WebHostingTalk has changed hands several times. It was founded by Matthew Freeman of UK-based Host Investigator in March of 2000, and sold in April 2002 to Robert Marsh of EV1Servers (ev1servers.net).

Industry veteran Gabriel Murphy began eyeing WebHostingTalk even before Marsh acquired it. He thought it would be logical, and more profitable, to group the forum with some other hosting, Web development and hardware sites owned by his technology media company iNET Interactive (inetinteractive.com). Negotiations began with Marsh shortly after he gained control and the site was purchased in September 2003.

In recent weeks, iNET Interactive was sold  to private equity firm Stoddard Hill Capital (stoddardhillcapital.com). Troy Augustine, founder and managing director of Stoddard Hill and a former marketing executive for an application service provider, will succeed president and CEO Ryan Elledge, who will stay on in a consultative role along with Gabriel Murphy, founder of iNET Interactive.

Co-founder of Web host Communitech.NET, which was later sold to Interland, Murphy wants to get back into the Web hosting business. He and his holding company Aberration! Ventures have had discussions with some "large entities within the SME hosting space" and expect to complete a deal some time in the next year.

While he is excited about the return to Web hosting, Murphy admits he never expected it to happen. "I didn't think we would be back when I sold Communitech," he says, "just because I thought the companies that were mismanaged at the time would clean up their operation in pretty short order. And that still hasn't happened three and a half years later."

INET's talks with Stoddard Hill began in August. Stoddard Hill had identified Internet media as an area of interest and Murphy had begun considering selling iNET to pursue other investments. "iNET was ahead of its business plan and circumstances allowed us to be able to have an attractive exit opportunity about two and a half years into that investment," Murphy says.

What ultimately made the deal possible was the shared vision for iNET's future. Other suitors wanted to roll iNET's assets into something larger but Stoddard Hill was more interested in maintaining its brand cachet and relevance to the communities it serves.

"Our intent is to take iNET from where it is today, and continue its growth under that same iNET name as well as that iNET Interactive vision," says Augustine. "I think both Gabriel and Ryan, as well as the rest of the team who helped get [it] off the ground, were very attracted to that."

Murphy agrees. "We decided to work with a company that was looking for a platform, versus just another company that would fit within its portfolio," he says. "That was really the principal driver of why we chose to work with Troy's group."

Augustine says there are no immediate plans for changes to WebHostingTalk, or the other iNET properties, and none will be liquidated. The same staff will remain in place and new faces may be added. Augustine says one of his first orders of business is to find ways to improve communication and responsiveness.

"We're going to listen to the communities, listen to the advertisers and take it in the direction that they provide." And it is the community that will continue to drive the direction of WebHostingTalk in the future.

"My general philosophy is that we are here to provide a service to the community," says Augustine. "If it weren't for the community members spending time on the sites, we wouldn't have a business."