Donsbulbs.com has shutdown

bloopyjack

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Sep 16, 2011
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I did several searches to see if there was any new info about the closing of bulb search site Donsbulbs.com and I didn't find anything on CPF about this.
Tonight I tried to go to Donsbulbs.com and this message is all that showed up.

--- Don has retired, and donsbulbs is permanently closed ---

No plans yet on possible future liquidating of assets.

If anything changes in the future, news will be posted here.

I have used this website for years when researching incandescent bulbs. Dons site was a wealth of information about bulbs of all types. He had info on everything and as far as I know his site is the only one of its kind. I checked on the internet archive Way Back Machine and they seem to have an incomplete archive of his website. I tried to do a few searches but the information is not there.
I'm sad to see this valuable resource go dark on the net.
Does anyone have any info on this situation or do you know Don? I guess I'm wondering if there is any possibility of getting his entire website archived for future use?
 

Mark@LF

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Nov 2, 2006
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Hong Kong
Wow, Donsbulb is gone?
I used to go to his site from time to time to check specs of different bulbs as well.
Haven't been on his site for quite a while tho.

I agree it is real sad to see his site go and the resource gone.

Hopefully someone here can contact him and ask if his info can be archived?
 

bloopyjack

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Sep 16, 2011
Messages
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Wow, Donsbulb is gone? I used to go to his site from time to time to check specs of different bulbs as well. Haven't been on his site for quite a while tho. I agree it is real sad to see his site go and the resource gone. Hopefully someone here can contact him and ask if his info can be archived?
Hi Mark@LF, I've been visiting it frequently in the past year and for the past few months his site has had a notice on it saying " Don is currently on vacation. No orders will be processed at this time." or something like that. Yes hopefully someone can get in touch with him and see if the archive thing could be done.
 

Minimoog

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Jan 13, 2005
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771
Did anyone ever manage to order anything from Don? I wanted some unusual bulbs mentioned on his website but just couldn't fathom how to actually order anything or even see if it was a stock item.
 

bloopyjack

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Sep 16, 2011
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I checked out Archive.org and a fair bit of Don's site is archived there but not all of it. You can't access the database or do a cross reference search of bulbs - at least I haven't found a way to do it yet. It seems the snapshots at archive.org may be incomplete.
 

bloopyjack

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Joined
Sep 16, 2011
Messages
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I reached out to Don at the email listed on his site. I asked him if there was any possibility of getting his complete site archived in some way - especially at Archive.org, but I didn't get a reply. His site lists criteria for emailing him, one of which indicated that the word 'bulb' or 'lamp' needed to be in the subject line. I did that, but as noted earlier I did not get a reply. It's possible he just doesn't monitor, or have access to that email address anymore.
It's too bad really. It's a shame to lose such a valuable cross reference. He did such an amazing job with that website. Unfortunately that info does not seem to be available online anymore. I believe he built it up from his library of lamp catalogues.
 
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