Dear HD Members,

It has been long few weeks in the making, but I am happy to finally announce that HostingDiscussion.com will soon become a part of a larger web hosting community we all know and respect - WebHostingTalk.com!

While my company has already been acquired on paper as of last week, the actual move date we are targeting is May 15, 2010. I will continue to work on the new forum in making it even more interesting, the difference being - the crowd will be larger.

It wasn't the first time iNet Interactive has approached me in hopes to acquire the community (the first contact was made back in 2005!), but the growing number of responsibilities that I am faced in the offline world has finally made sense for me to sell and take a laid back approach as managing this forum has become almost a full-time job.

At this time I would like to ask the HostingDiscussion.com community to please respect my decision and look forward to being a part of a larger community which, I am sure, will prove to be very positive for the industry.

I fully realize what date it is today, and I am guessing most of you will try to make a joke out of it, but the fact is, according to the contract, I was due to make the announcement within 5 working days and today happened to be the last date of it. That's classic Art - leaving stuff for last day.

Once again, I am NOT leaving the community and will eventually become the leader (disclosure: and minority shareholder) in the new merged community, so I will still be very much involved.

The amount of time I've spent on the pages of HostingDiscussion.com is priceless to me and I will never forget the kindness and friendships that were established. I hope to take these trusted connections with me into the next chapter of my life.

Best
Artashes

Please let this really be an April Fool's Day joke.

Would it make a difference if I re-post this tomorrow?

This is exactly what I was afraid of - that people will really take it the wrong way. I will email John from iNet to ask him whether it would be OK to make the announcement tomorrow instead while not many people know.

And please please pretty please with cherries on top, let's be positive about the issue. As I told staff members here, they will have the option to become staff members at WHT as well. Moderators can become moderators, and our advisors will become the advisors on WHT as well. We, as people, are not going anywhere!

Sounds like an interesting move. What happens to the HostingDiscussion brand? Does that get absorbed by iNet? I guess what I'm looking for is what will actually change? When you say "merge" does the HD forums go away and now become WHT, the forum that we all escaped from due to the petty arguments, flaming and ranting of various members?

Since moving to iNet, they'll likely move the servers etc too right? So we'll want to chat on that and make sure everything is ready for the May 15th date.

Sounds like an interesting move and hopefully everything works out for the best for everyone.

Conor, I will definitely get in touch with you today to discuss the details. We still have lots of time ahead.

As far as other questions, the brand is now in the hands of iNet. I am pretty positive the overall goal was to take over HD and merge it into WHT, redirect all the traffic as well. I used to think competition was great for this industry. I still do think so, and HD has been doing phenomenally well during the past couple of years, but I felt like it was my time to let go of that.

Another positive is that nobody will lose their posts, and if you have an account on both forums, the source account will be the one that is older.

Ths s awsm. W mght fnlly mv p n r Tpk rnkngs wth th nw wnrshp.

What about us hosts that paid in advance for advertising?

I highly doubt iNET is going to honor previous advertising agreements.

The best to you, Artashes. HD has been a wonderful forum.

@Plexi: All current clients will be refunded in a prorated format as of May 15.

@Steve: We still have some time left to play!

Ok. Thanks, Artashes.

So, this is not an April Fool's Day joke??

Cheers

Who's buying the first round?

On a more serious note, this is sad news, but I wish the best of luck.

Took me a while, but I just got it.
It is extremely sad news indeed. But now that I am filthy rich, I guess I will buy the first round, Jerry. Come on over.

But then another one will pop up. Haha.