On my links bar, I have my BEA link (
https://forum.bearchive.com/index.php?board=1.0) which takes me right to the forum. If I am not logged on, I cannot see pictures or other information like threads I had recently viewed or any PMs naturally. After logging in, I simple hit the link again. I doubt I have been to the BEA main page in the past few years simply because I have no interest there and where viewing requires a monthly membership fee, the same type of stories and morphs are free on DA, but since size is not limited there, there is so much more.
I understand it; I was here when the BEA was created back in the 90s. I remember the talk of the cost of buying a server for like $7-8k at the time in order to meet the demand; there was a lot of conversation regarding the proposed cost of membership. But that was almost 30 years ago when the internet was hardly even commercialized and today we have massive warehouses filled with servers and space is cheap, which I suppose led to the BEA switching from an England location to a central time zone location, which for some reason, I suspected to be either LA or TX. Forums are generally free, just like all social media, so the BEA is running on an antiquated business model which has continued to discourage new members. I was just thinking earlier this morning, how Solvegas would bump up the Beshine thread, saying he had found it on page 9 or something, though it had only been maybe 4 days since someone posted; this is how busy the forum was just a half dozen years ago, which was already down from a half dozen years prior, where a post on Beshine's thread could be a few pages back in just a day. The reason I thought of it was the last time I posted on it was 5 days ago and that date would have placed it at the top of page #3. When the BEA started, from one night to the next, on a popular thread, my last post could be on page #3 of that thread; today, the current page on Beshine's thread dates back to May 10th, 12 days ago.
If the BEA is to survive, they need to update the business model to increase memberships.