Important News!!

dubrov · 10-07-2025 12:01AM

Great to see that someone has realised the damage that customisations can cause. Ultimately they led to a poorer user experience and ballooning maintenance costs. Might be too late to turnaround but at least it's a start

Sonic the Shaghog · 10-07-2025 12:03AM

Look, I've been here since 2007 in various forms from lurker to regular poster to rereg to lurk again etc.

I subbed now and again one time for the avatar change etc.

But I'll tell you one thing, if ye expect any chance for this to work you need to accept all subs are going to be customers, all non subs potential customers and actually offer a roadmap and plan.

The days of just asking for donations and telling lads changing an avatar is a perk etc are long gone. I'm not suggesting letting subs have free reign but you will need to accept and view them as paying customers now lads or just wind it up to **** right now.

Like it or not the fact you've had to come cap in hand to the users means the customers have ye by the balls now lads so ye'll have to start offering a decent, more professional return. Perhaps it's not even possible.

Unfortunately I can see a few already in here that expect to keep going as normal and just expect posters to hand over money for the privilege so I won't hold my breath.

fritzelly · 10-07-2025 12:04AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619225#Comment_123619225

Highly unlikely to be that much, maybe a few hundred gigs, its all mainly just text stored in a DB

DrPhilG · 10-07-2025 12:20AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619223#Comment_123619223

2 good Irish EV Owners groups 😉

And yeah the Irish Solar group just hit 70k members.

DayInTheBog · 10-07-2025 12:52AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619262#Comment_123619262

Yourself, owen and the gang have done a great job to be fair. Not sure why the renewable forum is still a thing here 😁

DayInTheBog · 10-07-2025 12:54AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619243#Comment_123619243

You forgot about the photos that are uploaded to threads .

mike2084 · 10-07-2025 01:27AM

Some of us have been subscribers all along, will we remain on those subs or have to set up new ones?

dragonkin · 10-07-2025 01:34AM

bye and thanks for all the fish. Spent too much time in my youth here, saw the link from Reddit tbh. The old boards will always have a place in my heart, was a real lifeline back in the early 2000s. It will be sad to see it go. First post here for a while and obviously won’t be paying to keep a site alive that I don’t use. Reasons I left were same as everyone else, the gestapo.

mk7r · 10-07-2025 01:54AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058419143/important-news

I would disagree with the downfall being associated mainly to google changes. Ads have been broken since the Vanilla switch, often failing to even load and with the awful user experience and bouncing pages people wont stay to engage with those ads.

If you want to save boards then switching away from Vanilla and getting a developer on board is the ONLY solution. The switch to Vanilla is a lesson in business ignorance and suicide. On a site like this you must maintain control and with the Vanilla deal there is no control, only bugs and they are ever growing.

From a technical standpoint the boards site is not that complicated and could be replicated quite quickly from the ground up in a controllable purpose built application, its mainly just an interface to access decades of database information.

I cannot stress enough though that the person who made the decision to use Vanilla is responsible for the sites downfall. Their ignorance is unforgivable and they clearly understood nothing about the situation they were in.

isboards4sale · 10-07-2025 01:56AM

Much ye looking for the site? I've a modded ps3 and some off cut tiles if ye are willing to swap.

Seriously is it for sale as a going concern?

Anyone have a guessimate on boards monetary value?

ThePentagon · 10-07-2025 02:44AM

I hope you guys pull through. On my old account I (mis)spent so much of my 20s and 30s here, and it was such a laugh. Also, the main Irish forums/subs on reddit are so shite (you see, I can say that here - on reddit my comment would be 'downvoted' to oblivion).

sock.rocker* · 10-07-2025 05:25AM

Been here a long time, mainly on another deleted account with maybe 20k posts. I really wish for the site to do well.

But this below is why I won't be subscribing. The rules are like something an old-school teacher in the 70s would dream up, and simply serve to punish people who keep their accounts and reward rereg trolls.

The warnings scale-
1st warning = 1 day ban
2nd warning = 3 day ban
3rd warning = 1 week ban
4th warning = 2 week ban
5th warning = 3 week ban
6th warning = 1 month ban (can be appealed)
7th warning = 3 month ban (can be appealed)
8th warning = 6 month ban (can be appealed)
9th warning = Permanent ban (can be appealed)

I am currently on a 2-week ban for "being a díck", for saying something that is only worth a 12-hour or max 1-day ban. But that's not even why it's stupid.

That rule creates moral hazard. By giving out longer and longer bans for the exact same minor offences, you just make people throw away accounts because it's not worth the wait to keep a username.

If I subscribe and pay money, just to receive a 3-week ban next, I am burning a subscription fee when the exact same post gets a rereg a 1-day ban. The site's rules punish people who keep their accounts by letting warnings accumulate and ban lengths get longer with no consideration given to what caused the ban.

Bans should be capped so it makes users want to keep their username (like 3 days), or it simply be a permaban. The current rules are driving people away from the site reducing traffic, or are causing them to reregister.

JayRoc · 10-07-2025 05:27AM

I'm truly sorry that it's come to this. Boards used to be a great place, and as much of a cliché as it is, a great community.

But ever since the downgrade to Vanilla it's been a completely different animal. Forums that would have been busy before (even with the fall-off from traditional discussion sites) are graveyards.

The functionality has completely tanked (you STILL can't see who thanked a post, for example, a fundamental part of any interaction on a discussion site. Plus the constant jumping around and myriad other issues that just don't get fixed because Vanilla doesn't work) and I hate to say it but if they had come to us before the downgrade and asked for an increase in subscriptions I would have signed up. I've been here over 20 years.

But I don't think I'm prepared to pay for what boards has become now. Sorry.

(The modding is not and has never been an issue for me, to be fair)

dohouch · 10-07-2025 06:08AM

I've been on "Askabotmoney.com" for years, looks a lot like old boards, IMHO, lacks the specialist knowledge that one can find on some of the boards forums. My interests are, bargains, foreign satellite, android, mobile network offers, Ireland specific. Where do I go now??

I Won't subscribe to small minded parochial modding.

Hasta la vista 🥲🥲🥲

_Kaiser_ · 10-07-2025 06:56AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618933#Comment_123618933

That doesn't seem to be on the table though - the proposed solution to resolving the never-ending technical issues is to revert to standard Vanilla 1.0

I remember what that was like (the original thread is still here too over in feedback) - massive amounts of wasted empty space, glaringly white theme, broken functionality ... In fact here's my own post on the issues at the time :

As with the god-awful "responsive" site, there is so much wasted white space everywhere - and this is the desktop version!
The top menu bar is reduced even further and (unless I'm missing something), doesn't pop-up when you hover making it even harder to get around as it opens a new page instead
My favourites/Bookmarks now seems to be every thread, rather than the forums themselves?
No dark theme.. ye had a week and couldn't put that in? Makes the whole thing very hard to read (see also point 1)
The "touch" version has gone from clean and readable to cluttered and cramped (ironic considering the first point)
The "user" column to the left of each post varies depending on the length of their name
The "Categories" section is even more unhelpful than the old menu system if trying to find a specific forum with the whole lot just lumped together
No option to delete a post? I accidentally posted this in another tab but can't delete the entire post?
Performance is very slow. Even had a Vanilla "Maintenance" page come up when loading this page
Where are all the user/customisation settings

If we go back to even half of those issues it'll be game over I fear - Vanilla support have proven time and again to be woefully inadequate (or Boards can't afford to pay for the necessary support tier, or both!). It'll just drive all but the very last holdouts off the site, and that won't be enough to sustain it.

CelticRambler · 10-07-2025 07:10AM

If a "new and improved" Boards.ie is based on Vanilla, then I will not be supporting it in any way, other than occasional posts.

Vanilla is not and never will be the right platform for a site like this. Sticking with it is (IMO) a sign that the owners are not really interested in how we, the members, want to interact.

Other, better, software solutions exist (I'm on a special interest site elsewhere that has all the same features as the old boards.ie and is great to use) so if the decision is to scrap part of the Boards.ie personality in favour of vanilla crapware, then I'll mourn its passing and do something different with my time (and money).

Rawr · 10-07-2025 07:10AM

I'd pay to keep the old girl going. I'm on all manner and form of social media, but nothing in my many moons on the internet has matched the combination of craic, serious debate and real-time reaction to world events than here on Boards.ie

Even years after emegrating from Ireland, my browsers know damn well that when I type "b" that URL is going to end with an ".ie"

I don't know about getting 1000 users to do it, but with any luck there will be enough people out there to help.

smacl · 10-07-2025 07:23AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618660#Comment_123618660

It would also be worth seeing database size, number of active users and web traffic figures to see how much a server to meet the current load would cost. If the site failed as a commercial enterprise with full time employees it could still be sustainable as a community effort.

Morethanthat · 10-07-2025 08:04AM

I used to be a user here for years on and off. I still pop in. What kind of money are boards.ie looking for? Just a warning for people, investing your money here doesn't mean the site won't close down anyway.

con747 · 10-07-2025 08:10AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619489#Comment_123619489

Not much to invest really, 50 quid a year won't break most here who want it to keep going even if it's lost. Most will sign up for €6 a month if they want to safeguard the €50 outlay. Whether it will save it is another matter.

sock.rocker* · 10-07-2025 08:13AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619428#Comment_123619428

I can't imagine not being able to run it on a Hetzner VPS for like 100euro/month.

This is a dedicated one in Germany:

When the move was made to Vanilla, the mistake was not moving to XenForo I think it was. Minimal yearly fees + a main VPS + a backup. They could have had the community contribute to a public GitHub for site-specific features because a site like boards exists on its audience, not by keeping its code secret. You would have had people like me contributing to add to my CV.

DvB · 10-07-2025 08:15AM

I'll pay the annual subscription just to keep the thing going, have generally been a lurker (other than on the Christmas, forum & a couple of sport threads) for a few years now, but love reading through plenty of others.

Can see new specialist forums being set up though in advance of this site simply not being there some morning, which I suspect isnt too far away.

Be a realshame having spent many happy hours on here over the last near 20 years.

Morethanthat · 10-07-2025 08:16AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619497#Comment_123619497

I'm just saying, I think most people would rather have the 50 for themselves if the site is going to close anyway. It would be a bit of a sickener if loads of people put their money into it and then they get notice of a closure but we've all seen it happen before.

con747 · 10-07-2025 08:21AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619510#Comment_123619510

That's why if people can't afford to lose the €50 go for the €6 monthly option. We still have no idea of what the plan is so all this could be wasted typing. I just hope the powers that be are more vocal now about where this is going and what the plans are instead of the way it has been the past couple of years.

Bass Reeves · 10-07-2025 08:24AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619497#Comment_123619497

50 euro is not really going to break most people . As you say if you are afraid losing it then 6 a months is the way to go. If you are self employed it's probably tax deductible so 25-30 net depending on which you choose

However Boards do not make it easy on itself where is the subscription link hidden

_Kaiser_ · 10-07-2025 08:33AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619520#Comment_123619520

I read Mike's OP as it not being ready yet but will be available from next week. Hopefully with a lot more details too!

phog · 10-07-2025 08:36AM

I'm in the "sitting on the fence" on this one. I've been using Boards for longer than I care to remember, mainly for the Limerick and Rugby forums and a bit of travel/DIY, Bargain Alerts, etc, however, the rugby forum is gone so toxic with little of no modding that it's just not worthwhile anymore. The rugby forum has an excellent charter which is now largely ignored by a smallish group of posters and by the mods so the enjoyment of engaging there is on the wane. I feel this could be the final nail in the coffin. Unfortunately, the search facility since the relaunch has hindered it's usefulness too.

In saying all that I do hope Boards will survive as it was and probably still is my go to site.

SuprSi · 10-07-2025 08:46AM

I'm a member (and ex-subscriber) since 2003 though this is my first post in years. I visit Boards multiple times most days and would be a bit lost without it (especially as I live abroad) so will happily subscribe.

Trigger Happy · 10-07-2025 08:47AM

In this and other guises I have been on boards for much longer than I want to remember. It was a great resource and I did meet some great people thru this place. But the over zealous moderation really felt like Boards was trying to contain its popularity.

Remember the 'I found a safe' thread. That was a brilliant moment for those of us that were there but a mod closed it down in the middle of the drama because they did not believe it was true. Then when it was reopened any mention of the shutdown was deleted.

Own your mistakes…but better still - dont make them in the first place.

Vanilla was the cherry on top of the funeral pyre for me.

Exclamation Marc · 10-07-2025 08:50AM

Would I pay €50 for the lights to stay on? Probably..

Would I pay €50 to revert to the original Vanilla 1.0 that was utterly abysmal and nearly drove me away the first time? That's a much tougher sell.

Important News!!

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