Rockville Central, the news and community site that attracted a loyal following and stirred up the Web when it turned exclusively to Facebook in February, will cease publishing.

Editor Cindy Cotte Griffiths and founder and publisher Brad Rourke announced the move on the Facebook page on Friday.

"It is with mixed feelings that we are announcing that, after more than four years and four months of continuous existence, as of today Rockville Central will cease publishing," they wrote.

The site gained 1,620 "likes" on Facebook. Fans chimed in on Facebook on Friday morning with a mix of sorrow and gratitude.

"I understand just how hard keeping up a project like this is, and honor you both for doing it as long as you have," Erik Ledbetter wrote.

"I will miss my daily Rockville Central Fix. It's usually the first thing I look at on FB when I log in," wrote Linda Ford Bozzonetti. "Thank you for keeping us informed."

Media bloggers paid tribute as well.

Rockville Central created a stir among social media and online journalism observers in February when Griffiths and Rourke announced that the site would move from a blog to a Facebook-only format.

In their farewell post, Griffiths and Rourke deemed the move a success.

"Our active users have increased by over 500%," they wrote. "We’ve gone from about 24,000 hits a month on the website to 100,000 post views a month on Facebook. A single post on Facebook typically gets over 2,000 views."

In June, the journalism site Poynter talked to Rourke about lessons learned from the Facebook move.

Griffiths and Rourke wrote Friday that it was "gratifying" to see the civility of the many discussions that Rockville Central attracted.

"It is a labor of love and devotion to Our Fair City," they wrote. "We don’t feel we can devote the kind of energy it deserves and so, rather than let it whither, we decided to make a clean end."