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Grumpy

Grumpy

Member Since 20 Jan 2011
Offline Last Active Jul 18 2021 07:03 AM

#1872549 Search broken?

Posted by Grumpy on 13 April 2018 - 09:56 PM

Fixed




#1872542 Minor Maintenance - 20180413

Posted by Grumpy on 13 April 2018 - 09:48 PM

Even with the site closed for the most part, seems like haywire bots are still an issue for this site... I don't know what they're doing just making countless searches everywhere, but few bans and we're back to normal operation. I honestly haven't check this server in a while, so... it was probably at terrible speeds for a while now.




#1862433 Minor Announcements

Posted by Grumpy on 01 February 2018 - 08:22 PM

Fixed redirect on batoto.com, .net, .org and www. version of it to vatoto.com

 

Bet there's still more stuff to update somewhere that I can't remember.




#1862423 Ew. The site made with the bought bato.to domain. Ew.

Posted by Grumpy on 01 February 2018 - 08:20 PM

They literally copied mangawindow site, and just replaced the name with batoto,it's just lazy. I have a question, can't they use the same layout as batoto?

Well, I own the copyright to the layout as I made it. It's also built on top of the theme that I bought/licensed from IPS theme designing company (IPSFocus). Lastly, IPS itself. So, they would be infringing on three copyright owners issues if they copied ours.

But there's nothing physically stopping them.

So... they can, but they shouldn't.


I'm not too surprised[...]

Batoto was just an image hosting site with convenient sorting and a forum. Don't be calling us names now! :P

 

Number of companies actually already worked with us and actually had another one that was rolling out before I told them sorry for wasting their time. So, I don't really think they were shy from being associated with us.

 

One company whom I was in contact with was super into buying it. But couldn't convince their CEO. So, there is a lot of mixed desires on their side too.

 

The quantity of batoto traffic + smooth transition is worth seriously quite a lot. I actually had the site evaluated with a consultant prior to approaching them. To a strategic buyer (like manga publisher), I was supposed to approach them with low 6 figure (for site, not just domain). But did warn me that the strategic route of selling rarely work and shouldn't get my hopes up simply because they usually don't assign a budget for this type of nature, even for large companies. Meaning, they'd have to reassign their budget to make it work. This was a super bargain though. Still feel like a big loss of opportunity for them. 

 

In the end, market has spoken. The domain's value is 5k and it's where it's sold.




#1861964 Ew. The site made with the bought bato.to domain. Ew.

Posted by Grumpy on 31 January 2018 - 12:40 PM

It is weird. But oh well...

 

I actually approached other official publishers prior to putting domain up for auction to see if they're interested. From about a month and half before the announcement. Sadly, I either never got a reply or got turned down. I found that so stupid. They spend so much more money on advertising already and they were willing to let go of an extremely effective promo ability.

 

That's why I ultimately just sold it to market. At the point where publishers already declined, the only potential buyers left was random fan or a buyer like now. At least it's not malicious, so I can't complain... yet.




#1861951 Minor Announcements

Posted by Grumpy on 31 January 2018 - 12:11 PM

More dead links...
 
- Changed all group icons that were linked to img.bato.to to generic contributor
- Changed all img.bato.to in comic comments. (which will now just within new domain 404)
- .... and I got tired of listing. Removed img.bato.to from bunch of place which will now 404 from like 20 different types of places.
 
There's probably more ever lingering somewhere. If you ever see any, report!
 
Spoiler



#1861203 vatoto.com is up

Posted by Grumpy on 27 January 2018 - 11:14 PM

Who bought batoto ?

I don't know. Whole process is anonymous and handled through the third party (sedo).




#1860873 Annoying ads? (v3)

Posted by Grumpy on 26 January 2018 - 01:07 PM

We have no ads. Closed




#1860730 Minor Announcements

Posted by Grumpy on 25 January 2018 - 10:59 PM

I have updated the logo on all the themes now. 

Setup new analytics and webmasters tools for the site.

Along with my grandfathered gsuite that i'm gonna use forever and google can never charge me. [email protected] is now functional.

Recached everything.

Reconfiged everything... stupid site has way too many specific rules.

Updated urls on chat

Wrote up prettier dead notice on bato.to, which now deletes all cookies on visit.

Removed ad codes from everywhere I can remember.

Added dog.

 

Did I miss anything? Why am I making work for myself?

 

--------------

 

Updated privacy, tos and abuse pages.

Updated IPB license.




#1860708 vatoto.com is up

Posted by Grumpy on 25 January 2018 - 09:40 PM

I've always wondered, wtf does バトト / ばとと even mean?, if anything at all?

Nothing. Just something I thought sounded nice.




#1860537 Minor Announcements

Posted by Grumpy on 25 January 2018 - 03:31 PM

All the bato.to links in posts and comments have been updated to vatoto.com.




#1860511 Retaining old accounts on the new forum

Posted by Grumpy on 25 January 2018 - 03:07 PM

To be honest, I'm not sure where I stand myself on this matter.

 

Initially, I decided to nuke everything. Which is why I even told other admins to not bother with acct deletions anymore.

 

But some people managed to convince me to at least keep the forums up. So, it's here right now. Plus, I think I have difficulty letting things go as well.

 

If keeping Batoto as a whole was like managing a fleet of dozen cars, managing forums is still like managing 1 car. Surely, there's lot less I need to do. And I can do it with less vigor or need for urgency to fix issues. No one's going to be hammering our servers for content. It's tiny effort compared to before, but still effort. Keeping forums up costs too, again, tiny amount now compared to before (~$50/mo now) and I don't really intend to spend money forever on something people may not be too interested in.

 

So, it's up now. But if there's of high value to you, you should make a copy of it for yourself.




#1856003 How do I get a copy of my follows list?

Posted by Grumpy on 13 January 2018 - 09:48 AM

Check the side bar on the follows page

https://vatoto.com/myfollows




#1852992 Batoto will be closing permanently

Posted by Grumpy on 07 January 2018 - 08:57 PM

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



#1849959 Josei titles not accessible?

Posted by Grumpy on 19 December 2017 - 11:43 PM

Try changing your URL from https to http. Otherwise, noted.