Important News!!

Oscar_Madison · 09-07-2025 05:27PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618102#Comment_123618102

“With alternatives like reddit Ireland being quietly and heavily censored…”

- boards is not immune to censorship either

RedXIV · 09-07-2025 05:28PM

I owe a lot to boards over the years. I learned loads here while I was in college, got countless bargains over the years and it's incredibly useful for local home grown advice on things. I even met my wife thanks to boards.

Like others I was a subscriber here for a good while until it was scrapped, but I've got to admit, it does feel like we're in a pretty dark spot here. Anyone can see the traffic of users has declined and as much as we're told about the changes in the background, I've got to be honest and admit I don't recall a lot of "improvements" over the last few years.

I will probably subscribe alright, but I'd like to be able to dig into this more, maybe as others said, we can leverage the knowledge of the people in the site to try and improve things?

Sephiroth_dude · 09-07-2025 05:30PM

How could I not support ye, been here almost 20 years.

y0ssar1an22 · 09-07-2025 05:33PM

posting to follow thread. i'll prob pay €50 per annum to help keep the site alive

DayInTheBog · 09-07-2025 05:34PM

Nothing to add that hasn't already been said.

Community input, a future plan, moderation of the site. I'm here over 20 years and moderation has gone to such an extreme that I've returned to my decision not to post in certain fora, have even considered packing it in.

I've learnt loads, gotten lots of help , spent and saved lots of money but if mods make it not worth the time, then it's not worth the time.

Sad to see that Odhran couldn't be bothered even posting the announcement or engaging in the thread despite his grand entrance and many promises when he first turned up. He seems no different to the absentee landlord of past times with his agent on site.

Red Silurian · 09-07-2025 05:35PM

I'll subscribe for €6/month because the bargain alerts forum (and the bargain alerts sub-threads in gaming etc) has saved me multiples of this over the years. The monthly is also worth more to ye so a good reason to go monthly in my books

Also, might sound cynical, but if the lights get turned off in a few months I don't want to have handed over the annual sub

I'd say 2,000 might be a tall order though

Hermy · 09-07-2025 05:41PM

Happy to sign up to keep the lights on.

The internet without Boards wouldn't be right!

Inviere · 09-07-2025 05:42PM

Back to stock Vanilla? I'm not sure if people remember just how bad that was? It was f***ing awful, like truly terrible on every level. Yeah, we're goosed. Boards began as a community ran gaming forum and grew from there, maybe the only way it can survive is to hand it back to the community where it would be a LOT cheaper to run. Scale it all right back, pick a few village elders who'd want to run it, and explore how to transition it over, it really seems like the only realistic way.

Rolling subscriptions are unreliable and unpredictable with people able to bail at any moment, so at best they're only buying time. Couple that with trying to convince people to pay for stock Vanilla Boards, that's gonna be a tough tough sell.

Best of luck with it, Boards has been a real home for many of us for so long (ex Admin here), so it'd be a great shame to see it closed for good.

smacl · 09-07-2025 05:44PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618017#Comment_123618017

And the rest, €120k per annum is a very modest business even with only one full-time employee on not that great a salary. For a site like boards there'll also be VAT part of subscription, employers PRSI, admin, legal, accounting and possibly insurance costs. Hosting charges for a Vanilla enterprise server I'd guess are the smaller part of it.

If the site was fail as an ongoing commercial concern, I'd imagine the current owner would attempt to sell it for whatever money could be raised rather than give it away.

@Boards.ie: Mike another option to look at in addition to user subscription is reaching out to get some corporate sponsors in for the individual forums. e.g. Cycle Super Store, Giant, Decathlon etc.. for the cycling forum, which gives them the best advertising slot on that forum and a subforum dedicated to their products. If you have a look at some of the posts in Cycling for example, you see a lot of posts about people spending a lot of money on cycling products. Specific targetted ads in this context should be reasonably valuable. FWIW, I mod at another smaller industry tech forum and their commercial model is soley corporate sponsorship which works ok. Just a thought.

09-07-2025 05:46PM

12,000 euro a month to run this site?

Any bike sheds to sell the government?

Id love to see how you come to the conclusion it costs 12000 euro a month to run a medium sized forum!

Time you looked for new hosts if you are spending that much!

loyatemu · 09-07-2025 05:50PM

I'll throw you €50 to keep things going for a bit, god knows I spend enough time here and Reddit wrecks my head. I assume we'll know in a year if it's sustainable.

listermint · 09-07-2025 05:50PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618192#Comment_123618192

Without knowing the running costs it's unclear what scaling back is required. Personally know idea where it's hosted.

I'm sure it would be cheaper to run on local server as opposed to the charge rich cloud space.

I'd be happy to be a subscription if the site truly is going away. Yearly.

smacl · 09-07-2025 05:51PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618006#Comment_123618006

Mods need to be able moderate regardless of the subscription model. I personally think one of the strengths of boards is that it does have a strong experienced moderator team who do a serious amount of work for free and pick up a lot of flak in the process.

corkie · 09-07-2025 05:54PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123617889#Comment_123617889

I think it is more like sites will need to pay cloudflare to prevent AI scraping content?

Edit: - On a re read of the below link, AI scrappers might need to pay to the sites they want to scrape from.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618036#Comment_123618036

@Boards.ie: Mike

Was the below option enabled for Boards to prevent AI scraping?

Cloudflare Just Changed How AI Crawlers Scrape the Internet-at-Large; Permission-Based Approach Makes Way for A New Business Model ~ Posted about it here!

As a long term user of boards (Join Date: February 2001) I would hate to see it's demise, even with mods forcing me elsewhere because my oversharing about a particular platform.

Oscar_Madison · 09-07-2025 05:57PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618232#Comment_123618232

I would have agreed a few years ago - not anymore

RocketRaccoon · 09-07-2025 05:57PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618079#Comment_123618079

I'm to blame for that

DayInTheBog · 09-07-2025 05:58PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618232#Comment_123618232

Let's not bring this thread to yet another moderation debate

GarIT · 09-07-2025 05:59PM

I'll miss boards. I already do really. I left due to moderation decisions I disagreed with a long time ago. For hobbies I moved onto Facebook groups, Reddit for news and politics. Hopefully the Boards.ie community lives on in some way. As others said above Bargain Alerts was always invaluable, there's probably something to be said for a bargain alerts Ireland subreddit.

pinkypinky · 09-07-2025 06:06PM

Would be very sorry to see it go, but would like to see some proper numbers before I commit to subscriptions. Returning to the off the shelf Vanilla would be disastrous. I seem to remember there was no way to mod on it?

el Fenomeno · 09-07-2025 06:09PM

I would subscribe if it stays the same as is, but if it goes back to default Vanilla there's not a hope Id pay for that. The site was genuinely unusable.

magicbastarder · 09-07-2025 06:12PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618212#Comment_123618212

You do realise Mike is an employee, and needs his salary paid?

JP Liz V1 · 09-07-2025 06:12PM

Probably a stupid question, but could the site qualify for any grant help, funding etc.,?

RTE gets too much , share it out , Lotto funds?

I'd be happen to donate, not sure though monthly with the current issues especially the bouncing jumping but I would hate to see the site die

ancapailldorcha · 09-07-2025 06:14PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618232#Comment_123618232

This was never an issue. The mods, cmods and admins won't be see a penny of the subscription money so there's no reason to give subscribers an easier time of it.

Damien360 · 09-07-2025 06:15PM

A guess but it would seem boards has to pay extra for all the customisation just to keep it functioning as of this build. So going back to base vanilla cuts the added cost but will make it unusable. Who signed up for Vanilla ? So you are asking for money for what exactly. The site is dying due to poor modding with bans for nonsensical reasons by over zealous mods. That killed the user base. Base vanilla was truly atrocious and the I think paying extra is just paying for the nails of it's own coffin.

The Continental Op · 09-07-2025 06:18PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618297#Comment_123618297

Maybe he works one day a week? Who knows?

Dublin Calling · 09-07-2025 06:21PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618013#Comment_123618013

You should see the size of the underground bunker the DAFT lad is building. It costs big money to dig out a back garden in the middle of Dublin.

Mad_Lad · 09-07-2025 06:21PM

If I were to become a MOD I might consider a sub but paying a sub to end up banned or having comments moderated or deleted because a mod doesn't agree ? eah, no thanks !