Ron Dayes Posted June 6, 2020 Since the 4th of June 2020 (so 2 days ago from this post), the website "mocpages.com" no longer exist! Mocpages has - without any media news/final warning from its creator Sean Kenny - simply been deleted. The plug has been pulled and there are no hints on mocpages.com ever being restored again. If you search for it now, you wont even find the official link that lead to it. It is now listed on "crunshbase" as a website that (used to) run. Many users left mocpages a few years ago for flickr.com, yet for those who remained and still actively posted on this website this certainly is a shock i believe. If data wasnt backed up, pictures saved etc - it seems all that data is lost forever now. Immediately after its deletion, TLCB posted an article that really sums it up well. Its worth the read. I just want to spread those news here on this Forum so you people are aware that this former milestone for the AFOL community with fond memories of contests and discussions has silently passed away... Apparently most people didnt even notice (yet) since i didnt find a Post on any AFOL forum yet. Feel free to share your fond memories you've had on mocpages.com! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
1963maniac Posted June 6, 2020 (edited) Should you wish to contact Sean Kenney – regarding MOCpages or anything else – you can do so at his website by clicking https://www.seankenney.com/contact/ Edited June 6, 2020 by 1963maniac Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mindstormsboi Posted June 6, 2020 (edited) All the time before it got deleted, it was showing some error saying "Could not connect to the database" and the last Facebook post they ever made was a whopping 8 years ago. Underneath the error there were several images, one of a minifigure head, one of a red 2x2 brick, one of an office folder, and one of a greyed out group of people. I archived the minifig head image and used it as my profile picture. Edited June 6, 2020 by mindstormsboi Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ron Dayes Posted June 6, 2020 1 hour ago, 1963maniac said: Should you wish to contact Sean Kenney – regarding MOCpages or anything else – you can do so at his website by clicking https://www.seankenney.com/contact/ But dont expect him to reply. Before we left mocpages years ago, we tried to reach out to him to get any answer/statement on it whatsoever. Noone ever got through. If you wish to do it anyway, keep it brief and dont expect miracles. Perhaps once Mocshare is finished, it will restart a LEGO dedicated website in the style of mocpages again. 1 hour ago, mindstormsboi said: All the time before it got deleted, it was showing some error saying "Could not connect to the database" and the last Facebook post they ever made was a whopping 8 years ago. Underneath the error there were several images, one of a minifigure head, one of a red 2x2 brick, one of an office folder, and one of a greyed out group of people. I archived the minifig head image and used it as my profile picture. thats actually quite a cool idea^^ That picture would have been lost forever by now if it wasnt for you saving it as a profile pic ;) indeed, actual maintenace for mocpages stopped years ago. I wonder who really did the server maitenance to get it back up again all those times it broke down the last 2 years or so. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Lego David Posted June 7, 2020 Did someone just straight up delete MOCpages without any warning, or the website just simply crashed and stopped functioning or something? Because I can't see anyone who would just simply delete the site without giving any sort of warning to the active users. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ron Dayes Posted June 8, 2020 15 hours ago, Lego David said: Did someone just straight up delete MOCpages without any warning, or the website just simply crashed and stopped functioning or something? Because I can't see anyone who would just simply delete the site without giving any sort of warning to the active users. Seems impossible - BUT - Yes, that was exactly the case. The site was down for over a month and on the 4th of June it simply ceased to exist. No warning to its active users - the site simply vanished. Sean Kenny never responded to any messages, not even to the ones from the official moderators who tried improving the website. Many proposals on buying the website in order to save it were made in the past, but for whatever reason, there was never a respone from its creator. Feel free to read the official Lego Car blog article about it (the one i linked above) - its worth to read the comment section aswell! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MAB Posted June 8, 2020 (edited) If it came to renewal time and the creator didn't care about it any more, then it makes sense that it just disappeared overnight. Did anyone still use it? I can't say I've looked there in years. I imagine the advertising revenue dried up and it is not worth the effort or cost of running it. Edited June 8, 2020 by MAB Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BrickJagger Posted June 14, 2020 Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately that would mean we've now lost thousands of images that were posted on MOCpages and linked to this forum. As EB gets older, all of those early hosting services will have died out, so maybe the Admins should look into a way to keep those images backed up or something. It would be a shame to lose every piece of media posted on this forum. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BrickWild Posted June 14, 2020 Does anyone remember when ImageShack implemented a '500-Upload Limit' for standard accounts back in 2012? Users would then have to upgrade to a Premium Account or their older images would've disappeared at a whim. Thousands of images were lost as a dramatic result. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MAB Posted June 14, 2020 5 hours ago, BrickJagger said: Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately that would mean we've now lost thousands of images that were posted on MOCpages and linked to this forum. As EB gets older, all of those early hosting services will have died out, so maybe the Admins should look into a way to keep those images backed up or something. It would be a shame to lose every piece of media posted on this forum. This will always be a problem with EB in the future too, as images must be hosted elsewhere and not on EB. And if the hosting service changes their way of operating or disappears then content will be lost. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JaBaCaDaBra Posted June 14, 2020 (edited) You can still find parts of it on The Waynack Machinehttps://web.archive.org/web/20191226160053/http://www.moc-pages.com/ If you are really worried about disapprearing websites just make a backup of it. A program like Teleport Pro sucks a complete website down to your harddisk. Edited June 14, 2020 by JaBaCaDaBra Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Peppermint_M Posted June 14, 2020 It is unfortunate, but all this internet stuff does cost money! We forget as we merrily hop around (with adblocker on!) that places need revenue to run. It is a shame that people did not get a chance to back-up their images. I know some of my earliest MOCs online were on MOCpages (Fortunately, I have my images stored on my own backups), so they are no longer going to be online. As for EB hosting images, it is an expensive endeavour and for some of the older posts the users may no longer be active. That makes things more difficult, as people may not want the information saved and stored. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JaBaCaDaBra Posted June 14, 2020 18 minutes ago, Peppermint_M said: hosting images, expensive Not only the dataspace, you will generate an enormous datatraffic too and that's not free either. Besides that you will find that pictures will be deeplinked from EB to other fora thus generating even more traffic. This traffic comes now on the bill of Flickr and other picture hosts. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MAB Posted June 14, 2020 24 minutes ago, JaBaCaDaBra said: Not only the dataspace, you will generate an enormous datatraffic too and that's not free either. Besides that you will find that pictures will be deeplinked from EB to other fora thus generating even more traffic. This traffic comes now on the bill of Flickr and other picture hosts. Very true. And of course this is the problem. Sites offer free hosting as when people use them they generate advert income, yet if they bypass the site almost completely and only link to the images from elsewhere then the advert revenue does not come and so the site eventually disappears, as do the images. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
howitzer Posted June 15, 2020 Losing linked images on site like this is a very annoying problem which is hard to solve adequately. There's no way to generate enough income with ads to meet the costs of hosting images, while a subscription-based forum would lose vast majority of the users and so the forum would die out with lack of content. I'm hosting my images on my own website, which I pay from my own pocket, but I realize it's not a solution for most people. So at least for now I guess we'll just have to accept the fact that older threads tend lose linked images. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dr_spock Posted June 15, 2020 Surprisingly, BrickShelf is still around. I put my photos on different hosting sites for a bit of redunancy. For MOCs I posted on EB, the linked good picture is on Flickr and other linked pictures are on Brickshelf. I used Photobucket too and we all know what happened with that hosting site. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nerdsforprez Posted June 16, 2020 (edited) Probably late to this party... but did mocpages die? Can't seem to ever get it up and running. I know that for several years it was crashing and having significant problems, and I did not visit often. But checked like for the first time in like six months and I can't seem to get the site to load. Edited June 16, 2020 by Darkdragon Merged. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nerdsforprez Posted June 16, 2020 Thxs for moving my post. I was an avid Mocpages user for years, but hadn't really been on the site for the last year until I recently attempted and found that it was down. although this is sad, to any frequent user it should not come as a surprise. Mocpages had been in decline for many, many, years. There would be stretches of time, often for days and up to a week, where the site would be don and then magically reappear. in fact, years ago I made a MOC making fun of this act (Lord Business shooting a bazooka at MOCpages servers). When I get home I'll search for the an image and post it. I made a whole post of in on the site but... obviously it is now gone. Luckily I too kept my pics. But.... looks like I need to update my signature block.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sajuuk Posted July 20, 2020 First the Classic Space forums and now MOCPages!? It seems all of my old LEGO internet haunts are going under after coming out of my decades-long "dark age". The site always felt like a more LEGO specific Flickr, with more chances to interact with other builders and get quality feedback on MOC builds. It seems like yesterday that I had just uploaded two space MOCs to MOCPages, even though that around 3 to four months ago, but thankfully they are also on Brickshelf as well. I honestly liked the site better than Brickshelf for image hosting, even though I often uploaded a single MOC photo album to both my MOCPages and Brickshelf account. That being said, I have grown quite fond of Brickshelf despite its antiquated UI, so hopefully it stays around for a few more decades at least. RIP MOCPages. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hagridshut Posted July 20, 2020 It takes time and financial resources to run a webpage. This is a big problem for platforms run by individuals, who may have life changes that reduce their available time (like arrival of children), or run into financial difficulties and cannot pay for hosting services. I wonder if it may make sense for LEGO enthusiasts to use a platform like FaceBook as a permanent repository for MOC images. I know that there are privacy concerns and ethical problems with using platforms like FaceBook to host albums of images, but the company should be around for a long time, and its content can be accessed by anyone for "free" (with the true cost being one's personal information). Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
degu Posted August 14, 2020 Just looking for mocpages.com to see what kind of MOCs there were back in 2003-2010, but sadly indeed it's dead. Not enthousiastic about Facebook with it's genuinely nasty habits. FB may die some day as well, as all websites do eventually. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
firefly101 Posted March 30, 2021 There is a new site I just found called mocbuilder It looks like its just started but it seems to be only for Lego, maybe this will workout. I think we should all support him, flickr has too much other junk on it imo. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Brick Car Posted August 3, 2021 I was an avid mocpages enthusiast back then...so sad that is gone... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CP5670 Posted August 8, 2021 (edited) I use Flickr and Brickshelf at this point, and keep local copies of everything. Many file and image hosting sites from the pre-social media era were shut down, and it's a difficult business model. Even Flickr has struggled to make enough revenue in the past with free accounts, but is backed by a larger company. It's interesting Brickshelf is still running. I talked to Kevin about it once and he said it was losing money and he would have shut it down, but found some other way to keep it going after learning that some users there had died and their moc gallery was like a monument to their life. Edited August 8, 2021 by CP5670 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OldTim3r Posted November 27, 2022 (edited) "Many of these mocs were my friends. Creations I had known from brick and stud." Where the hell is Troll Town?!? Troll Town was AWESOME!!! Was not a LXF... it was something someone built in their own house... that *is* sad. #piratehatoverheart Edited November 27, 2022 by OldTim3r love❤️ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
