News

Thank You and Goodbye

Revenant
Posted onJan 6, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Updated onUpdated on Jan 6, 2025 at 5:26 PM

SFFN content creation is coming to an end and the site is returning to being a forum of passionate users and designers; what it was always best at. I wanted to post a thank you to everyone here. It’s been a true joy being able to fulfill a life long passion for tech journalism. The support from SFFN has been nothing short of amazing. Through SFFN I got to talk to engineers from major companies like Zotac and Asrock, review products long before they were public, and try to give a little back to the SFF community.

Unfortunately, like most SFFN volunteers, life has gotten complicated. After a concerning medical visit, I stepped away a few months ago to focus on my health. I’m happy to say my health improved substantially when I turned off the SFFN test bench pictured above, and started living a more active lifestyle with my family. I’m sad to say that the bench will now stay turned off.

Of course I’ll still be in the forums and Discord. SFFN forums allowed me to get some of my favorite cases like the CCD MI-6, Ghost S1, Thorzone Mjolner, Densium 4, and many more. While the forum isn’t as active as it once was, it’s still great to see hopeful designers post their concepts, and the creative builds users make with them. The Discord has been a great community to chat with and is full of talented and passionate people.

So again, thank you. Best to you and yours in the new year!

Revenant

View thread (12 replies)
Happy New Year to all!

It's become clear that SFF Network, as is, is not sustainable. The continued decline of readership of written content - the 10 minute summary clickbait YouTube videos that other content creators put out are far more desired - as well as many significant changes in my personal life have led to the following decision.

Going forward, SFF Network will no longer publish news, reviews and editorials. I'll be adjusting the DNS settings so that the SmallFormFactor.net and SFF.Network domains point to the forum. The community and Discord will live on for perpetuity!

I've made significant efforts to reduce costs and increase revenue, as well as significant efforts to focus time and energy on content and community, but alas, SFF Network still operates at a massively unsustainable deficit - half the operating costs are funded out of my pocket on an ongoing basis. Keep in mind our team, and myself, are volunteers - so this deficit is without even taking into account value of time spent!

With the loss of my long-standing "day job" employment in May 2024, and my move to night shift work with a significant increase in commute time and significant decrease in flexibility, the time and energy I have spare for the content side of SFF Network is minimal.

I thank each and every one of you for your support of SFF Network through the ups and downs we've had since we launched almost 10 years ago. I'd also like to thank our team for their support, even though I don't (can't) pay them a cent!

In short:
Community forum and Discord is business as usual.
No more reviews and news.
 
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confusis

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
Original poster
SFF Network
SFF Workshop
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,355
7,480
sff.network
Copied from discussion in Discord:

To be fair, I'm not asking for anyone to subscribe/donate/etc, I'm just winding down the content creation side of things to reduce my monetary and time costs to a manageable level.

I'd rather spend time working on my car and other hobbies, than write about PC hardware at the moment - kinda burnt out on the PC industry as a whole.



Hosting is the biggest cost, I've reduced as much as possible, but I _think_ i can knock 20% more off, but need to make sure dropping that server doesn't break any bridges/links we have going on between platforms. We're built on a fully custom platform , so it's not as easy as just moving to a different host.

I don't mind continuing to chip in to the costs so much (once shrunk down), it's the front page with news and reviews growing stale (and thus likely driving away new community members) that is the main gripe point for me.
 
Arboreal

Arboreal

King of Cable Management
Silver Supporter
Oct 11, 2015
825
825
Thanks John for all your doing and have done for SFFN, it's somewhere I come most days and it's good to read interesting stuff and not be assailed with videos and ads.
Long may it last, the decline of forums is sad and you're not alone in that.
 
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Revenant

Revenant

Christopher Moine - Senior Editor SFF.N
Revenant Tech
SFFn Staff
Apr 21, 2017
1,745
2,850
It's been rough for the SFFN volunteer staff. We've all been hit with life issues, some rather tragic, that has severely limited what we could contribute. I wish we all could have done more. However, I take solace that the history and resources in the forum will live on.
 
confusis

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
Original poster
SFF Network
SFF Workshop
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,355
7,480
sff.network
Revenant said:
It's been rough for the SFFN volunteer staff. We've all been hit with life issues, some rather tragic, that has severely limited what we could contribute. I wish we all could have done more. However, I take solace that the history and resources in the forum will live on.
Click to expand...
I almost wonder if being staff here is cursed >.>
 
Revenant

Revenant

Christopher Moine - Senior Editor SFF.N
Revenant Tech
SFFn Staff
Apr 21, 2017
1,745
2,850

SFFN content creation is coming to an end and the site is returning to being a forum of passionate users and designers; what it was always best at. I wanted to post a thank you to everyone here. It’s been a true joy being able to fulfill a life long passion for tech journalism. The support from SFFN has been nothing short of amazing. Through SFFN I got to talk to engineers from major companies like Zotac and Asrock, review products long before they were public, and try to give a little back to the SFF community.
Unfortunately, like most SFFN volunteers, life has gotten complicated. After a concerning medical visit, I stepped away a few months ago to focus on my health. I’m happy to say my health improved substantially when I turned off the SFFN test bench pictured above, and started living a more active lifestyle with my...
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Continue reading...
 
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Revenant

Revenant

Christopher Moine - Senior Editor SFF.N
Revenant Tech
SFFn Staff
Apr 21, 2017
1,745
2,850
mpalen19 said:
Sad to hear. It's a good site. Wish there was more interest / readership.
Click to expand...

Thank you. It’s bitter-sweet. I’m happy that John won’t have the burden he’s had for a while now, and I look forward to just enjoying tech again. However, I will miss the media stuff. It was neat getting to talk to engineers and play with hardware early. Though that wears off too after a while.
 
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Arboreal

Arboreal

King of Cable Management
Silver Supporter
Oct 11, 2015
825
825
Thank you Chris for all your work, it's sad to lose the hardware part, but your health has to take precedence.

Like my other tech community, Bit-Tech, we are a small and supportive community in a world where forums are in decline and people are getting their info and interactions in other less thoughtful and engaged ways.

Look at the C4 SFX thread, it must be coming up to it's 8th birthday, and is still active on one level...

I do think SFF has changed and small PCs have become more mainstream since I started dabbling 15+ years ago when mini ITX boards were low spec and hadn't graduated to socketed CPUs.

Here's to another year of small stuff and all the SFF friends out there
 
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