in touch with them and they felt that Abandonia, together with its community, is very strong and would be worth investing time and effort into in order to improve and bring it to the much needed next level. That is how the partnership was formed. They have agreed to offer an advanced hosting platform consisting of 5 load balanced servers as well as technical support and programming help from 4 professionals that work for one of the leading brittish IT consulting firm, in exchange for marketing rights and ad inventory. Don't worry, there will be no popups ;)

I have been attending some meetings and we have lots of interesting and exciting things planned for Abandonia in the upcoming months. The feature list is long, but some of the main ones are an improved layout, recoding the scripts to a professional CMS platform, company profiles, advanced search engine, "my profile", better integration of forums into the site, easier content submission, game browser etc. I will keep you informed of the features as they will be in production, and I hope the response to these changes will be positive. Once the initial feature set is developed and implemented, I will be asking for your ideas as the new framework will be completely modular and easy to update.

I know that most of the people got used to the system that has been working well for the past few years, but if we want Abandonia to keep the status of the coolest and most dynamic site on the abandonware scene, we need to make this big step. Overall, I felt that this was the right thing to do in order to also ensure the future stability and growth of the site, as well as to provide the community members a nicer place to spend the time in :)

If you have any feedback or questions, feel free to ask and I would also like to hear any feedback regarding this!

Sounds great. Especially easier content submission.

Way cool

This sounds really great and all... But I am quite sceptical. What is Studentis and, more importantly and more to the point, what would they gain by helping a site dedicated to Abandonware like this one?

Don't get me wrong, this would be great... But I just can't understand why a company would help a site which stand on the gray side of the law without getting something back in return. When it comes to companies, I never trust their goodwill attitude...

All these things sound really great from AB user perspective and I think you made a good step in bringing Abandonia to a higher level.

I take it for granted that you have a good insight in Studentis' plans, attending those meeting and negotiating with them, and if there was something fishy about this cooperation you would probably notice it.

So, thumbs up. :ok: Always strive for perfection, eh? ;)

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Blood-Pigggy @ Sep 17 2006, 11:36 PM) [snapback]255685[/snapback]</div>meh... classic gaming archive did it - severs was flooded very fast by enthusiasts... :D it took them a few months to clear the mess.

One thing i would propose in the layout - the screenshots. In my opinion Abandonia has them done good, while reloaded... well not so good. Takes too long to get to them, plus it's better if they are next to the text. just like in a magazine or newspaper. They complete the text that way instead of being standalone.

Is Studentis really a company ?! or a student organisation? if it is organisation then the benefit could be mutual... still there is that grey area of law the EoF mentioned.

EDIT: is it this one? : http://www.studentis.com/

Sounds good. I keep picturing the new Abandonia in about 5 years and being able to say "Yeah, I'm from the old generation" :max:

This is definitely cool, but I'm curious what the catch is. They're a marketing group, and as well-intended as they may be, they must be getting something out of it.

Of course it´s nice to see that Abandonia is improving. But when I read the text, I´m not really sure, what to think of this...

I mean, as some others said before, it´s a company and I´m sure, they want something in return for their help. Maybe I´ve just met the wrong companies until now, but I don´t know a company, that would give away so much help basically for free. Not to mention the fact, that Abandonia is dedicated to abandonware. Even if this site is in contact with with ESA and doesn´t host warez, it still can not be called officially legal, or can it? Neither do I want to sound too pessimistic nor do I want to paint everything in black, but I just can´t help myself; I am really curious why a company takes the risk to make contract / offer a partnership with a site that is far in the grey area. There must be something, that makes it worth it. And that worries me... :unsure:


And as we are allowed, to ask questions, i´ll ask a question. :w00t:

Could you explain this a bit, please?
"Ad inventory" seems clear; they decide which ads appear on this site. But what does "marketing rights" exactly mean? In my ears that term sounds like it´s more than just the right to choose which ads do appear. Can you please tell us, what this "Studentis Group" is allowed to do, when they become the owners of the marketing rights of abandonia?

I can't say whether I'm positive or negative about this, I don't know whether this is a good move, can we see example of their work?