First of all, I really appreciate your being upfront about your plans and retirement.  

But of course I’m also worried.   You guys have provided the best support I’ve ever experienced anywhere — I opened my first website in 1994, been around the block a few times.

I hope some cool people will take over, but I can’t imagine support continuing to be so outstanding.

Thanks for the kind words! We certainly hope to find some capable folks to continue it…

If I was previously a platinum account, do I get to keep all of my downloaded plugins when I renew with a silver account since platinum renewal is no longer an option? 

Absolutely. 

Just wondering if there is any news on this.  I am getting nervous that I may have to change my forum software and I really really don’t want to.  I spent a lot of time and money trying to find one that works and paid gconverter to convert so I am just nervous..  Hoping someone will take this over as it is superb software and the best wordpress forum software out there imo..  

Thanks for the great work guys and I am hoping in the end this will all work out for everyone.. 

We. of course, hope for the same thing.  

While we have had some discussions with a handful of folks, there is nothing we can report at this time. And of course, no guarantee that we will find someone. If you know of anyone (individual or team) that might be interested, send them our way. 

I share exactly the feeling here:

– thank you for being so open about your plan and the 1 year timeframe is gold. 

– thank you for your work up to today: great.

– quite worried about the future. Plan B is of course a premium migration service to another forum software 🙂 Good luck. 

appreciate the kind words…  still working to find someone to pick up simple press before the year timeframe is over…

Simple Press has been amazing for me. I have been using it for over 7 years, and have built a substantial business around it. While I understand that you must follow your own plans in life, I am sorry to learn that you will be leaving Simple Press.

I know you are looking for people to take it over. My question is – if you don’t find suitable people to take it over, what will happen with Simple Press after your one year deadline?

Would this mean that I might have to look for a replacement for Simple Press in this scenario? And would you offer any suggestion for transitioning to a different forum software? I hope it won’t come to this, but I want to be prepared since this forum plays a major role in my business. It has 14,000 posts now.

Also – are you still working on the 5.8 version update, or is this on hold?

It’s hard to answer – at least definitively. Let me start at the end of the question.

Yes – we are still working on a 5.8 release which is vitally important for the future as it brings the code base up to date to take full advantage of what newer versions of php encourage. This should also make it easier for people to take over at some stage.

So this is our primary focus at the moment and we hope to be in a position to release that around the end of this year. Having that in place makes it easier to discuss options with third parties. So we remain very hopeful. But we will keep users informed of any progress nearer the time.

Any news on SP’s future….. I am at a crossroads of converting another large forum from SMF to something WP based…. and I love SP (paid for an use). But I hope to not have to do a change over twice.

Afraid nothing new to report…  Must admit, we had hoped to have good news to share by now, but its not the case…  We are still working to find someone to pick it up…   We are still targeting end of July for our “retirement”… 

Trust us, it would break out hearts to not have a solution in place by then…

Still deciding whether to renew my paid Gold membership (now only Copper on a mthly basis).
Will the 5.8 release be out before you guys retire from Simple Press? You were hoping for this release to be out by end of 2017.

Yeah, only Copper currently… we dont want any memberships extending beyond our retirement date in order to honor those commitments…

wow, were we really talking about 5.7 at the end of last year??  its still our intention to release it prior to retirement…  its essentially done and ready – just needs more testing…  in an ideal world, we would run a whole beta program… from the ground up, its an overhaul and restructure for performance and maintainability…

and its a major release…  every plugin needs to update (already done) as part of the release… so just thinking about logistics… and frankly, worried about releasing so close to retirement should there be issues…

I can honestly say that we truly do not want to waste the time we spent on 5.7…  we are currently targeting early June…