Well is has been a very eventful three hours!
The short story is that I'll be your humble manager here, I just met with Yusuf about an hour ago and acquired this website.
The long story is a series of serendipities. A few hours ago I came upon a post made
Kyt. I'm talking about
this one here. In it he mentioned something about the site being sold, and being a curious guy I went ahead and contacted
spdude to ask him myself. He informed me that he wasn't advertising or putting the site up for auction, but if an enthusiast came along and wanted to take control of it and run it, he was willing to part with it. For those who don't know Yusuf, the former owner, is a website dealer, he makes his living from running large internet communities. He buys and sells a LOT of websites. Compared to his other huge sites, ww2talk is a small fish, and he had never gotten around to changing things here. Like any smart businessman, he was in the process of unloading all his smaller websites and just focusing on the larger, more profitable ones.
Here is where it gets really weird. I live in Chicago, but I'm currently visiting my parents at their home outside Toronto, I've been here for about four days. After bouncing back an forth a few ideas with Yusuf, he informed me that he also lives in Toronto, about 15 minutes from my parents house! I decided to stop by and visit Yusuf with the idea that I might be able to discuss the site with him. Mind you, we had only been communication for about 30 minutes at this point. So I drove over to his house (after stopping by the bank), made Yusuf an offer, and he accepted! We did the deal the old fashioned way, with cash and a handshake. I'm not sure if it is old fashioned but Yusuf served me some delicious mango juice on his patio.
So basically the site got sold because of a post about the sale of the site!
Thanks Kyt!
For those who don't know me, I run a similar website to this one over at
World War II Forums , I've been running it for eight years, and I've always had the members best interest at heart. I really like the ww2talk community, and am very serious about keeping it as is. From what I can tell the existing admin/mod team you have done a great job and I'm looking forward to maintaining & hopefully improving ww2talk.com with you.
I'd like to especially thank
Lee Wisener for all his hard work over the years, and and I would be delighted if he stayed on as before. Lee has built a great community here and I want to keep that trend going.
For the record. I am not a website dealer, nor am I looking to flip this website to make a quick buck. I am a WWII enthusiast, I will do everything in my power to ensure your standards are not compromised. If you want any references, please contact any of the members (aka Rogues
) from over at ww2f.com and see what they have to say. I'm confident they will attest that I truly care about them, and I am concerned with the community.
I'm know this is all very short notice (heck, I was drinking mango juice at Yusuf's house not 60 minutes ago), but the server is going to be moved in the next few days, so unfortunately we will have some down-time. If, in the meantime you have
any question feel free to email be at
ottobomb@gmail.com , I'll be glad to answer any and all questions.
An eventful three hours indeed!