First, if you were somehow to pull it off, I'd be happy to try and help. However...
It's pretty much unreasonable for you to do so. There are several reasons for this, some of which have already been posted in the other thread:
1) If you JUST buy the forums, then you'd be a sucker. The forums have no real chance to grow if not for the fact they are attached to the main site, and the news articles that entice people to come here. If you get rid of the main site attachment, then the forum will slowly die off, and you will have wasted your money.
2) If you buy the website AND the forums, then think of how much you'll have to pay people to keep the web site active. I suppose you could do like most sites do and just rip off news from everywhere else, but even then, that would take a lot of work.
3) To have a web site and a forum, you have to be able to host them somewhere. For a site this large, you would need a server machine dedicated to the web site and the forums. There would be two ways to do that, and they both are bad.
A) Pay for hosting online...which will cost you, in some cases, over $100 a month for a good host. Additionally, you won't actually have easy access to the server and so going in and editing server files will be a pain.
B) Host the web site yourself. I'm sure this is what Crave does. Buying a new server costs a LOT of money, and hosting it could be dangerous to your personal stuff. The best way to host a web site would be to have an entirely separate machine AND internet connection, so no one could hack into your personal network and see your personal information. Additionally, the cost of having an online connection dedicated to a web site will be VERY large, I would imagine. You would want very high speeds for downloading and uploading, and many home connections will not be fast enough to handle all the work.
4) The "best" route for hosting a website would be to do it yourself, so let's presume you do that. Do you have any idea how to set up a web server? Do you know how to install a program (let's use Apache, for example), and how to configure it to work with vbulletin forums? Do you know how to install PHP and MySQL, and configure them to work with a vbulletin forum? Because, it's not easy, and while I haven't worked too hard at it, I haven't figured it out. I'm sure you could get someone with technical expertise to do it, but then you're out of a lot more money.
5) Why would you want to do this? To fix some problems that the forums have? The cost of doing something like this, if Crave was even interested in selling, would be in the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars. Would it really be worth 5-10 grand just for a place that you come a few hours a day to enjoy yourself? Would it be worth the hours upon hours of work that you put into it, hours which will have nothing to do with posting?
6) If you purchase the forums, you will need to have control of the main administrator account. So, don't be saying that you'll be a G-Mod, because SOMEONE will need to know the main admin account, and I'm not sure I'd trust ANYONE with $10,000 of my hard earned money...which is basically what you'd be doing.
If you are TRULY serious about this, and money isn't an object, then the first thing I'd recommend is trying to install a web server on a computer you don't use (Apache is a good web server), find a nullified version of vbulletin, and try get a nullified version of vbulletin up and running, and play around with things on there first. A nullified version of vbulletin is one that has been cracked, and thus, is free to use...but definitely in violation of vbulletin terms of service. Since you will only be using it to see what you can do, you can feel pretty safe that nothing bad will happen though. Find a null version of vbulletin, try installing it, and play around with it. Before you do ANYTHING else, do that first. You will need to download a web server (Apache), PHP 5 (I think??) and a version of MySQl. Try getting all that going, and then see if you still are interested.
On a side note, I made a new thread, because the old one is...well, it went the way of the Bar Room. And if you can't tell, I've thought about this before as well.
It's pretty much unreasonable for you to do so. There are several reasons for this, some of which have already been posted in the other thread:
1) If you JUST buy the forums, then you'd be a sucker. The forums have no real chance to grow if not for the fact they are attached to the main site, and the news articles that entice people to come here. If you get rid of the main site attachment, then the forum will slowly die off, and you will have wasted your money.
2) If you buy the website AND the forums, then think of how much you'll have to pay people to keep the web site active. I suppose you could do like most sites do and just rip off news from everywhere else, but even then, that would take a lot of work.
3) To have a web site and a forum, you have to be able to host them somewhere. For a site this large, you would need a server machine dedicated to the web site and the forums. There would be two ways to do that, and they both are bad.
A) Pay for hosting online...which will cost you, in some cases, over $100 a month for a good host. Additionally, you won't actually have easy access to the server and so going in and editing server files will be a pain.
B) Host the web site yourself. I'm sure this is what Crave does. Buying a new server costs a LOT of money, and hosting it could be dangerous to your personal stuff. The best way to host a web site would be to have an entirely separate machine AND internet connection, so no one could hack into your personal network and see your personal information. Additionally, the cost of having an online connection dedicated to a web site will be VERY large, I would imagine. You would want very high speeds for downloading and uploading, and many home connections will not be fast enough to handle all the work.
4) The "best" route for hosting a website would be to do it yourself, so let's presume you do that. Do you have any idea how to set up a web server? Do you know how to install a program (let's use Apache, for example), and how to configure it to work with vbulletin forums? Do you know how to install PHP and MySQL, and configure them to work with a vbulletin forum? Because, it's not easy, and while I haven't worked too hard at it, I haven't figured it out. I'm sure you could get someone with technical expertise to do it, but then you're out of a lot more money.
5) Why would you want to do this? To fix some problems that the forums have? The cost of doing something like this, if Crave was even interested in selling, would be in the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars. Would it really be worth 5-10 grand just for a place that you come a few hours a day to enjoy yourself? Would it be worth the hours upon hours of work that you put into it, hours which will have nothing to do with posting?
6) If you purchase the forums, you will need to have control of the main administrator account. So, don't be saying that you'll be a G-Mod, because SOMEONE will need to know the main admin account, and I'm not sure I'd trust ANYONE with $10,000 of my hard earned money...which is basically what you'd be doing.
If you are TRULY serious about this, and money isn't an object, then the first thing I'd recommend is trying to install a web server on a computer you don't use (Apache is a good web server), find a nullified version of vbulletin, and try get a nullified version of vbulletin up and running, and play around with things on there first. A nullified version of vbulletin is one that has been cracked, and thus, is free to use...but definitely in violation of vbulletin terms of service. Since you will only be using it to see what you can do, you can feel pretty safe that nothing bad will happen though. Find a null version of vbulletin, try installing it, and play around with it. Before you do ANYTHING else, do that first. You will need to download a web server (Apache), PHP 5 (I think??) and a version of MySQl. Try getting all that going, and then see if you still are interested.
On a side note, I made a new thread, because the old one is...well, it went the way of the Bar Room. And if you can't tell, I've thought about this before as well.
