Is The "Stamp World History" Website Gone?

It was working yesterday, but today..

http://www.stampworldhistory.com/




For those that don't know. Gerben Van Gelder from the Netherlands put together a fantastic resource made up of his own synthesis country maps, and detailed history.

Example..



He passed away in December, 2016.

https://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.c...der-has.html

But his web site lived on through the help of his daughter.

But today, I do not see it.

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

From the error message, I would guess that the site has a limit as to how much data is downloaded in a month and that the limit has been reached. It may just automatically come back in September.

Is the site being modified and added to or has it been static since Gerben's passing?
Don

The message is:

This account has been suspended.
Either the domain has been overused, or the reseller ran out of resources.

Don - the site has been static since Gerben passed away.

My concern is the funds have been used up to keep the site alive.

Searching the web for "stamp world history Gerben Van Gelder" turns up a thread from Feb 2017 on another forum. It includes the following copied from the Stamp World History website:

Dear all,
I regret to inform you that Gerben has unfortunately passed away on December 31st, 2016, after a long and hard battle against cancer.
I, his daughter, want to personally thank all of you for visiting his site, helping him and supporting him in each and every way. Gerben put his heart and soul into Stamp World History and truly enjoyed writing these profiles.
Stamp World History will remain open for at least another year, but no new content will be added.
If you would like to contact us (his family), you can reach us on the following e-mail address: (address on web site)
Gerben will be missed.
Faithfully,
His loving family.

Later in the same thread it is mentioned that the contents of Stamp World History website will be hosted elsewhere, but there is no further mention after that.
It will be a sad loss if Gerben's wonderful work is lost completely.

The site has been archived by the "Wayback Machine" as of Aug 6, 2018 here ***Removed***. Unfortunately however it seems as if not all the pages have been archived.

Clive

"Wayback Machine" steals websites without permission and as Clive noted, it never captures all the content.

If someone can reach his daughter/family please offer to host his site on Stamp Smarter so his efforts can continue to help hobbyists for years to come.
Don

I found his daughter's email address. I sent her a message.

Any progress on this? Have you had a reply?

Yes, there is progress.

I've been in contact with Selma (Gerben's daughter), and there is a good chance it will be reactivated.

Stay tuned...

To deal with any expenses in being online, perhaps she should charge a small fee to access the website. I'd gladly pay.

Update

I sent an email to Gerben's daughter a month ago, and received no reply.

I hope the plan is to continue with the site as she indicated initially when I contacted her.

I sent her another email ( at two email addresses I have) today, and hopefully will hear something.

It is concerning however, as it has been two months now that the site has not been up.

I don't quite get the problem here.

Why is there only "a good chance" that the website will be re-activated. Surely it's just up to somebody to do something. If it's a matter of funding or the work involved and the new owner (Selma?) is not interested personally, then just hand it over. I would have thought there would be a more than a few people out there with the resources to host it and even carry on the work.

The site was this guy's legacy. He put his heart and soul into it in the last years of his life. I'm sorry, but it strikes me as a little disrespectful if it just fizzles out without even a coherent explanation from the family, when so many people are interested. I'm sorry if that's judgemental. Maybe there's more to it than I know.

The "Wayback Machine" archive mentioned by Clive is better than nothing but it is Sloooow and incomplete. Also, I've not seen this link anywhere else so I'd wager that a lot of people don't know about it. Google for "Stamp World History" and you just get the original dead link.

I think what happens is that others (family members) are often reluctant to turn it over to someone else; so they plan to republish it themselves but never get around to it.

Additionally, family members rarely understand the work involved. Websites are like a magazine, they truly require a significant effort to keep them moving forward each month. I agree that republishing a site and not keeping it moving forward is better than nothing, the best solution is to find a person who is willing to keep investing time. In this case that person(s) exists so it will be a real shame if the opportunity is missed.
Don

People grieve in their own way, at a pace that is rarely of their choosing.

Let's save our criticisms of the family for ourselves.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Hi Don

FYI, I sent Patricia Selma's e-mail.

I believe it was static. The hardest part of updating the site would be Gerben's writing style. There were a few areas he was planning to write when he passed away.

However, re-publishing the site is most important.

Jerry B