[Tazzzie]

Here is the situation as it stands (skip to the middle if you don’t want the history) - and a bit of a history lesson - and the options (skip to the bottom if you want where do we go from here) as to where we go from here!

IBF History
IBF was started back in the day by former root admin Matt, a result of using Google (or yahoo groups, I believe called MI (Motorcycle Ireland)) and finding its limitations a bit trying and decided to start a forum.

After much looking, Matt chose our current provider Invision Power Board as both the hosting company and custom software provider. A package was chosen based on the then needs of the forum.
As the forum took off, the requirements changed and the original package was upgraded to suit the needs. Bits and bobs were added yada yada yada. The hosting price increased as the resources required increased.
Next level up was prohibitively expensive as I understand it and Matt decided to self host and bought a licence from the host and a server which was largely funded by him and donations from members.

Self hosting proved in the end to be an unreliable option (again as I understand it) and we went back to the current host and took what ever plan was appropriate give the size of our membership and board activity.

This agreement proved very successful in terms of server uptime / and performance as we got hosting, forum software and tech support all provided by the host.

A couple of years ago Matt decided for various reasons to stand down as the Root admin. He had decided to sell the forum the year previous but there was no "suitable" buyer available at that time, but due to work and family commitments he didn’t have time to run the show. He paid the bills etc. but essentially was root admin in name only. Various bits and bobs were farmed out to admin and mods.

Discussions were had some time later between myself and Matt and conditions ended up as such that I ended up as root admin (I'll not go into the small print here, because its not necessary, and because when it comes to private matters, I like to keep them private)
All the paper work was sorted in terms of usernames / passwords domains (well I have one issue there which I am working on resolving, but no reflection on Matt, just that at some point I lost access to my Gmail account !!) etc. etc. and IBF continued in the same vein with the same goal. Provide the best possible online community to the members of the Irish biking community and beyond.
No Egos, no bullshit, no pr0n, family friendly, work friendly, decent (but different) software, good uptime, excellent support and carrying on with the IBF business of genuine honest fun

The situation as it stands:
Some time ago we had a software upgrade, and we lost some functionality, in order to get this functionality back, I would have to buy this or that add-on for the forum (all the bits are modular - the "Board" software is the portal and forums. The security software is a paid for add-on, as is blogs / gallery / chat etc. etc. etc.

I complained to the host that we lost functionality - wasn’t happy so they gave us chat for free (for a period of time), but the rest, erm, nope, if you want it, want support for it, pony up.
We then had some down time, which wasn’t resolved within a reasonable amount of time (based on past experiences) - presumably because back then we were on a "corporate package" but since the new release of software - and appropriate increase in costs - we were moved to a different package (read non corporate).
I took this to be a sign of the future and began planning the great migration to the mighty Irish host. I registered the www.irishbikerforum.ie domain, took up a small hosting package in order to get a feel for what was on offer and looked at other forum software, joomla, phpbb, smf, wordpress for blogs etc etc etc.

As I am sure you have seen on other forums, it’s just not the same as IBF. Not better, not worse, just different and porting our content to it would be a mighty challenge, and personally, I am loath to write away 600,000 posts over 6 or 7 years even if most of it is just my drivel

During the outages we've had over the years, I often cited the host as sucking donkey balls or what now, hindsight is a wonderful thing, I didn’t realise the implications of hosting on a shared server for example, where they pack plenty of low volume sites onto single server. Where we were once a small site, we probably now take the same resources as a dozen (or more) of smaller sites - it terms of disk writes / cpu cycles etc.. So if were moved out of the loop, they can take on more hosts to that server. Recession is a bit of a birch like that. (They still haven’t explained that to me - I got it from a hosting forum - just quoting bandwidth (which we never exceeded))

So during these outages I whine about the host, I have had some very nice genuine offers of assistance with hosting (one such phone call today (thanks !!) and an offer on the Facebook too (thanks !!)
I haven’t taken up any of those offers. Primarily because I am a stubborn git sometimes and "want to do it myself" or "figure it out myself" and partly because, I wonder what will happen if I fall out with these people, or if they start acting up and I have to ban them - what happens then - take the ball home and bye IBF. Not saying it’s going to happen, but I have banned people I thought would never be banned because in "real life" they were wonderful people, so it’s no wonder I won’t put myself into that situation.

Right now, having told the host its unacceptable, turn the site back on, if this was Ireland, I'd have you for breaching the sale of goods act blah blah blah and getting no response, I have done a huge back track (something I generally don’t do) to agreeing to move to another host and disabling guest access in order to get us back online and moving forward.

Where do we go from here:
Self host: Proven in the past to be unreliable.
Accept the cost increase and stick with the current host: Preferable (based on uptime, support etc. etc.), but I can just see this same situation arising in a couple of years - could offset this cost by charging new members a join fee and enforcing mandatory yearly "donations" (not workable in my opinion)
Moving to another host: More preferable, but risky in terms of setup and initial downtime, and not without extra cost increase - but offset this by exploiting Google ads or what ever (I hate Google ads !!)
Going Irish: I would love to do this, ultimately having already bought the .ie and a slice of server, it’s probably the way I am inclined to opt - just with a VPS rather than a slice of a box.

Either way, moving forward, some difficult decisions to be made, and less than a month to make and implement them !

Again - sorry for the downtime, hopefully we'll get there without too much pain.
Any questions, feel free to ask (no guarantee on when I will answer them though)

IBF - Onwards and upwards !!
Brian / Tazzzie

[golly]

jebus, that was almost like reading a post from Shinners!

[Inadzuma]

Get the gist Tazzz

Thanks for everything over the last few days, months, years but..

Question - What can WE (the members)do to help???

I get the feeling we're in a very dodgy situation and we need to hang on to the IBF spirit and momentum

'zuma

Edit !

Move this??? Nobody / A few read the Feedback sub-forum thingy? Forum Announcement?

This post has been edited by Inadzuma: 06 July 2011 - 10:01 PM

[Blade RR]

Not easy, forums do take a lot of time, effort and money.


Anything we can do, just ask away.

[Slow Poke]

Blade RR, on 06 July 2011 - 10:01 PM, said:

Not easy, forums do take a lot of time, effort and money.


Anything we can do, just ask away.

[Tazzzie]

golly, on 06 July 2011 - 09:29 PM, said:

jebus, that was almost like reading a post from Shinners!

I know, took me over an hour to type (granted I was dabbing stuff on the kids chickenpox inbetween)

Inadzuma, on 06 July 2011 - 09:58 PM, said:

Question - What can WE (the members)do to help???

I get the feeling we're in a very dodgy situation and we need to hang on to the IBF spirit and momentum

Move this??? Nobody / A few read the Feedback sub-forum thingy? Forum Announcement?

I'll do an announcement alright and a bulk pm. Regarding what can the members do? In the immediate term Delete the pm's you dont need any more, if you have email addresses, back up your inboxes, restrict your searches, try google 1st, make sure you have a copy of your blogs etc.

Blade RR, on 06 July 2011 - 10:01 PM, said:

Not easy, forums do take a lot of time, effort and money.


Anything we can do, just ask away.

For now, pony up or not. I am not crying about the money, but the more we have, the more options are open to us. If we have to lock the forum down and stop guests viewing it / remove blogs / gallery etc., then thats what we'll do to keeep the overheads down if the money is not there.

Thanks.
Tazzzie.

[jamesobrady]

Would 10-20euro each sort out the problem ? If the answer is a yes, say yes and Im sure we will all chip in.

[Hazardo]

A twisty road you've travelled, mate. Hopefully everyone appreciates the hoops you (and Matt previously) have jumped through to keep IBF alive.

jamesobrady, on 06 July 2011 - 11:15 PM, said:

Would 10-20euro each sort out the problem ? If the answer is a yes, say yes and Im sure we will all chip in.

I was happy to be a donating member until I ran out of work. However, if it means the difference between IBF or no IBF, I'll stump up quick enough. Small price to pay for a biker forum like no other in Ireland

[hawkeye]

I think its quite hard to "donate" to IBF. I'm not keen on the Paypal thingy, as I have read here about automatic renewals and the like. I have asked a few members/admins if they would take a donation and pass it on, but they seem reluctant to do so.I value the IBF and have no problem coughing up when it is needed.Can I suggest that at, say an SMBR that the organiser would agree to take donations- do it official if you like, with a receipt and a confirmation email fron Tazzie, whatever. Those who are not donating members are given the opportunity to give something back to IBF and if a donating member wants to contribute a bit more, due to the present situation, thats fine too.Between NOBS ,SMBR's, New faces meets etc, there are plenty of opportunities to make this work.Thats my for what it's worth.

[jamesobrady]

Hazardo, on 06 July 2011 - 11:38 PM, said:

A twisty road you've travelled, mate. Hopefully everyone appreciates the hoops you (and Matt previously) have jumped through to keep IBF alive.




I was happy to be a donating member until I ran out of work. However, if it means the difference between IBF or no IBF, I'll stump up quick enough. Small price to pay for a biker forum like no other in Ireland

Ya, apologies to anyone who felt i was talking on their behalf....I meant exactly that..if the choice is IBF or no IBF.....

[Shinwacker]

I'm glad we're up and running again Boss. I know how difficult it is for you to tell us all what is going on. I do think it is a bad idea to "cut" anything out of the present forum, it's just great the way it is. So now the nasty part, money. I do agree with whole Gooogle ads thingy, fecking hate it, spoils every forum I've seen, makes reading post really difficult in both distraction and interference.

I do agree with Hogkiller, we need to get some sort of collection going to pay for this whole deal. There is no such thing as a free lunch, keep that in mind folks. Four days without our forum and it did hurt and life was just the bit worst when you don't get to talk with your friends. I think the donations are the way to go. We just need a list of people who will collect the money and give it to Tazzie to pay the bills. Give what you can afford I think would be appropriate so we don't leave people behind or embarrass anyone.

Just a couple of thoughts folks, any one else any idea on how to help Tazzie out and keep the place the way we like it?

Shins

[Darkcloud]

jamesobrady, on 06 July 2011 - 11:15 PM, said:

Would 10-20euro each sort out the problem ? If the answer is a yes, say yes and Im sure we will all chip in.

Whatever it takes I say..............ans just as in the 'real economy' I believe that those who can pay most should pay most....voluntarily of course

[Sin]

Thanks for getting the site back online.

I'd also donate as much as I can when we meet for ride-outs and so, can't do it online.

[The Greek AKA The cat]

PM's deleted.

Taz can you remove the search box and replace with a field to parse the search to google. Searching IBF with google is always more effective anyway.

For those who want to do it anyway go to google and type in

site:irishbikerforum.com <what you are searching for>


Far more effective than the default search engine.

Then decide what you are going to do and then let us know what you want/need from us.

[The Wraith]

Will getting rid of the shoutbox at the bottom help in any way? It's not used that much and I read somewhere you were gonna turn it off anyway?

[kairos]

In the past few years we - as IBF - have always been ready to contribute for lots of good charity run. Now it seems that we are in need of a bit of help and I see no reason why we shouldn't organise something similar for ourself. As already suggested, we can turn an SMBR into a collection rideout either arranging a big gathering in the middle of the country where the members from all over the isle can meet or we can split the same idea in 4, one for each province.
I am unemployed myself but I rather save few bobs here and there and donate them to the forum then seeing IBF turning into something different then it is right now

[Jem]

Thanks for the feedback Tazzie.

Just to second what everyone else has been saying. I am happy to send a donation to keep the beast alive. I havent done so in the past - 'caus like hawkeye says, if your not a fan of Paypal it seems difficult to be able to donate.
'
I will go delete my PM's now and if the forum does need downtime, sure we can all keep in touch on Facebook, like we've been doing the past few days.

Whatever your decision is - thanks for everything and please let us know how to donate

[Vixen]

I know im new but ill give and help what i can.

Would a fundraising event help? Raise money doing what we love
Donate prizes for a raffle etc

[Ted]

As everyone else is saying anything we can do to help we will. A save IBF ride out where people can give whatever they can afford seems a great idea and I'm sure we could get big enough numbers to get what we need.

Fingers crossed, I'd hate to see the site go.

PM's deleted

[sheaman]

Good to see the site back up.And fair play for all the hard work Tazzzie..
Any help needed just send the mail etc.