The place seems to be a bit of a ghost town since the move, many people haven't come back
Is there any forum where we can provide feedback?
They're popping up on the threads in the feedback forum frequently enough. They've acknowledged that people are frustrated.
The whole thing has been badly handled that's as clear as day, but it's easy for us to speculate and say what we would have done differently without having any first hand knowledge. We haven't a clue what behind the scenes goings on set of circumstances led to the current state of affairs.
To be fair and to be obvious, there is a massive resource that was always available - users of the site.
Some of them even have professional knowledge, imagine that!
UAT doesn't need to be done by staff. A small panel of volunteers, mods and end users (i.e., us) would have identified loads of problems that could've been addressed in advance. I daresay there's a good chunk of users with design/testing experience, too.
Resource issue I would guess. There are only a couple of people employed by boards.ie
I fully agree with you. Any migration plan should have include a trial "pre-migration" with some QA and at least some minimal UAT with either the mods or some trusted users.
I only use the mobile site, and since the upgrade, it's absolutely sh1te.
Its rotten looking, weird scrolling motion, there's no proper separation to the posts, it's just horrible to use.
The lack of activity and usability here has driven me to the other site (I'm not gonna spam it) which is easy on the eyes, easy to use and is gaining in nunbers of users (including prolific and known users) so that it FEELS like being back on Boards.ie.
The idea that the switch was made without full functionality of the My Forums feature absolutely boggles my tiny little mind. It's how the majority of regular users navigate the site. It's really put me off even browsing now both on PC and phone because it's a shambles trying to find most of the forums I'd look at the most.
The Save Draft feature is annoying as sh*te too because sometimes I'd half type a message, decide not to post, and then can't get rid of the f*cking thing because it keeps showing back up in the text box the next time I visit the thread, not to mention it's more difficult to delete links and quotes.
There just also seems to be a ridiculous amount of redundancy in the new system. The Activity function only seems to appear on the mobile site, yet it's utterly pointless anyway. Clicking Discussions and just Boards.ie at the top banner is basically the same thing. The range of emojis is stupid too, this is a discussion forum not a Whatsapp group.
Whatever about the stability and stuff on the backend that will be beneficial to the Boards team etc, the useability of the site and some of the new features for me now are utterly pointless and detract from the user experience.
Lovely analogy, but let me take it further.
You are worried the bridge will fall down so you start building a new one to replace it.
But the old four lane bridge with speed limit of 100kph on nice tarmaced surface is closed and replaced by the half build bridge with only two gravel covered lanes open, speed limit is down to 40 kph, you have traffic lights in the middle and it no longer links up with roads on one side but ends in the middle of a field.
I have done a fair migrations in my time, mainly ERP and service desks/help desks.
If I was responsible for a comparable fook up on this scale I would have ended up with an ERP system with half the stock missing, half the customers missing, no way of adding orders and no way of quering pricing.
I think everyone would deem that an epic failure.
There’s more wrong with this site now then what’s right with it.
its an awful pity.boards was great.could they not shut it down for another week and put it back the way it was.
It is not available at the moment. If you want a list for a specific forum I can find out for you. Just pm me
Does anybody know where one can obtain the list of moderators of a particular forum... maybes I’m going blind but I’m not seeing it.
It was very unstable and the whole thing was a patchwork of add ons and sticky plasters that could (and did) topple over at any moment. A change was needed. Unfortunately it does not seem to be going well
How was it broken? And if so, fine, its broken or its out grown the previous platform.
But migrate to something better, not some bag of sh1t platform.
It was broke though. That was the problem
i commented this morning and i'm still on the front page :)
I've been on this site for years and while not the most prolific poster I did spend a lot of time browsing various forums and topics. This new layout and navigation is horrendous. There's and old saying , " if it ain't broke , don't fix it " .
It really is bad and I don’t think people are being hyperbolic when they say it’s now a “ghost town”.
When I find the threads I’m generally a part of nobody is posting. The abysmal effort of the mobile site will do damage. The weeks downtime made people move on. The pains of navigating the new site will do the same.
It was one click to see my threads before on mobile. Now I simply don't know where any of them are.
It's definitely a step back
It's a load of bollix...
I miss the old format layout
The set up for some is different BUT the barometer that I am seeing is that the first page of after hours still has posts going back 2 days. Previously you might only see posts going back 6/7 hours before having to move on to page 2.
A lack of m.boards has seen my usage decrease. Far too difficult to navigate.
I once had a post on Reddit deleted because I wasn't verified as BIPOC. There was a large discussion about Ireland on it. They wanted a picture of the colour of the skin on my arm before I could post...
Think of it like a building/bridge with a serious structrial defect. It's going to fall down eventually, so do you replace it now, or wait for the final collaspse.
😄 I'm not seeing any ads.
I mean scalable in terms of its functionality and ability to upgrade. Of course if what you say it correct then scalability in terms of needing resources won't be a problem.
Edit: Dynamic is the word I probably should've used.
Scalable, but in which direction? Given the user base is diminishing, will it be trimming the fat to make the experience load at a less than glacial pace?
There's a certain irony that the ad that keeps popping up is one for a website builder (and its not vanilla)!
I found this on another thread - 'if you want to close your account you can email hello@boards.ie or datarequests@boards.ie and we'll do it for you manually here.'
Well said.
For what it's worth, although certainly not perfect at the moment, I welcome the move to a more modern, scaleable platform. It's actually what prompted me to sign up again.
It will get better in time. I know first hand how difficult migrations can be. So well done @Boards.ie: Niamh and co on what was a difficult undertaking.
Does anyone know how to shut down your boards account? I tried looking it up, but since that link is now dead, I can't find it.
I've tried this new layout-it's not working for me. So I'd rather just kill my account.
This never happens as it usually is someone at the top pushing these things so definitely no going back until they lose face when it goes to complete sh!t.
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://www.boards.ie/applications/dashboard/design/images/banned.png)
