phantomoftheopera.com - the site has disappeared

People have been wondering what has happened to phantomoftheopera.com, and contacting myself and HDKingsbury since we used to moderate there.

If you can't "find it", it isn't because there is something wrong with your computer or the Internet... after a period of technical problems the site has disappeared completely.

I have no further information to share, I'm afraid, and mourn the loss of a fascinating site with many interesting discussions and lovely members. Hopefully they will find their way here, and continue to share their love and obsession for Phantom.

Thanks for letting us know about this, Jennie. I was visiting that forum until recently when it suddenly shut down. It's too bad it's gone, since it seemed to be a *very* active site with lots of Phans posting interesting stuff. Hopefully it'll return one day. In the meantime, yes, maybe some of the people from there will find their way here.

I hadn't been on the forum for quite awhile (grad school monopolized my life) and I was quite surprised when I tried to go there today and find it just...gone. In fact, it takes me to a domain name purchasing site, which usually means the site owner hasn't renewed their domain. When this happens, it's usually up in the air if the site will come back or not. I certainly hope it will, as I found it to be the best Phan forum out there.

Thanks for telling us what you know, Jennie. Nice to see someone familiar here.

So glad for the update, thank you Jennie. I made it over here as well. Had been wondering what happened since the inability to post (and having to create a new username) started. I miss the activity there and still have a habit of typing the address into Chrome each morning! I wasn't an overly active poster but I visited daily. That site has been around for a long time in the Phandom....

Anyway, it's good to know we have a community here as well. Hopefully we spark some discussion!

I'm so sad the forum just disappeared. It was an institution, it's been so important to so many, either in the past or in recent time. Thanks for the update anyhow.

  I've found my way here too. I'm still grieving over the loss of phantomoftheopera.com but I'm very happy to have found this site and to see others I recognize here as well.

Hi Mesadallas, nice to see you here. I owe you thanks, because it was you who suggested on the old forum that I turn my long story, "An Unexpected Kindness," into a novel. I'm in the process of doing so, and it's now double the length it was before. Still a work in progress, but it is a very interesting project, and I'm grateful to you for getting me started on it.

Yes, I too miss the other forum. I suppose it must have been occupying a huge amount of memory on a web server somewhere, but it is such a pity that it should be lost. I hope more of the regulars turn up here.

Mary

Hello, nice to see some of the "old regulars" finding their way over here!

Am looking forward to future Phantom discussions with you all....

Karin Willison is the site owner of phantomoftheopera.com - does anyone here know her?

Thank you, ladies! It's so nice to find others from the other site- and thank you Mary for the wonderful compliment it really made my day. I can't tell you how much I'm anticipating reading your novel!

So when a site gets to a point where it has had a ton of activity it just shuts down? Is this what happened? Can't the person who began it just begin it again?

I don't know much about how internet sites work so pardon me if these are silly questions.

mesadallas wrote:So when a site gets to a point where it has had a ton of activity it just shuts down? Is this what happened?

No, I don't think it's that.  But the site owner has to pay the web hosting fees, and if they stop, that may be what shuts it down.  Jennie knows more than I do about Karin Willison, who was the exclusive owner of the Phantom site.  I know Jennie has tried a number of different ways to contact her, but Karin has apparently dropped right out of sight.  If she made no arrangements for anyone else to take over the website, then I don't think anything can be done to revive it.

Mary

Hi Mesadallas, it wasn't a traffic issue as far as I know....

I feel a bit like one of the managers in "Phantom" standing in front of an audience, not understanding what has happened, but trying to provide some kind of explanation     ... but here goes....

For the record, this is what I know:

Christine Daaé and Karin Willison were co-owners.  About a year ago, Christine let me know that she was handing over the site to Karin who has the rights to the domain name. Karin moved it to another server last autumn, and planned to set it up again "from scratch" on Wordpress, but archiving the old threads. The software used to build the site was old and not being updated, as I understand it. After some more glitching this spring the site disappeared from the Internet in May. I'm hoping that Karin will get it sorted out, but haven't heard anything from her.

I'm sorry to hear that Karin's Phantom site has gone down, but I just wanted to leave a note to welcome her regulars who have found their way here. We're glad to have you as part of our phamily

R.

Thank you for the welcome, Raphael.

Thank you Mary and Jennie- that makes perfect sense.

Hello !
I was a member of that site , too. Some of you may remember me as CRP.
I’m happy to see so many of my fellow Phans here. @mesadalas - thank you for helping me find this site

Your are more than welcome rook. Glad I was able to help another Phan. The only reason I discovered this site myself was it was because I just finished reading The Magic Envelope and the book mentioned this site.

So the domain address for the POTO forum has been bought by RUG and now links to the official website. It's a sad chapter to realize that the forum is forever gone. But I'm kinda happy the domain at least went into the "right" hands. Right, as in not a gambling or porn site…

Thanks for letting us know, operafantomet. I hadn't checked the address for a while.

I was rather hoping, if RUG got the domain name, that they might re-instate a forum. It's free publicity and generates a lot of interest in Phantom. On the other hand, I think they're hot on copyright, so if anyone posted a link to, say, a bootleg video on YouTube, it would probably get taken down immediately. So maybe we're better to do our chatting here.

Mary

So the RUG bought it so that it can no longer be used by fans?

operafantomet wrote:So the domain address for the POTO forum has been bought by RUG and now links to the official website. It's a sad chapter to realize that the forum is forever gone. But I'm kinda happy the domain at least went into the "right" hands. Right, as in not a gambling or porn site…

I've seen RUG's comment on tumblr..... it's rather interesting

http://operafantomet.tumblr.com/post/94882029037/dont-know-if-youre-aware-of-this-but-the-poto-forum

They say: Knowing the forum was active and we’ll used by Phans we did not pursue the domain. Last month the forum disappeared and the domain was put up for auction, we obtained it last week but not from the previous forum owner so only have the domain

Note the sad smilie at the end when they say "have only the domain". To me it implies that they regret the site having disappeared.

It makes me wonder if RUG would have been interested in helping to maintain the site as it was.... I wish!

mesadallas wrote:So the RUG bought it so that it can no longer be used by fans?

As Jennie posted, they had been eyeing the domain for years, but they let the forum be. I *think* that if they wanted to, they could have raised hell and claimed some legal rights for the domain. But they realized how popular the forum was, and kept a distance.

The reply on Tumblr, with the sad face and all, mostly felt like their way of communicating with teenagers… Which made me feel a bit odd as a grown up woman. but anyhow, I don't think they would ever have continued the forum, even if they could. Why?  

I remember how incredibly (and at time ridiculously) strict they moderated the official forum back in the days, deleting all posts containing reference to bootlegs (like, mentioning their existence) and all discussion re: cast changes. It was impossible to be around there, because you couldn't mention anything you knew that wasn't official. And let's face it, they're not kings of social media, they fail to tell about most going on in POTO land, or they tell it long after other sources has updated on it. So discussing in the official forum was like going 4 months back in time… Eventually I think they just closed it.

As a contrast, the POTO forum was where everything and anyone was discussed. It was a vital and fun forum. But 60% of its content would have been unacceptable to RUG, at least going by the standards of their old official forum. So they could never have run POTO.com as it was.

But with the domain they really aren't the bad guys. They didn't claim the domain before it was up for grabs, and what they do - make it link to the already existing official site - makes sense from a business point of view. It's the most obvious address for the official POTO site, and with the forum gone I'm really happy it links to other relevant content and not some cheat-ass diet pills or Dubai based gambling central.

operafantomet wrote:
But with the domain they really aren't the bad guys. They didn't claim the domain before it was up for grabs, and what they do - make it link to the already existing official site - makes sense from a business point of view. It's the most obvious address for the official POTO site, and with the forum gone I'm really happy it links to other relevant content and not some cheat-ass diet pills or Dubai based gambling central.

Am with you on this one, Operafantomet. At least the site name links to something that is relevant, even if it is to only one of the facets of the diamond that is the world of Phantom.

I wonder if there is any way to make this site more visible to Phantom fans, and easier for them to find.... One member here said they found it because I'd referred to it in my book.

It doesn't come up in searches for "phantom of the opera fan sites".... and the name doesn't clearly shout out "Phantom!!!!" either, I'm afraid.

Could we ask RUG to link to it on their site ???   

Jennie, nice idea to spread the word.  I've just gone to my profile on FanFiction Net, and added this line:
If you're looking for a friendly forum to chat about Phantom, search on Deserted Phans and that will take you to the desertedphans forumotion site.

I couldn't actually post the link, because FFN won't let you do that.  And I don't know how many people who read stories will look at an author's profile.  But one or two might find it.

Mary

Nice work Mary. I'll do the same in my author's profile on ffn.net.

Does anyone else have any suggestions for spreading information about this Phantom site?

You could go to IMDB and post the info in the Phantom movies.

If anyone wants to save articles and threads from the old site, go to archive.org and enter the URL in their "Wayback Machine." It's not perfect, but it's a good way to save some material that might otherwise be lost.

I'm sad to see it gone. I know site hosting can get expensive, but I do wish there had been a little advance notice that the site was going to cease operations.

I don't know if there's any way to tag this forum so search engines find it...that's the downside of templates and forums like this.

I tried archive.org but it just takes me to the ALW site. Sigh. I had hope I could print out the compositions. There were a lot of great stories there I had working my way through but had not yet had time to read.

I second the thought that it would have been nice to know the site was going to go down. I would have taken advantage of the fact.   

Archive.org might not work for the last few months of the site, but if you pick a date a little further back, it shows up.  It won't help for really recent threads and stories posted just before it went off-line, but most threads are coming up for me (as well as some of the old articles).  I think the latest date is September 28, 2013...which is better than nothing.

Ah, thanks! I'll try again.