After the termination of cghub.com by their investors a shockwave passed through the CG community. The original team behind the site is now raising $90,000 on Kickstarter in order to build its successor.
Unexpected termination of cghub.com was a disappointment for the artistic community as the site provided an unmatched service for the CG industry. The owners controlled 100% of the site, and when they said it was over the developer had no say in the matter.
We need a new site that will be set up in such a fashion that it will be owned by the developer, CG community representatives and, potentially, investors. This way it will not be shut down without a warning like CGHUB was.
Team Shakuro, the original developer of cghub, has joined forces with top artists in the industry to bring you back a new website that will inherit the best parts of the old one, improve them and expand the functionality even further.
10 Comments
90.000 $!? for making a website? damn, must be made of gold.
It all depends on what they're doing it with. Are they making it from a premium CMS? Then it's licensing, which can cost up to $40k/yr. Dedicated servers are around $200/mo which, if they're a hub that generates tons of traffic, they'll need it. Are they quiting their day jobs? That's money there too.
In actuality, it's probably more the dev time and hosting more than a CMS. I'd imagine they'd leverage open source CMS like WordPress or Drupal.
In all honesty, if it were me (and it's not) I'd start by building the site on a share host like Dreamhost that is scalable so as the need arises I can have them move the site to accommodate. If I was passionate about the project, I'd take a week off and dedicate it to building the site, rehashing content and get it back going. Gauge the interest from the community there.
$90k to start a website isn't so expensive (I work in enterprise web industry and $90k for a web project isnt' something we'd tough) but I think (unless I misunderstand their fanbase) they're setting themselves up for disappointment.
Sounds like the 80s - "what?! pay for software development?"
Definitely not, I've been making websites since I was 15 and I'm 32.
I've been setting up server farms since a couple of years back.
I've never needed 90k for webhosting or development of a community site for 10k+ users.
I'd donate if I've every used or heard of cghub.com
I wasn't on CGhub, actually I only really found out what it was when the news came that it had closed down, but this seem interesting.
Between Polycount.com, DrawCrowd.com, Facepunch.com, ConceptArt.org and Increatable.com, I don't think I'll be needing a CG Hub successor, even though I did enjoy CG Hub a very great deal.
I haven't the slightest idea how this duplicated occurred, but would you delete this one for me, Bart?
Sure!
Between Polycount.com (a no-brainer in the community), DrawCrowd.com (my new favorite hub), ConceptArt.org (a long-time name, great for sketchbooks) and Increatable.com (my second new favorite hub), I don't think I'll be needing a CG Hub successor, even though I did enjoy CG Hub a very great deal.
This new successor might gain the support of those who frequented CG Hub to scour the thousands of great professional work you could spend hours browsing and downloading images for our inspiration folders. Not sure if many are going to be willing to pay to have this, though, especially since several other similar sites has appeared in recent years.
If Team Shakuro get a new site going, I'd check it out, but I'm not sure if it'd be my primary gallery hangout like CG Hub used to be. Not out of spite or anything--I've just turned to the many other places that pretty much do the same thing CG Hub did, some of them I like better (such as DrawCrowd, which is co-founded by notable concept designer Feng Zhu).
Though, I think many other people who once relied on CG Hub for networking will rather use someone else than this successor of CG Hub. Some people established some deep years-long networking with CG Hub, and with some folks gained both in-house and freelance work thanks to CG Hub. When CG Hub suddenly closed without any bit of warning, I think they broke a lot of long-timers' trust.
Though, I think many other people who once relied on CG Hub extensively for networking will rather use someone else than this successor of CG Hub. Some people established some deep years-long networking with CG Hub, and with some folks even gained in-house and freelance work thanks to CG Hub. When CG Hub suddenly closed without any bit of warning, I think they broke a lot of long-timers' trust. It'll be harder to restore their confidence.