Jump to content

Primary: Sky Slate Blackcurrant Watermelon Strawberry Orange Banana Apple Emerald Chocolate Marble
Secondary: Sky Slate Blackcurrant Watermelon Strawberry Orange Banana Apple Emerald Chocolate Marble
Pattern: Blank Waves Squares Notes Sharp Wood Rockface Leather Honey Vertical Triangles
Photo

Batoto will be closing permanently


  • This topic is locked This topic is locked
2393 replies to this topic

#1
Grumpy

Grumpy

    RawR

  • Administrators
  • 4,078 posts
  • LocationHere of course!

*
POPULAR

Hello everyone.
 
Batoto will be closing down permanently.
 
I just don't have the will to run this site anymore. This is not a sudden decision for me or something I make lightly, it has been on my mind for a couple years now. And I've finally made my mind to put it into action.
 
I started Batoto along with the crew from The Company back in January of 2011 and it's been a very meaningful part of my life. I don't regret taking on this hobby called Batoto and I cherish the role that I've played as well as the countless hours everyone else here has put in as well as the great community that we've built. I've come to see this like my baby. At 7 years, I suppose it's not even a baby anymore. But it is at a point where I need to move on with my life. I'm tired and I just can't do this anymore.
 
Batoto is proving to be ever more time consuming to maintain despite the fact that we have fewer real visitors. Our bot visitors are always growing as we're the only source that still gives true quality. I've made some serious and controversial changes to counter that like adding membership requirements. While that helped a ton at that time, it always creeps back and we're almost back to square one at this point when I look at the statistics. They currently make up roughly 35% of the traffic which are much more troublesome than real users. And I don't want to make more serious change to this site that'll inconvenience the readers even further. We've already lost enough.
 
It's not just the bots that adds to the technical issues. It's a big site with huge number of page views. It's just expected part of running the site. Whether it be a DDoS attack, scraper bots gone haywire, servers/hosting company being annoying, ad company being annoying, there's just so many stuff that I constantly have to deal with. Over the last 7 years, I haven't had a single day when I could just freely take a day off. If the site goes down, I had to be there, on my computer, ready to take action. I obviously don't do something every single day, but just making myself available is taxing on my life. The fact that I'm unable to take a vacation have often been a point of argument with others in my life. Anytime someone says, let's go somewhere, I could only say no. I have to be here. Sound sleeping is also a thing of the past. I have alarms that go off when the site goes down. I'd wake up in the middle of the sleep to take care of it. False alarm, while irritating, is one of the best things to see when I'm interrupted from my sleep. How else would I have always responded to issues immediately?
 
I've simply run out of will and I feel this is the best choice for me. I beg that the community understands this difficult decision I've made.
 
 
Services will be severely affected starting January 18th as servers expire, though content may still be accessible for you. By January 25th, critical number of servers will have expired that the site will no longer function. But you should consider 18th to be the last day.
 
 
I have stopped accepting donations for a several months now and I'll check to see if anyone sent anything directly and I'll be sure to refund them if they did.
 
Going forward, some of the staff members have and still are in the process of backing up the entire Batoto comic content as they have been notified of this decision well in advanced. They may choose to create a new Batoto or something simpler. That will be up to them, but I will no longer be part of running it.
 
I understand that our forum is a valuable form of communication for many. Because of that, I will be keeping the forums running for an extended period of time, date of which is not yet decided. I will also be making an export for your follows list so that your list isn't lost. Additionally, this list will be available as long as the forum is up and running. Other information that may be useful to the community may be filtered and backed up then made available for the community, but I will, under no circumstances, give anyone a full backup of the site or database. Many have used our system in confidence and it will stay that way.
 
I would like to thank everyone here for your patronage all these years. It has been a good run. Really, thank you. Wouldn't have made it this far without you.
 
---------------------
 
Looks like a lot of people are in a scramble to save what they can, and as a result, site is lot slower. I'm turning on the cloudflare anti-ddos protection to put the site back to a manageable speed. Will likely need to keep it on until the end.
- 2018/1/7
 
---------------------
 
The export feature has been added. Go to my follows and check the side bar. Realized there isn't much data to save when our IDs and such are all gone. But it's there anyway for the fuller version.
If domain is no longer up, forums will be available at the alternate address of vatoto.com (not used right now)
- 2018/1/13
 
---------------------
 
The servers have begun to expire. First the of the servers are now offline. With the exception of the main (control) server, it's designed so that load is shared among the rest when one goes down. So, it'll continually get slower to serve pages unless people trying to access also decreases. I will manually remove reader pages by 25th and migrate the forums away.
- 2018/1/18

Edited by Grumpy, 18 January 2018 - 06:10 AM.


#2
mayonayses

mayonayses

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 1 posts

*
POPULAR

Goodbye and take care!

#3
casinia

casinia

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 1 posts

*
POPULAR

i hope u finally have the time to take care of yourself, thanks for everything



#4
achyif

achyif

    Potato Sprout

  • Contributor
  • 7 posts

*
POPULAR

interested in seeing how things will develop for scanlation from here.

 

This will probably suck the most for smaller series and scan groups.


Edited by achyif, 07 January 2018 - 09:06 PM.

quicksandscans.wordpress.com

#5
Z3US_Ouroboros

Z3US_Ouroboros

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 4 posts

*
POPULAR

See you space cowboy... 2 years in this site, i really appreciate all your work take care and thank you for everything


Edited by Z3US_Ouroboros, 07 January 2018 - 09:03 PM.


#6
Stark700

Stark700

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 8 posts
  • LocationAnime World

*
POPULAR

Wow. This came to me as a surprise but thanks for everything.

 

I haven't been active on the forums here but always been reading manga for the past 5 years since I've joined. 



#7
CaptainNarcolepsy

CaptainNarcolepsy

    Potato Spud

  • Members
  • 14 posts

*
POPULAR

Thank you for your hard work over the years! Batoto has been the best manga reading experience for me.


trainer.png party.png

#8
kagome999

kagome999

    Potato Spud

  • Members
  • 15 posts

feels bad man but thx for everything



#9
Flare20012

Flare20012

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 1 posts

As the others have said, thanks for everything and goodbye.



#10
kanapesh

kanapesh

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 1 posts

*
POPULAR

First and last post.

Godspeed.



#11
Phantom369

Phantom369

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 2 posts
  • LocationGermany

was a good time and really enjoyed my stay here thanks for the high quality in the past years and thanks for your hard work



#12
Nozomi

Nozomi

    Potato Spud

  • Members
  • 12 posts

Many thanks to you and the rest of the staff for making this place an enjoyable visit for so many years. You will be missed. :)


"It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one’s own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between."

- Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350), [i]Tsurezure-Gusa (1340)

#13
SuperStupid

SuperStupid

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 1 posts

*
POPULAR

F

 

Only manga site I actually like so far, you'll be missed. Hope you have lots of comfy days reading manga or whatever else you fancy.


Let the record show, that batoto was a good site much loved by its community.


#14
NormanDFang

NormanDFang

    Potato Spud

  • Members
  • 10 posts

*
POPULAR

It's sad...VERY SADDENING. I really enjoy this site for reading manga. I don't think I'll find any other site quite like this. :( :( :(

 

Truly the most predictable thing about life is its unpredictability.

 

I'll remain with this site up to the last possible minute. So thank you for holding out until now. Rest well, knowing that at the very least I really appreciate this site you managed for so long. :batoto_012: :batoto_019:



#15
Leizu

Leizu

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 1 posts

Thanks for everything, ain't have much time around in this page but was a good experience.

 

Goodbye and take care yourself.



#16
-Ashi-

-Ashi-

    Potato Sprout

  • Contributor
  • 5 posts
  • LocationPoland

Wow, kinda unexpected... Or maybe not. Thank you for everything that you have done till today and goodbye!
Hope you can now go on a long vacation and do everything you wanted to do, but weren't able to :)


Edited by -Ashi-, 17 January 2018 - 09:09 PM.


#17
NZPIEFACE

NZPIEFACE

    Fingerling Potato

  • Members
  • 79 posts
  • LocationTake a guess

Well that sucks.

Thanks for your hard work.


Keep scrolling, nothing here


#18
Seikah

Seikah

    Potato

  • Donator
  • 167 posts

Thank you for everything. 



#19
Bleach118

Bleach118

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 1 posts

I'm sad but thank you for every thing you did. It was always a pleasure coming on this site and discovering new mangas. Have fun, sleep well ans stop all your alarms...



#20
epio

epio

    Potato Sprout

  • Members
  • 1 posts

fug