Initially Fortune City gave out no information whatsoever on what the status of these problems was. It was left to volunteers like me to try and answer the angry and confused posts that the technical message boards were flooded with. In those days this page became a home for the latest news about Fortune City's technical problems and the work arounds for them.

To be fair I must add that later on they did start giving out information, and the techs were actively posting answers to peoples questions on the message boards.

The banner policy...
When all that had died down a bit, the next thing happened. When I moved in to Fortune City it was still allowed to display their banner at the bottom of each page. That was changed, and people had to display the banner at the top of each page. Since at that time the banner was displayed in a bright-blue, large, and badly designed banner console this made almost everyone's site look bad. Lots of people with high-quality sites moved out.

The new forums...
Fortune City's message boards used to be a fun place to hang out. People made friends there, got help building their website, wrote round-robin stories together... Until Fortune City re-designed them at the end of last year. In terms of loading speed, navigation and general useability the new message boards were a total disaster. Apart from that they were also full of technical bugs. Conversation on many of the message boards died down to a minimum, and people began to set up message board communities of their own.

Fortune City UK...
Fortune City UK has started to offer 100 Mb sites. Now, hardly anybody actually needs 100 Mb. Unless your site is really large and really sound and graphics intensive 20 Mb is more than sufficient.

But, it sounded like a good idea to have that kind of space available for backup copies of my other sites, so on February 16th I moved in. The next morning I decided that I didn't want the banners, even on backup copies of my sites that few people would get to see anyway, so I tried to move out. I got a page telling my to try again after a few minutes. I did. With the same result. That evening I tried again. With the same result. The next morning I tried again. With the same result. I went to the forums to see whether more people were having the same problem. I found a message from one of the Ministers telling me that a solution to this problem was posted on the Meltingpot forum. With some difficulty I located the Meltingpot forum. The message wasn't there. I tried to post a message to the forum. My name showed up, but the title and the contents of the message didn't. I deleted the message and gave up.

Moving on...
So, there you have it. My first website was on Fortune City, and Fortune City's message boards gave me an idea what on-line communities could be like. I was once a Neighbourhood Guide for Fortune City, and seriously planning to become a Minister. But, right now, I've lost my enthusiasm. I still have my site here, though most of the content has been moved elsewhere, and I visit the message boards, occasionally. Oh well, who knows what might happen yet...