ROLL IT BACK

Deja Boo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117700797#Comment_117700797

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

Deja Boo

Thread needs a Sea Shanty... "Roll the OLD chariot back, and we'll all hang on behind!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49FWp7WLYKw

[ ^ that is supposed to be a youtube vid, since vanilla doesn't specify - click to sing along!] :D

FionnK86

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!

smacl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117701018#Comment_117701018

The site was there, on an on and off basis Boo, but I don't think they ever sought feedback on it as you would a beta site.

virginmediapls

Is there any way to roll it back yet?

What a complete **** up from the admins. A week to migrate? No beta version to gather feedback? Utterly ludicrous.

This will be the death knell of the site unless reverted soon.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117700965#Comment_117700965

I'd reckon the only way to do it and make it wipe its face is to go off the shelf old style BB(with more up to date BB platform, without the bells and whistles nobody asked for, and cheap), archive everything over say two years old(bookend it at the start of covid 19), trim and collesce forums with extreme prejudice(if there aren't near daily posts, cut it), host it locally and cheaply and get a few tried and trusted BB code wranglers to crowd support it. The long thread in feedback of guys fixes and tweaks shows there are enough such people out there.

AlekSmart

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117701175#Comment_117701175

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.

smacl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117701216#Comment_117701216

Personally, if it was me, first thing I'd do is find a decent enough server with enough welly to run the existing vBulletin site at an acceptable pace and then leave it the feck alone from a tech point of view. Archiving and culling old posts and accounts would likely improve performance a fair bit, although people do like to trawl through the past a bit. That said, until you look under the hood, you really don't have any idea how gruesome things actually are.

catrionanic

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.

Shakyfan

Finally found the Tommy Tiernan Show discussion on the Television board after 2 weeks.

Not through the boards.ie search function which found ^^^^ all. Ended up typping "boards.ie Tommy Tiernan Show" into google where it came up at the top of the results.

Turtyturd

Have the categories/topics been rearranged?

Seems much more awkward to access the feedback forum.

CantGetNoSleep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117700684#Comment_117700684

I'm not even confident a roll back will work any more.

It is clear that the powers that be do not have the either the funds or the competence to run such a site and we are probably within weeks of extinction. The whole migration, down time, lack of basic features five weeks later such as drop down menus shows that. This migration has not been tested and if it has, even worse for going live. That is without mentioning the GDPR issues popping up on a daily basis.

I see two options now:

(A) a slow demise of the site in less than six months

(B) hand it over to the users for a nominal fee and let a community fix happen. The staff or at the very least the leadership should be looking towards other sectors for their next role.

Absolute shambles

Deja Boo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117694005#Comment_117694005

Me on Boards.Legacy:

Me on Boards.Vanilla:

Dtp1979

I used to have a sense of comfort and look forward to what was in front of me when I hit the Boards.ie icon on my phone.

Now, I find myself going to the icon, my thumb hovers over it and 8/10 times I say nah.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117701906#Comment_117701906

Just a happy coincidence? Just remember to be on the site long enough to be allowed post in it too, that seems to be what's really important now.

A week now since my request for account deletion was acknowledged and its still here.

MadYaker

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.

Mickeroo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117703656#Comment_117703656

Workaround to see post history is to edit the url on your profile from https://www.boards.ie/profile/discussions/MadYaker to https://www.boards.ie/profile/comments/MadYaker

There doesn't seem to be any way to filter it by forum or anything like on the old site though.

CantGetNoSleep

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?

Andrew76

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117704023#Comment_117704023

I'm guessing you have the View filter set to All in Categories? No help there I'm afraid as I always have it set to Following - it's the closest I can get to the old 'My Forums' functionality and the only reason I'm still visiting boards tbh.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117704233#Comment_117704233

I think that only works on mobile though?

MadYaker

Can anyone explain to me why they have fcuked this website? It’s been weeks since the changeover. What problems did we have that they were trying to fix? Was the site too easy to use? I was thinking give it a few weeks and it’ll be grand but it’s more than a few weeks now.

Sleepy

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?

Andrew76

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117704346#Comment_117704346

I think you can only follow a forum on mobile and that then populates the Categories section on desktop - or the Following view anyway. Not sure if things have changed in the last while as once I managed to get a list of my followed forums, I stopped trying to navigate the site in any other way. Says alot about the state of the place when it's that awkward to describe how to use it (don't mind the differences between desktop and mobile).

Turtyturd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117702972#Comment_117702972

Watch the loudest critics of the changeover coincidentally disappear.

Pelvis Parsley

I'm sorry to say that I have no confidence that monies donated under the current regime would be a productive endeavour.

If I thought otherwise, I'd have my Paypal open as we speak.

CantGetNoSleep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117705972#Comment_117705972

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

Leg End Reject

Donations/crowd funding etc. would have been effective before the migration. A lot of trust has been lost in the aftermath.

MadYaker

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.

Sonic the Shaghog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117709987#Comment_117709987

Oh it's been known for long time. I'm on here years and I regularly remember posters putting up stats showing the site was regularly in the red. In fact I don't know if it's ever turned a profit?