Jake Passed Away & Future Of Applianceblog.com

[eva2000]

To all Applianceblog visitors and community forum members, I have sad news that Jake (forum profile), the site owner, has passed away on June 24, 2023

• His obituary is online at https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/parker-az/edward-lucier-11366451.
• A forum memorial thread has been created here.
• A dedicated questions thread has been created here.

What Happened?

• The recent site downtime was related to the web host suspending the server due to overdue web hosting bill for August 2023. The server was automatically scheduled for cancellation by the web host. At the time, I didn't know what happened to Jake. So I made every effort to reach Jake through various means - email, phone, and even by sending a USPS Certified Mail letter to his last known address.
• Fortunately, years ago, Jake created and provided me a subaccount with Hivelocity.net and on August 13, 2023, I managed to persuade them to temporarily halt server termination while I attempt to contact Jake or his family to address the hosting bill. The server when in and out of suspended state as I asked the web host if I could get an opportunity to contact the forum staff members to see if they knew how to get in contact with Jake or his family.
• Sadly, I found an obituary suggesting that Jake may have passed away on June 24, 2023. https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/parker-az/edward-lucier-11366451. Jake Lucier's full legal name is Edward John Lucier Jr, though he occasionally went by John Lucier. This explains why Jake hadn't paid his web hosting bill. I reached out to the funeral home in hopes of contacting Jake's family to confirm this tragic news. But never got a reply. The web host also rang the funeral home to ask, but the funeral home said due to privacy reasons, they can't give out any specific information.
• As my search for Jake and his family went on, the web host stated they can only wait until September 1, 2023 for the unpaid bill. After which the server will be terminated. So on August 25, 2023, I updated Applianceblog.com domain's DNS to point to a different server that I control so that visitors and forum members can read a site wide message and know what is going on in hopes of visitors and forum members would know of a way to contact Jake or his family. You can see the original site web message on a domain I registered just in case we lost the applianceblog.com at https://applianceblog.repair/info and also created an Appliance Blog Discord server for everyone to join and discuss the ongoing situation with me. You can access it https://discord.gg/NBBtw8qx2d and also setup a Paypal donate link just in case I couldn't find family and had to take over the wen hosting and operating costs of the site. Once Joseph is verified, I intend to refund the Paypal donations made to that donate button. Some folks have said they are happy with me keeping the donations as a gesture of thanks. You can contact me using details further below.
• Relative contact: Between August 27-28, 2023, Jake's stepson, Joseph Winn contacted me via Jake's email address to confirm that Jake had officially passed away and that the obituary was his . Joseph did convey to me that he intended to keep Jake's site running. Joseph contacted the web host over the phone to add his payment details to Jake's account in order to pay the August 2023 overdue web hosting bill - saving the server from scheduled termination.
• Relative contact: Around August 28, 2023, I had a phone call with Joseph and one of the topics we discussed, is that I would need proof to verify his relationship before providing access details. He's agreed to provide copy of death certificate and authorise the funeral home to reply to my prior email confirming Jake's obituary and death. Once, I receive that they we can move forward with getting the site and forums back running. There's a lot more admin side matters for Joseph and I to handle though so it will take some time to get back to 100%.
• Relative contact: As at September 2, 2023, still waiting on Joseph's relationship verification proof before can move forward with specific site and forum plans.

What's been done so far?

• The Appliance Blog Discord server channel is still running and available at https://discord.gg/NBBtw8qx2d. Some members have expressed they want to keep it running. Ultimately, that would be a decision for Joseph at a later date. For now it's still running though.
• The server suspension on/off dance, did break a few things on the server and forum side including email sending and forum search. They should be fixed now.
• Some of the planned server software updates that Jake would have discussed with me, have also been done. Sad to do them without him as I knew some were on his mind Forums should be slightly faster because of these updates too.
• I've made a few forum side improvements with new forum addons for performance and functionality i.e. like whose viewing each thread display at bottom of thread, message alert grouping, new media embed sites support, separating forum sticky threads from regular threads and new password tools so when you change or set your forum passwords the system will alert you if you have a strong enough password and whether it has been compromised before. The changes also include making the forum pages load faster and also some cosmetic changes i.e. footer Paypal donation placement style etc.
• I've reduced the time limit between new post replies and new thread creation.

What's Next?

• As Joseph isn't familiar with the online web, blog and forum scene, it will be a steep learning curve to become familiar with the site and it's operation. There will also be additional site operation costs that he wouldn't be use to. This is where the forum community's support financially would be most welcomed.
• I've let Joseph know both in the phone call and reply email, that I am open to extending my role beyond just the server backend maintenance to help Joseph tackle the task of getting a grasp over the site management and operations. I run my own site, blog and forums all using the same software as this site and have been working with forum communities since 2000. So I am very familiar with all aspects of keeping Jake's site running from both the frontend and the backend Just need to touch base with Joseph once he verifies his relationship to Jake and discuss what my specific role and my rates would be.

How can you help?

• Now waiting to touch base with Joseph before we can decide how to move forward. Right now though, I am not sure if Joseph has access to Jake's financial accounts which the site's advertising, affiliate and Paypal donation income is paid into. Which means Paypal donations made on the site might go into Jake's Paypal account which Joseph may not have access to. As such I've temporarily removed Jake's Paypal donate button just in case folks donate into an account which Joseph can't access.

Ways you can contact me and/or show appreciation

If you need to contact me privately, you can do so in the following ways

1. Use Applianceblog Discord server's private message me feature by clicking on my username = eva2000 in Discord and use the message me feature.
2. This forum's private message me by clicking on my username = eva2000 or via my profile and start a new conversation.
3. I've set my own separate Paypal donate at https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=QDGHRQAMAP2DL to cover my time and costs so far.

Who is Joseph Winn?

• I've emailed Joseph to ask if he wants to introduce himself. I'll update with this info when it becomes available.

Who is eva2000 (George Liu)?

• My name is George Liu from Brisbane, Australia (+10 GMT timezone). I have been working on Jake's server backend for this forum/blog site for over 12 years since July 14, 2011! You can find me on the forum under the username eva2000.
• For all these years, Jake hired me to ensure the site's servers ran smoothly with every backend server system responsible for Applianceblog.com running online being set up and configured by me.
• Fortunately, because of my backend server access that Jake provided me with, I am able to save Jake's site and servers and pass on access credentials to Joseph. Jake officially hired me for 1hr of work at end of each month and any additional work is negotiated fixed fee basis or based on my standard hourly rates.
• I've been running web sites and forums since 2000. I worked for vBulletin.com forum software in technical support for a decade helping forum owners with vBulletin server related hosting issues (how I met Jake when he was using vBulletin forum software) before branching out on my own doing server optimisation consulting and web site page speed optimisation consulting. I worked with some of the largest forum discussion communities on the internet.