Welcome to the new Boards.ie platform - Version 1.0 :)

brimal

Would be great to get some sort of update from @Boards.ie: Odhran seeing as we are gone 1 year post-upgrade

Comhrá

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119357998#Comment_119357998

To be honest, I don't think there is very much to update us about over the past few months.

I get the impression that we have the finished article at this stage, unfortunately.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119360998#Comment_119360998

Version 1.0 as the thread title says.

Comhrá

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119362238#Comment_119362238

A year on and no sign of even version 1.1 yet, so I'm not getting my expectations too high at this stage.

When they still haven't managed to display the correct time by now, it doesn't bode well, does it?

m8

Is anyone using Boards now, seems not too many of the users no longer post anymore.Myself I rarely login now as I find it hard to find anything or even browse the forums.

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119368869#Comment_119368869

I use about 3-5 forums regularly down from surfing anything that caught me eye because of the loading speed issues I still encounter like some others and just the basic hassle of using the site in general. It's swarming with trolls and Moderation is absent on a lot of threads due to Mods leaving as well. No updates here after a full year of this lately. I'll see how it goes but it's not looking good.

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119362473#Comment_119362473

There's Odhran, Niamh and a part-time contactor dev. That makes up Boards.ie these days from my understanding (excluding the volunteer mods and admins).

With only one part time dev it's no wonder that any fixes, never mind improvements, are extremely slow. The only other support would come from whatever agreement they have with Vanilla - which if the rest of their "product" is any indication (not to mention the disastrous relaunch last year) isn't likely to be up to much given that cost factors were a driving force in the first place.

At this stage I think only critical issues are being tackled - subject to the time zone difference and SLA they have in place. The lack of any other communication, updates, or signs of real improvement is increasingly concerning given the previous dire warnings about finances.

I think it's getting to where the next thing we'll be told is a shutdown date, or that the site is being sold. The latter might not be so bad to be honest (depending on the buyer), but I will be surprised if we get to the end of the year without one of these 2 outcomes.

I'd like to be wrong, but I have a feeling I'm not.

Deja Boo

I think it's getting to where the next thing we'll be told is a shutdown date, or that the site is being sold. The latter might not be so bad to be honest (depending on the buyer), but I will be surprised if we get to the end of the year without one of these 2 outcomes.I'd like to be wrong, but I have a feeling I'm not.

That would be a terrible shame to see happen to the community, but surely inevitable. Boards stood no chance as a Vanilla forum.

Because of Vanilla, I am rarely on Boards anymore, except to stay in touch with a few folk, now and then.

Boards is barely a shadow of its former self. RIP my old friend, you were the best of the best.

If it ever becomes financially unviable, I hope they give it back to the community. The vast majority of Vanilla users host it themselves, and a few of us would be happy to run that technical side of it. I assume some others would help with some of the costs.

Or maybe that's naive. But it sounds better than it just disappearing.

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119375261#Comment_119375261

I could absolutely see that being a viable alternative. In fact, if they had reached out to the community before the migration and laid out the situation properly, rather than the vague pronouncements of the platform being difficult to maintain, needing work, and them being under-resourced and asked for help/donations/support then we might not have ended up here in the first place.

The "other forum we're not allowed mention" showed how it can be done by what I think was a one man operator.

There are definitely people here who could help with the support, PM and business sides of it if they'd been asked.

Comhrá

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380167#Comment_119380167

The "other forum we're not allowed mention" showed how it can be done by what I think was a one man operator.

Indeed, the "other forum" is a pleasure to use and I believe it's gaining a bit of traction now, albeit slowly.

The Continental Op

The elephant in the room here is the mobile phone. I'm quite sure it was the start of the demise of the old forum. The problem seems to be that there is too much information supplied on a traditional bulletin board to be conveniently viewed on a mobile phone. I'm a desktop user and if the only option to use this service was a mobile phone I wouldn't bother.

The other forum is no different regarding ease of use with a mobile phone, their only advantage is that at this stage they don't have too many posts to view and they have a traditional well known format. I can't imagine the pain of mobile phone users who have a jumping screen!

What the old site had was continuity and a user base that was prepared to make the effort to work with the old system no matter what device they were using. Now we have something new with a mass of new problems I'm quite sure many just gave up bothering.

Declan A Walsh

While the "other forum" is easier to navigate, Boards has still got better traction on some forums in the Entertainment section. For example, there is a distinct lack of interest in pirates or any music-led radio stations in the other forum's Radio section. Even national licensed Today FM does not get much of a look in. By the way, another Forum Games site was set up last year by erstwhile users from Boards and they are all largely played on the newer site, and many of the regulars migrated to the new site. The Boards Forum Games area is only used to redirect people to the newer site!

I am on multiple sites now, but still keep in touch with Boards, especially the entertainment forums...and, of course, this thread for updates!

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119381295#Comment_119381295

To be fair, the old Touch site worked pretty well I thought. It was the godawful "responsive" site that was the problem there and the older m.boards was just massively outdated from a UI perspective.

But yes.. there were options. Options that should have been explored with input and support from the users (and all of it offered freely no doubt!) before they decided to shift the whole thing to Vanilla. Really the last year has been spent trying to get back to where the old site was in terms of functionality and usage and they're STILL not there - and likely won't get there under the current ownership IMO.

Pelvis Parsley

I'm still trying to figure out if Alan Partridge (assisted by Lynn) have taken over the show, or what the story is.

It's not an unreasonable question to ask-who owns the platform?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119383091#Comment_119383091

https://who.is/whois/boards.ie

Before GDPR a Whois search yielded very interesting results down to the residential address of the person whose site it was. Nowadays you just get the domain hosting company.

However a little Googull search reveals Boards.ie is owned by Distilled Media which was set up by the two lads mentioned in article below.

https://fora.ie/who-owns-irelands-media-3382010-May2017/

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119382321#Comment_119382321

Lots of out of the box forums work just fine.

They should have parked and archived the old site, started over with a new one. The idea that they had to migrate all the old obsolete content and functionality was pointless and impractical. They should have culled about 80% of the sub forum bloat.

Boards lite on a out of the box solution would still fix about 99% of the usability issues and you still have 80% of entertainment for 20% of the effort.

osarusan

What is the story with the prison icons on mobile site? Some users' profile photographs or icons or whatever are kind of overlaid with a prison door which makes it look like they are banned, but they are still posting and on the desktop site, just their regular photograph or icon displays.

muffler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119383408#Comment_119383408

I'm not 100% sure but I think it indicates they have been banned from a particular forum.

Beasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119383549#Comment_119383549

No - the bars are applied if a user has 3 or more active warning points

At 3 points there is a limit on functionality - you can post less often and cannot start threads, and your signature is hidden

At 4 points further limitations on posting arise

At 5 points it's an automatic siteban,

The points expire after a set period, depending on when the differing warning levels arose

con747

Posts overlapping for a few seconds when you go onto a thread on desktop. Not sure if it's worth reporting anything anymore since nobody from boards has posted here in god knows how long. Also the followed forums, regional, topics, talk to, on top of the page do nothing now. When on a thread it just shows what forum you are in and not the thread title like it should. If on Amazon bargains thread it just says "Home› Topics› Business & Finance› Consumer› Bargain Alerts" and not the thread title.

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119387513#Comment_119387513

The same thing was happening to posts a few weeks back. It was caused by some Vanilla update or other, so hopefully it's as easy fixed this time too.

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119387627#Comment_119387627

It would be nice for someone to at least notify us when these things are happening by posting something here, I know there's other threads where issues are discussed but I don't have the patience to try find them on this version of boards anymore. Has anyone heard from the powers that be here at all?

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119387671#Comment_119387671

There's just Niamh left in that regard. That's not right either to be fair. I don't think the part time dev contractor posts.

Relikk

Dropdown menus on the top and sidebar appear to be borked again.

Boards.ie: Niamh

Sorry guys I am reporting these issues now. Vanilla push out a regular updae monthly to everyone with bug fixes and additions to features etc. but last month it caused us issues and although they were rectified last month, a new update last night seems to have had the same effect. Hopefully it'll be rectified later today, thanks for your patience.

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119387748#Comment_119387748

There is Admin and Mods who could be brought into the loop to help keep us updated, I don't think that is unfair to expect after a year.

Pelvis Parsley

I don't think there are too many of them left either.

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119390564#Comment_119390564

Seems to be the case going by the amount of trolls running amok on some threads.

muffler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119390450#Comment_119390450

Most mods and admins would gladly update the thread if we only knew what was going on. We're as much in the dark as everyone else.