Daniel, the developer and webmaster of IRCDriven.com has closed down his website due to “time constraints, lack of interest and a lack of developers and staff”. The site will be shut down “indefinitely until we can come back with a better approach” he writes in his announcement.
The site – when it was still operational – was an indexing service for IRC networks, had community forums and amongst other things also a Wiki with IRC-related information.
He however writes that in the meantime development on the site will continue and upon the anticipated relaunch the website will feature a “more web 2.0 look”, new features and improvements on the old feature-set.
Staff will remain the same and all SQL-databases have been backed up as of June 1st 2010 so one would expect that all user accounts will work as before when the relaunch is going to happen.
Closing his announcement Daniel writes that he thanks everyone “who has been apart of IRC Driven and I hope you remain faithful to us during this indefinite down period”.
Thanks for the tip go to Bertrum & Trixar_za!
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Bertrum says:
I am kind of dissapointed that IRCDriven has closed down. (As a user rather than a competitor) It was nice to see a newish indexing service that was willing to cater for all its users, but in the end I think that was what caused the time constraints, I think the IRCDriven team were working at too many different sections rather than concentrating on one at a time. IRCDriven also openly aimed to be better than SearchIRC, whicg again I thought would be a problem because if you concentrate to hard on a competitior, you lose focus on your own project. That aside as a user I did think that IRCDriven was far more feature rich than netsplit and sirc, and they did always help a user out within a few minutes if possible.
Anyway I wish Daniel and the rest of the IRCDriven team the best of luck with future projects or whatever they may do, and I look forward to seeing the new and improved IRCDriven when it is released.
katsklaw says:
wha?? Ok, color me ignorant but you’re shutting down due to lack of time/interest but already planned a comeback?
Rather contradictory isn’t it?
Daniel says:
The time constraints are due to the fact I am going to Iraq in 3 months. I will be gone a year long and do not have time constantly work on the website. The lack of developers is what also causes an issue because I need to have a reliable team that can maintain the website while I am deployed. This means future updates and making sure the servers are kept updated.
The whole plans of an “IRC Driven 2.0″ is honestly my attempt to try and relaunch the website with a better idea. The website has honestly been made to this day built off of “last minute” ideas. So I am writing a word document right now that will explain all the new features, and old features. This document will be the official IRC Driven 2.0 site plan.
I could have however kept the website up if I really wanted to while making this new website, but I find shutting it down the easiest method right now because that makes it so I can alter the databases, and rewrite the backend without conflicts to new inputted data.
I am hoping that we can relaunch before I leave to Iraq, but probably will not able to relaunch the website until the end of 2011 if I don’t get help with this.
Bertrum says:
I would have to agree with Katsklaw. Also you should of found a reliable enough team, or a partner when you first came up with IRCDriven, recently I was offline for around 6/7 weeks and came back and the Wiki had alot more content/users than when I left, people wont stop using the service just because you are not online, so maybe shutting down wasn’t the best thing you could of done, however I wish you luck and look forward to seeing 2.0.
Daniel says:
This decision wasn’t easy for me to make. You are absolutely right. I need a more reliable and dedicated team. Which brings me to the point, IRC Driven will not return until that happens. The website was poorly written, poorly planned, and poorly played out. I plan on fixing this. I started IRC Driven back in 2006 as a project to start learning PHP. Now that I have a strong grasp on PHP I will write the website in a more cleaner and efficient matter.
Point is though, I made this decision on my own, and I felt it was the best route to take right now. That is what matters. This website was costing me too much and giving too little of results. I can guarantee the domain is registered at least for another 2 years, and once IRC Driven 2.0 is released, I will NOT be taking the website down again.
Anon says:
@Mods: Might want to delete the link to this site from your Links section then.
phrozen77 says:
[quote comment="3510"]@Mods: Might want to delete the link to this site from your Links section then.[/quote]
Done, thanks for the notice!