Duckworks now a subscription site?

[Frank Hagan]

Hey, when did duckworksmagazine.com become a subscription site? :?

Anyone know the story behind that? I used to like to pop in every 3 to six months and just read a bit. Looks like they have gone more to the commercial side of things, and the best articles require a subscription now.

There's still a lot there that you can access ... its at http://www.duckworksmagazine.com. I think all the reader's projects are still available. Still, its a bit disappointing; Duckworks was one of those sites that got me started thinking about building a boat.

[capt jake]

I noticed that a month or so ago, Bummer!!! I liked what they had (have) to offer. Too bad!

[Charlie Jones]

I was camping with Chuck (of Duckworks) at the Messabout on Padre Island last weekend. We were discussing his site. He told me that his hosting company had begun charging him $160 per month due to his bandwidth usage so he was forced to either go subscription or quit.

He wasn't particularly happy about it, but could not afford to keep running the site at those costs.

[Paul J]

Chuck is real good people and I am sure it was a tough call to make for him. But with the economy the way it is these days with costs going up and income not going up it may well be that other sites that are very popular may be forced to take a some kind of measure to cover the costs. Look how many sites have gone to those damn pop-up ads in the last year. They are all over the place.

[tdrown]

I remember this was one of the sites I looked at when I was reseaching the posibility of building a boat.

[Frank Hagan]

Bandwidth costs can get pretty ugly when you get that popular. Smaller sites like messing-about get by with 20gb of data transfer fairly cheaply, but it gets expensive if you go over that ... and the costs can get really out of hand. So I understand it.

Charging does have the effect of also reducing the bandwidth because not as many people will come to the site. That's a shame, because it was always one of my favorites. And, like Paul, I hate those pop-up or "pop under" windows and flashing banners. I don't mind the static banners so much, and every now and then I click on one to see what its about. But the intrusive ones get to me sometimes!