--> Forum Now Read Only Options

[LS Support]

With all apologies to everyone who has visited over the past 24 years, and with lengthy consideration and much hand-wringing, the Lightning-Strike Forum has been closed to new registrations, and is now read-only (as of January 1, 2020).

Why?

• Traffic (for sign-ups) has dwindled to a couple or less per month since I launched this site in October 1996, which is way beyond the typical lifetime of forums like this which tend to start decaying after 5-8 years. And the very few that do get approved to use the forum don't even post.

• Trump this up to the rapid proliferation of media-rich social platforms as well.

• It takes time and effort to run a forum, from checking new registrations daily to weekly data backups to fixing hacker damage and more. Unfortunately my time is becoming more limited nowadays as I head into my golden years.

So what does this mean?

• The website and forum will memorialized in-place. Meaning there will no longer be updates, new sign-ups or the ability to post and/or reply.

• This forum contains volumes of useful information and support vehicles for pet loss...85K+ posts created by more than 5K guests...so its original purpose will continue to serve people who have loved and lost their pets and other companion animals.

• The L-S facebook page will continue to operate as it does today. Though i realize it could never replace this forum, we are close to having 10K members, so there are plenty of people out there who will find even the restricted forum to have benefit https://www.facebook.com/pet.loss.grief.support/

The members here helped make what L-S is today. For that, I thank you all! I would also like to take a moment to give kudos to the few forum moderators who helped keep the forum under a watchful eye over the years. I'll admit that I sort of burned out on my personal pet loss support efforts about 10 years ago... so everyone's help is also greatly appreciated!

So please continue to use the resources provided by this website and forum. There's plenty of love to share

MD Cohn