This forum has been a very valuable source of information & discussion for me, over the years. I'm grateful for its existence and the people who post on it.

But without doubt it has the most awful, outdated, infuriating forum interface I post on, anywhere on the internet.

Will it ever get updated?

I don't think I need to list the multiple things that are wrong with it - surely anyone who uses it knows.

I would post here more often and contribute more if the interface was brought up to the basic minimum standards we expect in 2022. Not just because the experience of using it would be more pleasant - but because there are things that actively prevent me from using it, as it is. For example, it's almost impossible to use on a phone screen. Other seemingly minor things that make it very easy to miss responses on threads you're interested in. How easy it is, to write a lengthy and detailed reply and then accidentally lose all of it in the stroke of a keypress.

It must put off potential new users too. Without new users the only direction is withering and death.


If it would be expensive to upgrade to modern forum software - how much? I'd potentially be willing to contribute to a crowdfunded effort.

It works reasonably well and as you say it is free.

The biggest issue will be that it is not SSL. At some point browsers will simply refuse to serve non-secure content.

Of the different forums I frequent, those based on Discourse (not Discord) https://www.discourse.org are the best. Some of the most prominent community sites are based on this software.

I have a very soft spot for GBF and would be so sad if it disappeared. I do note that it does not seem to have too many active contributors now and I hanker for the busy-ness of 'the old days'!

Keith, what do you reckon?

Yours, positively,

Nick

I love forums- checking for posts when you wish, on your own timetable. So many things have moved to facebook/etc- where if you're not constantly looking at your computer/phone you miss things.

But GBF is quiet these days. As are many other forums I frequent.

Great store of information as well- I search and read much more than I post!

Posted By: lineweightAre there other forums out there where you have to choose between buttons to "format comments as text or html" and where you can't have functioning quotes in the same post as a working hyperlink?

I'll grant you that is sometimes annoying, but at least it forces you to think about which is most important.

Or which can't deal with more than one layer of quotes (so if you want to quote a reply that's already quoting someone else, you have to do manual surgery on the text markup tags to make the thing intelligible

Eh, people regularly do that, so I don't understand the problem?

Or which you can't set to automatically subscribe you to topics you've posted on?

That's a bit odd, but it's just a different style of working, IMHO.

Posted By: lineweight

Posted By: CharliI love forums- checking for posts when you wish, on your own timetable. So many things have moved to facebook/etc- where if you're not constantly looking at your computer/phone you miss things.

Same here.

Here's a quote, quoting a quote, BTW.

Mobiles, no, I'd never want to read a forum on a phone. I'm currently trying to persuade my GP to stop sending me texts with hyperlinks in - they're useless to me.

Posted By: djhMobiles, no, I'd never want to read a forum on a phone.

But maybe you could consider the possibility that lots of others do.

I love that its basic

The majority of forums i’ve used have always moved in the direction of getting ever smaller in terms of the numbers of active users, usually to the point of about a dozen or so who are active and effecticely keep things going and a couple of dozen more occasional contributors. The unknown is how many others check in to see whats being discussed and seek out old threads of interest.

Posted By: ArtiglioThe majority of forums i’ve used have always moved in the direction of getting ever smaller in terms of the numbers of active users

True - the saddest example being the quite sudden decline of the AECB forum, which used to be at least as active and useful as GBF, invested in a major redesign, followed over the following year (but not because of) by everyone no longer posting. I asked why, admin's answer was because a) the leading lights geting to busy with 'real life'/too succesful in making a biz out of their knowledge/switching to Facebook. That stimulated my only attempt to get into social media, but couldn't live with

Posted By: Charliif you're not constantly looking at your computer/phone you miss things

and the unsearchability as a repository of past knowledge.

I think that 'move in the direction of ... smaller' isn't inherent in forums starting enthusiastically then running out of steam, but is due to the old-school forums, whether established or newly begun, becoming superceded by 'new' social media. But now that social media is far from 'new', it's a miracle that so many forums still hang in there.

Another which died, which I had a foundational stake in, was Sporting Fiats Club forum - but the 'other' Fiat Forum goes from strength to strength!

This is a superb forum that has shared so much knowledge to allow greener buildings and life in general.
I also turn my phone sideways and
write posts in word or notepad if they are long as you may loose them.
Thankyou Keith. Lee

If it ain't broke do not fix it.
A car forum I follow was broken when it was migrated and all the wonderful archive has been lost.

I certainly hope that the site will remain up and running into the future. It would be good to see the membership expand, but quality trumps quantity.

There was a thread a couple of years ago - http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=16677 - mentioning the possibility of adopting https and upgrading to the latest version of the Vanilla forum software, which should make it more mobile-friendly & fix some of the other issues (the current version is well over 10 years old, maybe more that 15 - I can't actually find the release date).

It would be good if Keith is able to take a look at this again, even if finding time to do so is difficult. At some point the web host will stop supporting the PHP version that the existing forum requires - v5.x I think - which will stop it working.

To avoid losing posts install 'textarea cache' plugin in your browser. This works almost everywhere and has saved my bacon many many times.

I rather like this forum software (Vanilla 1.0.3), but then I've never tried using it on a phone.

There are newer releases (3.x) available here:
https://open.vanillaforums.com/
And migrating to the same system is likely to be a lot easier than moving elsewhere. Keith would no doubt like some help with that. We did get quite a lot of breakage last time the forum software was upgraded (lost all the pics IIRC).

They have probably fixed the 'text or html' bug sometime in the last decade. And it is likely to work better on small screens. However it's still PHP7 (not 8) so even upstream may have a limited future. https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/39197/php-7-4-end-of-life-plans-for-vanilla
PHP7 is available on Debian stable so a new install now could last another 8 years and be run on a server that costs about €4/month (Hetzner VM).

So personally I'd vote for just upgrading to current and seeing how that goes.

For people wanting to chat about retrofit in a more modern, but still open, way there is a matrix #retrofit channel which would benefit from larger participation. https://matrix.to/#/#retrofit:matrix.org (You'll need to create a matrix account if you've not used it before). Decentralised, open services are the future of 'social meeja', hopefully for all, but certainly for anyone who isn't a big fan of Meta, Google and Apple tracking and controlling everything. There is a range of matrix clients so you can choose what sort of user experience you want. It's not a threaded forum like this though - it's linear 'chat' (like signal and telegram and whatsapp) so not good for detailed discussion over a longer period. You can have a 'space' containing a set of rooms to try and separate-but-group subjects to some degree.

I find both chat-style comms and forum-style comms very useful (and have been using both for 20-25 years), but for different purposes.

A snazzier modern forum software would be discourse, as borpin pointed out. Flarum is also suggested on the vanilla forums (I'm not familiar with that - discourse is pretty good and has some sensible features) The question there would be how easy is it migrate the impressive collection of info this forum contains? Ease of migration depends primarily on the support the _destination_ software has. It seems that discouse has a vanilla import that works reasonably well (at least for this poster: https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrate-a-vanilla-forum-to-discourse/27273 ) So that might be a viable route.

But like I said, How about someone volunteers to help Keith update the software on this instance? And maybe some of us make a bit more use of the matrix #retrofit chat for 'chattier' things. Then in a year or so we can see how things are going?

I still recommend this forum to a lot of people - it has good advice and an excellent archive. But I do agree that there are fewer users than there used to be, which probably won't be changed by newer software but some newer software is likely to have useful improvements (we should check that before jumping).

"Probably the biggest barrier to entry onto the forum is the subscription fee."


???

£5 a year? (+ VAT). I thought it was a one-off fee. I saw someone's reference to it being free and thought maybe the charge had been dropped. I have been on long enough never to have paid but I would have paid several times - it's been - and still is - worth it. Would be nice if it could be free, though. If I remember rightly the imposition of a fee was more due to spam than for revenue-raising.Is that right, Keith?