ROLL IT BACK

Teachinggal it's actually the other one boards.ie email issue July 2021 if you could put it up.

Thanks!

Thanks Leg End Reject.

I don't know where all the subforum links went to overnight (except for Technology & Internet) but it's even harder to navigate the forums now than it already was.

Christ.

Boards has turned into an absolute 𝒻𝓊𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃ℊ shithole.

Vanilla must be the most incompetent forum software provider. Do they even work on large communities? Their client list is all lame sales / tech support.

Boards will be rolled back in the next few months. Mark my words.

There appeared an early version of boards-vanilla from April - it would seem they did.

First comment in a long time, used to read boards for at least an hour a day. I click my bookmark, hoping it's gone back to normal but sadly not. Reddits just not the same. I was waiting for the day the restrictions would end and the thanks that post would get, but it looks as if that day won't come. You were great to me boards, hope something similar rises from the ashes!

Same here,but in spite of the assurances re the 20th July update,there is STILL no "My Forums" capability. The whole Bookmarks thing is not functional for me,in addition to the somewhat obvious loss of functionality overall.

It's been a week or two now and I still can't navigate my way around this site. Been a member for many years but probably gonna give it up now.

Have the categories/topics been rearranged?

Seems much more awkward to access the feedback forum.

Me on Boards.Legacy:

Me on Boards.Vanilla:

The site is basically unusable on mobile. I had to use google to find this forum and I can’t seem to my post history? The bookmarks thing doesn’t seem to work. When I post in threads they don’t appear there like they did in the My Threads tab. I hope it’s still very much a work in progress.

Navigation seems to have become even worse on desktop? Up to a few days ago you could click categories then Ctrl+F to find whatever forum you wanted. Can't even do that anymore?

I think that only works on mobile though?

There seems to be a massive lack of understanding of what this site is from management: it's a community forum. It is never going to be a cash-cow and while the commercial "Talk to..." sub-forums can contribute to the upkeep, the market for these forums simply isn't big enough to make boards.ie profitable.

If the problems boards.ie are facing at the moment are financial why weren't we, the community, being asked to help?

I'm sure Adverts.ie was intended to be the revenue generator that paid for the rest of the site, allowing it to be split off into a separate legal entity from the forums was either a huge mistake or (being more cynical) an indication that management knew they were in danger of burning down the farm so they should at least try to protect the golden goose.

If advertising can't pay the bills (and not being overly familiar with digital advertising I'm not sure why it can't: surely the traffic volumes should be high enough to generate a decent revenue stream from Google Ads?) then management should be diversifying their revenue streams. A few suggestions:

1. Pushing for more subscription revenue by either making the subscriber benefits more attractive or simply appealing to those of us who value the site to help keep the lights on: I can remember the reason I subscribed multiple times over the years being in response to an appeal from DeVore.
2. Implement a system similar to Reddit's "Gold" whereby users can pay a couple of euros to guild another poster whose response they've found particularly useful (Responses to my questions on these forums have saved me thousands over the years. I can't be alone in this... I notice there's a feature in Vanilla to mark a post as an "answer" to a query... perhaps a bit of Javascript could be tied to that function to pop up an "If you've found this site useful please consider subscribing / donating?" when a user uses that function?
3. A simple Ko-Fi donation button would generate a few quid given the volumes of people who've found answers to their DIY, Mechanical or Tech questions here (boards.ie often being among the first results in a google search)
4. Patreon seems to fund thousands of Youtube channels, maybe that could work for boards.ie?

Watch the loudest critics of the changeover coincidentally disappear.

Yeah I'd only donate in the event of a roll back plus a clear forward looking plan, maybe like some small cosmetics forum did posted on another thread. Not a hope I'd give a single euro to a sinking ship like this

I’m on boards ten years and I didn’t even know the site was in financial difficulty. If I’d known that and subscribers got some benefits I’d subscribe.

As someone who was evangelical about m.boards for the longest time, this new version of the site just really is not doing anything for me. It just seems... Off. I can't put my finger on it.

Boards would have been my go to each time I logged on, but now, I just don't enjoy using the site anymore. I posted a couple times but it's just not intuitive. Plus it takes a while to load the soccer forum for some reason.

I understand the changes that needed to be made as the v bulletin system was dying a death, but serious questions should be asked by whoever oversaw this rollout to understand what the hell has happened here. Surely some of the issues we've all experienced since the switch were identified in pre production environments (I would hope).

Just my two cents anyway, I'll still use the site but tbh it'll be less and less in future.

Just heard about everyone having all their PMs over 30 days old deleted last night, what a joke. I had hundreds of them and some with important information and now theyre vanished. This migration goes from bad to worse.

what other thread?