Amesfanclub.com was then moved to and hosted on the once prominent, now defunct X-Gravity.net / New York NOC servers, until Christmas Day 2004, when a massive crash took down the entire site.  Still unclear what happened, our years of message board entries were lost forever.  I initially received an email stating there was nothing they could do, and not to attempt to contact them, in an attempt to wash their hands clean of their lost accounts.  Then abruptly, in an attempt to make amends (Assumingly due to possible lawsuits), the company offered free unlimited web space and bandwidth for life to all lost account owners.  For me it was a good deal, meaning I would only need to fund our domain names.  I redeveloped the website from partial backups I had on my computer, and rebuilt what I did not have.  We remained on this free space for over a year without any problems.  We rebuilt the message board better than ever, even though I still remember great content that was lost.

Around Summer 2006, our luck ran out again, and server downtime became erratic.  Eventually the server bombed again and I had absolutely no means of contact with the former company.  I eventually came in contact with other people online shafted by the same company, and after 2 months of tracking down and prying I was able to obtain a backup copy of the forum.  We instantly re-launched and are currently hosted by Hostgator.com.

Today amesfanclub.com features a fully functional store locator and largest Ames photo gallery on the web.  We are allied with the the most prominent former and dead retail sites, and have had over 60,000 visitors in the last 3 years.

I thank our visitors and members especially for keeping us alive.  Thank you for not forgetting us in our down time, and for your dedicated efforts throughout the years.