Hiatus

What do you think of owners going on hiatus, or taking long, dramatic breaks?
Discuss here.
Personally, sometimes they deserve the breaks, but some people are just going off because someone hurt their feelings and dramatically refusing to update because they feel wounded...
I hate when sites like that close their site. You might as well leave it open for viewing.

I'm neutral on this now, really. It started with one owner closing the entire site down to have some renovations (there really isn't any justifiable reason for you wanting to close your sites) done. Then it took some over hyping and over promising everything to keep people on their feet. A lot of struggling webmasters thought this would generate more attention to their site, so they decided to do the same as well. In the end (After months of waiting), it turned out that the site was opened and it really has nothing new to offer at all except a brand new layout (this is what happens in most cases). When there are tools such as XAMPP, which were built for local development and testing, it makes me wonder why they would want to close off every portion of their site.

Ayame said:

Personally, sometimes they deserve the breaks

Click to expand...

By the way, what does "deserve" actually mean in a fan sites case? Without making a far-fetched assumption, I read this as if you were implying that they owe you their time and content. For most fan sites, most webmasters only do this as an online hobby or something to distract themselves with when they have nothing else to do. I know I do for the sites of my own. I believe that being devoted to your site, plus caring about your visitors is perfectly fine. When it comes to the point of you writing a long apology in an update, it really just looks ridiculous. The webmaster is going against his/her will and always gives in to visitor demands. It's your site indeed; do what you want with it. Of course, try to have a more open-minded approach to many things when building a website; especially a fan site.

I think it's stupid that people feel the need to deny their visitors access to all of their content just because the layout isn't pretty. Test it on your own computer or throw together a quick free account with similar settings on another host, create a subdomain... just because you're feeling insecure or attention-starved doesn't mean that I don't need to look at your walkthroughs or whatever for six months. It's true, in the end they don't "owe" their visitors anything because it's just a fansite, but still. Why? It defeats the purpose of offering the content in the first place.

...of course, I find that many of the sites that go on hiatus willy-nilly actually don't have much worthwhile content to begin with, so it's not like I'm missing much. :/ The above paragraph was hypothetical, I suppose.

I think it's a horrible idea to even go on hatius! You gennerally don't display your afflate links, and can't you just leave the site open for viewing and work on the new HTML in a note pad or something? If any of my afflates went on a haitus and didn't disply my link, they'd be off in a heart beat.

I belive I have stated that before, I can't remember. :/

A silly trend. As Faltzer said, started with one webmaster thinking it was a good idea, went on to everybody else thinking that was the way to make great renovations on your site.

I wouldn't dream of doing it, but then again it is very easy for me to do local testing; I might perhaps see the drive to do it if I didn't. :/ Regardless, it's generally a stupid idea. Taking the site down while updating something/having real-life issues/being bored of the site won't help anyone; taking the extra effort to test somewhere else is worth it.

Eevee's Headquarters was the place where the stupid hiatus fad started.

On forums a lot of people do it. At least on most of the forums I go to. I think it's away for people to get the, "OH DON'T GO WE LOVE YOU YOU ROCK" kind of response. I suppose it makes them feel appreciated. Stupid thing to do. People do it for attention. TOTALLY for attention.

If I feel like I need a break from my website, I'll take a break from my website. I post saying I'm going to be taking a break for a week or so, and that's that. I don't close anything down; just because I'm taking a break doesn't mean my visitors have to.

It really isn't safe for me to assume this, since I can't read minds, but it feels like when webmasters put their sites on hiatus, they're expecting popularity to surge because they're going to have all this awesome new stuff when they reopen, and that a single page with a chatbox is going to draw so many visitors because they can't wait for the new site. That's the impression I get with many hiatuses (though not all).

*sigh* But whatever the webmaster wants to do, I suppose... it is their site, after all.

I think it's ridiculous and I thought it was stupid when Eevee's HQ did it, too.

The only reason to take your website down really is if you don't want anyone to see it (presumably because it's awful) or because you are making some mind-blowing change (and I do mean mind-blowing) and you don't want half your pages being old and the other new. To tell you the truth, even that last one is a little iffy.

My website is on an unintentional hiatus because I didn't renew the domain name in time and now it costs $99. My dad and I (I can't use credit cards~) are waiting for it to expire.

Oh no, I'm going to lose my 25 visitors. :(

Well, Eevee's Headquarters should pay for this trend! Torches and pitchforks, everyone!
I can't believe it caught on. Half the time after a hiatus, there is hardly anything as good as expected, which means that all the taunting and whispers of new content and the wait weren't good at all. I mean, you go to the site, and you expect it to be online, but then it's like, "No, we extended the wait, sorry!" or "We're on a hiatus!" and then you're disappointed because you expected the site to be there (maybe you wanted to show your friend).
I guess if your site is completely screwed up and you really need to renovate it behind the scenes, it might be okay, like if your site is an embarrassing sight, but I can't think of many circumstances that would leave your site like this. :/

Ayame said:

Well, Eevee's Headquarters should pay for this trend! Torches and pitchforks, everyone!

Click to expand...

Aww, but that's not fair; how was anyone to know what kind of trend that that would cause?

To be fair, Eevee's HQ actually was recoded in its entirety, which is very rarely the case with the followers.

My site's been on a hiatus for ages now but I haven't ever said it's a hiatus
It's because there is nothing to update and I can't really be arsed anymore

closing-of-site hiatuses are lame
there's no point to them

Butterfree said:

To be fair, Eevee's HQ actually was recoded in its entirety, which is very rarely the case with the followers.

Click to expand...

I still don't understand how 127.0.0.1 could not have been an alternative. I don't see any reason as justifiable for that unless you really broke something (which in this case would not be a hiatus.).

Sandstone-Shadow said:

Aww, but that's not fair; how was anyone to know what kind of trend that that would cause?

Click to expand...

They likely didn't know what they were starting. It's not like they encouraged everyone to have a long hiatus.

Regarding Butterfree's points, I have to agree that they did have MAJOR construction going on, but the fad it started was rather bad.