Poll Calguns Data Migration Round 2 - Aug 3

[H. Bowman]

I really do appreciate your loyalty, but let’s do some basic math. $600/year for BOTH ads and memberships.

For easy numbers. The contributors plan was $20 per 6 month $30 per year $300 lifetime.

Let’s just say at $20/6 mo 1 person contributed to $40/year. That takes 15 people at its lowest plan to hit $600/year not including ads. The number of registered users was ~374,000.

The number of ads were also about 8 spots at the top of each page. The number of impressions was 1 million in June on cloud. Typically an advertiser would pay on the low end $1-2 per 100k x 8 advertisers per month.

In full transparency, just the ad at the top and sidebar pulls $100/mo, not including memberships. This site with all the licenses and add-ons is well over $2k to startup, not including cloud costs. Most of what I get I reinvest into features that were missing. The search feature alone cost $500 plus another server to run for indexing. The classifieds and feedback system cost an annual fee as well. Calguns was fixed at $179 no add-ons.

Thanks to contributors I’m able to break even with the support and offer this for free. Otherwise I wouldn’t support a losing endeavor and also why I offered to help for free the first time around, it was easier to help. Now that I’m somewhat committed. I’m building out this site.

calguns.net Website Traffic, Ranking, Analytics [July 2026]

calguns.net is ranked #40809 in US with 0 Traffic. Categories: Retail. Learn more about website traffic, market share, and more!

www.semrush.com

I’m trying to level with some of you as someone who’s done thing for the last 20 years in the space. Typically I work for big companies, so I have some knowledge in both advertising and t

Not sure on the loyalty thing.

I hope this site runs wild and you make a hefty profit on it. I think Kestryll could have done the same with Calguns but I don't think it was managed well. It never seemed like more than an afterthought or side gig, even back when it was running well. I don't know where the money he was bringing in went or what he did with it, but I am pretty confident it was nowhere near as high as many people think it was. Sucks for him, and sucks for all of the users, and sucks for the historical knowledge and information that was (is?) there.

I haven't looked into contributor status or whatever it's called here. I'll do that, as I'm happy to help fund a place I will likely spend quite a bit time on and which will be beneficial to me.

Thanks for putting it together, it is appreciated!

 

[ugimports]

Not sure on the loyalty thing.

I hope this site runs wild and you make a hefty profit on it. I think Kestryll could have done the same with Calguns but I don't think it was managed well. It never seemed like more than an afterthought or side gig, even back when it was running well. I don't know where the money he was bringing in went or what he did with it, but I am pretty confident it was nowhere near as high as many people think it was. Sucks for him, and sucks for all of the users, and sucks for the historical knowledge and information that was (is?) there.

I haven't looked into contributor status or whatever it's called here. I'll do that, as I'm happy to help fund a place I will likely spend quite a bit time on and which will be beneficial to me.

Thanks for putting it together, it is appreciated!

As a frame of reference..I was a low end paying vendor and I gave $20/mo. Come to think of it I think I'm still being billed even though it's offline (maybe not).

 

[ugimports]

I really do appreciate your loyalty, but let’s do some basic math. $600/year for BOTH ads and memberships.

For easy numbers. The contributors plan was $20 per 6 month $30 per year $300 lifetime.

Let’s just say at $20/6 mo 1 person contributed to $40/year. That takes 15 people at its lowest plan to hit $600/year not including ads. The number of registered users was ~374,000.

The number of ads were also about 8 spots at the top of each page. The number of impressions was 1 million in June on cloud. Typically an advertiser would pay on the low end $1-2 per 100k x 8 advertisers per month.

In full transparency, just the ad at the top and sidebar pulls $100/mo, not including memberships. This site with all the licenses and add-ons is well over $2k to startup, not including cloud costs. Most of what I get I reinvest into features that were missing. The search feature alone cost $500 plus another server to run for indexing. The classifieds and feedback system cost an annual fee as well. Calguns was fixed at $179 no add-ons.

Thanks to contributors I’m able to break even with the support and offer this for free. Otherwise I wouldn’t support a losing endeavor and also why I offered to help for free the first time around, it was easier to help. Now that I’m somewhat committed. I’m building out this site.

calguns.net Website Traffic, Ranking, Analytics [July 2026]

calguns.net is ranked #40809 in US with 0 Traffic. Categories: Retail. Learn more about website traffic, market share, and more!

www.semrush.com

I’m trying to level with some of you as someone who’s done thing for the last 20 years in the space. Typically I work for big companies, so I have some knowledge in both advertising and tech.

Depending how much longer calguns goes I may cancel my paid membership over there. I may also keep both running to support both of you guys.

 

[p--and--p]

This is ridiculous, its just down for a month?? Not accepting help is insane, but for some reason people only bookmarked that site and never googled anything else so they aren't filling up the classifieds section!

 

[BHPMK3]

As a Senior Project Manager, I know that sometimes there are huge hurdles BUT the key is to God damn it to communicate and keep the users posted and provide milestones. I have been called to rescue some massive cluster F- migration projects and the only reason we never had a rebellion on our hands is because I insisted on keeping our users informed and NOT keeping them in the dark. This is not only ridiculous but extremely disrespectful.

 

[ikeo1]

It looks like there is progress on Calguns’s. There are fewer broken images and the debug section was removed. Overall he’s making progress, but the database and some images are still having issues loading

 

[Pew!]

Quite odd that calguns in the build vs buy went with buy only to reverse couse to go back to build.
The two reasons cited for moving away from the vBulletin Cloud hosting was performance and cost. Maybe the poor performance wasn't apparent but the expected costs should have been prior to buying Cloud hosting.

Also operationally very odd to not to have performed a test run of the migration off the vBulletin Cloud to the new host prior to burning the boats and turning off vBulletin Cloud hosted calguns.
The test run would have only cost a small amount of time and money.
All of this seems obvious to me as things you do to minimize downtime and reduce risk.

Since calguns had rotted in recent years the only thing I still looked for over there was the marketplace for PPT and to keep track of relevant legislation. Was really sad when iTrader went away.

If a iTrader sort of thing and legislation tracking happened on caguns then even if calguns came back online I would stop looking for calguns.

 

[H. Bowman]

I don't like to admit it, but I really enjoyed OT there. Partially for the comedy and partially for the better-than-any-news-source-up-to-date-news.

 

[andyman]

Just found this after doing a google search to see what the heck is wrong with calguns. I haven't used it much in the last few years but everytime I try to login to check 2A news or forums, it seems to be down. I have to say out of all the websites out there, calguns is probably the worst for downtime. Its like they don't even take the website seriously.. Why even bother? Sell the domain to someone who cares. Anyway I won't be going back to calguns. Its just too pathetic. I am pretty sure every forum sponsor is reconsidering their sponsorship of calguns.

 

[Tcd511]

Well so far this CAGuns seems pretty decent. Just became a supporter and see how this goes compared to calguns.

 

[ikeo1]

I don't like to admit it, but I really enjoyed OT there. Partially for the comedy and partially for the better-than-any-news-source-up-to-date-news.

Guilty pleasures are a thing.. Here hopefully we can get the news and comedy without the drama. We're going to try hard to break up squabbles fast and furious...

No update in ~2 weeks now. I noticed on calguns.org OLight is the latest member which made his first post on 8.6.24 So its likely he's still doing things for some sponsors and not approving normies. I also noticed on the FB page a post for GSSF. The people paying are getting some responses, but the community at large does not.

On that note,

• We're gearing up to support vendors and FFL's here since our traffic is getting pretty good 700-800 active members daily ~1-2k non-members coming and going.
• Also looking for volunteers to contribute news worthy posts..
• We'll be doing some promos for user generated content, reviews for products soon too.

I also sent another message offering to buy calguns.net so i can possibly fix it. I'm thinking it would be a no go, but it was worth a shot.

 

[Radman64]

Does Kes not speak to anyone who has assisted him since he took over?
Nothing makes sense to me with what is going on with CG nor does he post anything on the .org site as far as updates, I don't do FB anymore.

 

[ikeo1]

Looks like it’s back online

 

[Chupacabra]

Damn it's slow.

 

[ikeo1]

Damn it's slow.

It’s going to take a bit for the server to get configured from here, but it’s finally back online! However, the instability looks like it’s going to continue to be a problem.

For the folks that joined us from Calguns! Thanks for checking us out!

If you want something that works, we’re here!

P.S if you like what we have here, please help us spread the word. Thank you!

 

[ikeo1]

First impressions is it’s brutally slow… given there’s not that many people online, this is definitely going to get worse as people get online. Lets hope they get it figured out..

 

[9mmContagion]

Why would Kes even release it in the current state. Took 5 minutes to load his “caveat” page?! IMHO Kes should have taken @ikeo1 offer and ran with it. At least allow him to make it better. I think CGN might finally be dead. If @ikeo1 made this platform on CGN, it would have skyrocketed things. Kes tanked it for himself. It pains me to say this as I loved that placed for over 12 years, but it became a shell of itself. I was a supporter for several years, but I can’t imagine donating money to something/someone who puts no effort in to keeping up with modern technology

 

[ikeo1]

I can see why it’s slow…

One of those things where you choose not to invest in your bread and butter. Ultimately, he’s trying to run the site as cheap as possible to collect as much as possible. In the same thread, CPU is 90-100% utilized. I assumed he used a higher tier

He’s gonna have to migrate again. The server is severely underpowered. This spec should be just for the database at a minimum.

There’s no room for growth. Imagine trying to run a site with several thousand simultaneous users on a $35/$70 dedicated host! Database AND webserver on 4 cores!

 

[dickasauraswreks]

I just want to post memes

 

[joefrank64k]

Been with CG since 2009 and I’ve been wishing for a more modern interface forever.

CAguns is like a breath of fresh air. Like many of you, I hit different forums. Modern interfaces, easy to upload pics, search that works, easy to see the latest posts, and on and on.

Nice work, @ikeo1 !!