Anyone know what happened to Painters Pitstop

Puma · Post by **Puma** » Mon Jun 13, 2022 2:22 pm

Hmm seems to be on a prolonged down period at the moment, as in it looks like the whole site has been deleted.

Someone-Else · Post by **Someone-Else** » Mon Jun 13, 2022 5:02 pm

url? the one I tried they havent paid the bill

: pp.jpg (21.46 KiB) Viewed 4195 times

Puma · Post by **Puma** » Mon Jun 13, 2022 10:00 pm

Yeah that's the one. painterspitstop.com A bit a shame there seems to be no info about its demise. It has been down for over a week now.

Someone-Else · Post by **Someone-Else** » Tue Jun 14, 2022 12:04 am

Put it this way, if you owned a website/forum what ever, and you could not pay the bill and so it closed, would you want to tell anyone it closed and that you hadn't paid the bill, and if you did want to reveal all, where would you tell everyone? you couldn't do it on your own website...........because it isnt there.

TBH I would say they are having "technical difficulties" and that it will be back sometime, if a website closes and is no more you will get

not found

the requested url was not found on this server.

In your case, you don't see that, so it is there, just you can't access it, hence technical difficulties

dynamod · Post by **dynamod** » Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:25 am

I'd be surprised if it had been deleted, but you never know I suppose. Wouldn't admin make an announcement prior to any server maintenance to prevent speculation and inform the users?

For it to just die off is odd.

Was it getting much traffic/use/posts as I'm never on PPS these days.

The Wall2Wall debacle a few years back killed any interest I had, as it was nothing but arguments for weeks on end.

It was a good resource though.

Puma · Post by **Puma** » Tue Jun 14, 2022 8:34 pm

Hi mate, yeah the wall2wall stuff was absolutely epic! My God weeks of arguments, it was such a load of b*llocks.

Painters Pitstop had, I am pretty sure, been getting quieter and quieter so I think Tim might just have thrown in the towel. He could have lost a sponsor or two as well. It is a real shame as he seems to have taken the site down; there was a lot of useful information on there.

Anyway hopefully he will bounce back from whatever is going on. The way he has left it now with no explanation or anything is disappointing.

dynamod · Post by **dynamod** » Wed Jun 15, 2022 7:55 am

In all honesty, I can't help feeling that forums in general are in decline and have been that way for a while.

I know Facebook gets blamed a lot in this respect, but assuming traffic and sponsorship provide the financial means, it's easy to see how once a forum starts to slip it would be hard to bring it back.

Bib n Braces got pretty quiet and may also be gone. I think correct moderation goes a long way towards creating the right atmosphere, but some forums tend to self-moderate anyway.

I always found PPS a strange place if I'm honest. There were a lot of quality posters, but it had more than its quota of outright bell-ends. There was a one-upmanship about much of it that I simply didn't care for at all. Everyone is learning from everyone else. There are no 'stars' or 'wise old men'.

Not really a criticism as such, but more of a personal observation.

Someone-Else · Post by **Someone-Else** » Wed Jun 15, 2022 8:18 am

dynamod wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:25 amWouldn't admin make an announcement prior to any server maintenance to prevent speculation and inform the users?

You are overlooking the obvious...............unless you were not here when it happened.

Click here

It happens and the site owner has no control or notice that it is going to happen, so no, it is not normal to get a notification a site is going offline, and once it is offline, how can you get a notification?

Puma · Post by **Puma** » Wed Jun 15, 2022 9:06 am

S -E It has been down for a couple of weeks now, that's why I posted it seems to more than just a server outage which are, in my experience, always fixed in less than 24 hrs.

Dyna - Yeah the snob factor on Painters Pitstop was pretty high and there are lots of people going to extraordinary lengths just to decorate a room. Generally the quality of info was great though.

Someone-Else · Post by **Someone-Else** » Wed Jun 15, 2022 9:23 am

Puma wrote: ↑Wed Jun 15, 2022 9:06 amt has been down for a couple of weeks now, that's why I posted it seems to more than just a server outage which are, in my experience, always fixed in less than 24 hrs.

If the site had gone bust you would see

not found

the requested url was not found on this server.

But you don't, you see a web error page, so the server is working

It may be that it is run by a one man band and he is off long term sick?

dynamod · Post by **dynamod** » Thu Jun 16, 2022 6:00 am

Puma wrote: ↑Wed Jun 15, 2022 9:06 am Dyna - Yeah the snob factor on Painters Pitstop was pretty high and there are lots of people going to extraordinary lengths just to decorate a room. Generally the quality of info was great though.

Agreed. It was also a good resource for new materials/products, as someone always seemed to be trialing new gear. Some worked, some didn't, but it was useful to get the drop on new stuff.

Puma wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 8:34 pm the wall2wall stuff was absolutely epic! My God weeks of arguments, it was such a load of b*llocks.

It was little more than a willy waving contest between 2 people as I remember it, and I suspect it did a lot of damage that the site never fully recovered from. In my humble submission it was handled very poorly by the mods as it rumbled on for far too long and dragged far too many people into its path. It split the forum into factions which was very unhelpful. Like many things in life, some simply got too close to it all and really needed to stand back to see the bigger picture, minus their egos.

Hopefully something will take it's place in a 'New and Improved' fashion a la Dulux.

Puma · Post by **Puma** » Thu Jun 16, 2022 5:21 pm

Yep it was a weird one, it was as if there was a forum war for a while. As you say the mods did let a few moaners stay on the site being an absolute bore for ages.

Anyhow it's gone for the time being. The way it was closed is a bit of an insult to those who spent quite a lot of time putting reviews up there. Tim should have handed it on just as it was given to him many moons ago. I guess it might just come back, time will tell.

Theo Arboria · Post by **Theo Arboria** » Wed Jun 29, 2022 8:38 pm

I heard through the grapevine that Tim was off on hols when it went down and nobody else to sort it out. Sounds a bit odd but who knows. It was a good resource and recently most posters were forward thinking people sharing useful info. Unlike the F~B Dec Forum that seems to be mostly 15 year old school boys with a 1980s mentality!

Puma · Post by **Puma** » Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:29 am

Thanks Theo, I should have probably mentioned that Wayners who was a regular poster got in touch to say the same thing - the system went down whilst Tim was away. It is looking like a permanent failure at the moment so Wayne has set up https://pro-painters.freeforums.net Thanks again.

Bob225 · Post by **Bob225** » Fri Jul 01, 2022 9:14 am

Meh, it's just another abandoned forum, owners lose interest, or it's not making enough to cover the bills, typically the site will stay up until the domain expires, or the server is taken down

its now gone