The Future of this site

[Vespula Vulgaris]

I thought that after the recent outage it might be a good idea to have a bit of a discussion about this place.

I really enjoy the forums here, I think the tone is friendly and respectful, even when we disagree, and as such I think it is worth doing everything I can to keep it going.

However it is clear that the current situation regarding forum software, and hosting solution is precarious at best.

I am happy to muddle on as best we can and hope for the best, or we can look at maybe switching to a more robust solution.  The only issue with that is that there will likely be a financial cost involved.  So I guess I have a couple of questions.

Firstly, do you want this place to keep going?

Secondly if so woud you be willing to donate a few pounds to a fund to help buy some better software like Xenforo or similar?

Some of the forums I have used before have had an option for people to become supporters by paying an annual donation of their choice towards the running of the place.  Would that be something anyone would consider?

Alternatively I could possibly step up the ads, or use an ad provide other than Google to get a better level of income from them? 

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts...

[Rossm]

Glad we're back. Definitely want to keep this site going and getting better and better. (BTW: Why has DW not gone down recently? There's been no new articles). Don't like ads, increased or not - I already use Adblock Plus and Ghostery.
I would be prepared to pay some form of small donation on a regular basis. I have been visiting this site a lot and wouldn't mind subsidising less frequent visitors. Don't know the best way of doing this though. An annual supporters' fund seems a good idea, though I wouldn't like to see some kind of 2 tier membership.

[RogerE]

 Firstly I like the tone on this forum - like DW used to be back in the early part of this millenium.

With regards to software have you considered phpBB?

It's what powers Planet Rugby, and a load of other fora/forums.

I have used it for a few forums associated with websites I have written, and only problems I have had were due to problems at the web hosting sites, not the software/mySQL. (e.g. when upgrading version finding the web host hadn't  the new version of PHP properly).

The only downside is that most phpBB forums look like Planet Rugby, although It can be made to be more like this board.

[Vespula Vulgaris]

Firstly I like the tone on this forum - like DW used to be back in the early part of this millenium.

With regards to software have you considered phpBB?

It's what powers Planet Rugby, and a load of other fora/forums.

I have used it for a few forums associated with websites I have written, and only problems I have had were due to problems at the web hosting sites, not the software/mySQL. (e.g. when upgrading version finding the web host hadn't  the new version of PHP properly).

The only downside is that most phpBB forums look like Planet Rugby, although It can be made to be more like this board.

I used to have several sites running phpBB, but they did something odd to it in an update and it was far less usable,  That was several years ago though so it may have improved significantly.

I also used to run a couple of sites using vBulletin, but when they released v5 they essentially killed it.  Most people seem to be using Vanilla forum, or Xenforo at the moment.  But neither of them are cheap.

[Tervueren]

Yes to keeping it going and yes to contributing towards the costs.

You are doing loads, seems unreasonable to expect you to also unilaterally cough up for the "privilege".

[Fats]

Yes to keeping it going and yes to contributing towards the costs.

You are doing loads, seems unreasonable to expect you to also unilaterally cough up for the "privilege".

Agree completely.

[Raggs]

I'd say it'd be worth pursuing phpBB first, but if it turns out to be unusable then I think I'd be willing to put a bit into the kitty. My issue with a pay scheme, is that forums evolve and change over time, and it may get to a point where not enough are willing to contribute, and then it just disappears.

[Mikeuk56]

Having only just joined I like the way this forum works so happy to make a contribution

[egg shaped man]

Agree with all of the above , for me this is like reading the newspaper, this forum represents Times/Telegraph/ Guardian we have DW as the Mail and FB as the Sun.
I used to like the DW because it had a sense of humour and was informative, now it seems to feed off the worst comments and opinions.

And yes I would contribute in some way, maybe a quarterly subscription based on a fixed calendar, that way everyone pays in at the same time, thus avoiding too much admin. 

Well done to all who keep it going.

[Vespula Vulgaris]

You guys are awesome, it's nice to know that this place has such support.

What I'm thinking might be the simplest option is to use a different forum system like phpBB, and pay for a custom theme to make it look "Wasps".  That way it would keep the costs down, I could have some ads to cover the hosting like now, and we'd still have a nice place to hang out and talk about the club we all love.

We should also be able to migrate the existing threads and user accounts over so we don't lose any information.

[Brandnewtorugby]

Yes, I like it here, more than happy to contribute.

A motorcycle forum that I am on has a premium membership option, £15 per year, not sure what premium offers (guess no ads) but apparently you get a Halfords discount card if you sign up to that!

[RogerE]

Firstly I like the tone on this forum - like DW used to be back in the early part of this millenium.

With regards to software have you considered phpBB?

It's what powers Planet Rugby, and a load of other fora/forums.

I have used it for a few forums associated with websites I have written, and only problems I have had were due to problems at the web hosting sites, not the software/mySQL. (e.g. when upgrading version finding the web host hadn't  the new version of PHP properly).

The only downside is that most phpBB forums look like Planet Rugby, although It can be made to be more like this board.

I used to have several sites running phpBB, but they did something odd to it in an update and it was far less usable,  That was several years ago though so it may have improved significantly.

I also used to run a couple of sites using vBulletin, but when they released v5 they essentially killed it.  Most people seem to be using Vanilla forum, or Xenforo at the moment.  But neither of them are cheap.

I think the phpBB problems arose at round about version 2.4 - I had the same problem when I updated a test forum, but luckily decided not to change the live versions until they introduced version 3, which seems stable enough - at least I've had no problems .

vBulletin is now supposed to be better, but like many users have not been back since the update fiasco.

I also have a website that uses an ASP forum, that has never had any maintenance/updates since 2008, and is still running fine (would you believe runs an Access 2007 backend ), with several hundred members, and up to 500 post/day. Only problem it is on a Windows server.

[Neils]

Yea gods go for a drive and back you pop!
Good see a return.
Yes anything reasonable to keep it functioning.

[wasps]

I too am happy to make a donation.

However, I wonder whether that is a suitable long term strategy.
I'm not sure how much it costs to run a site like this, particularly as it scales up to additional users.

If the site survival is reliant on a number of people donating, then that's fine today, and probably for some months, but it's difficult to guarantee that those same people will be in a position to donate in 12-24-36 months time.


I like this site and I want it to survive, and if that means donating a bit every few months, then I'm happy with that

[Vespula Vulgaris]

I too am happy to make a donation.

However, I wonder whether that is a suitable long term strategy.
I'm not sure how much it costs to run a site like this, particularly as it scales up to additional users.

If the site survival is reliant on a number of people donating, then that's fine today, and probably for some months, but it's difficult to guarantee that those same people will be in a position to donate in 12-24-36 months time.


I like this site and I want it to survive, and if that means donating a bit every few months, then I'm happy with that

It doesn't cost a great deal to run it.  And I'm pretty sure the ad revenue from what we have more than covers that.  So assuming that people can work around a few google ads then we should be good.  It's more the migrating to a better solution is gonna incur some costs.

It's all just ideas at the moment, I just want to know how people feel so I can hopefully make the right decisions...