ABR Forum - Pay As You Go?

[Treadtrader]

I'm sure that Alun and the mods used to engage more with people on this forum.

To be honest, I haven't noticed many comments from mods while I've been reading through threads lately. :huh:

.

Currently I'm the only mod/admin on the forum. This will change soon.

I also have a business to run.

On the subject of this thread, there is no intention by the owner to charge a subscription for the use of this forum.

This thread was started by a concerned member because of some issues with slow loading at certain times.
As has been said before, the whole site is due an upgrade, this will happen when possible, not as easy as some think.

I would like to thank the many members with concerns, stick with it, it will improve.

[utaka]

It all becomes like motorcycle owners clubs, no doubt forum owners have watched how paid sites are supported, and one can assume they have realised that charging is NOT the way to go for users, if it was, don't you think ADV and Horizons would be charging? Back to motorcycle clubs, I own 7 different brands of motorcycle, join each owners club?...no way, just join the most beneficial ones, as someone pointed out about the amount of drivel on this forum it certainly would not be a 'preferred' choice over say Horizons,ADV, to name just 2.

[Scott_rider]

Here is a cautionary tale about forums...another well-known and busy dirt bike forum changed it's 'forum software' about 18 months ago because the old software was....well, just old apparently...after that and only within a few months that forum was like a ghost town because the new style didn't appeal to the older forumites (amongst other reasons)and people drifted away from it. A lot of us are now on here B) .

So maybe don't change what ain't broke?

[davsato]

So maybe don't fix what ain't broke?

+1
I don't care how many lurkers there are, for whatever their reasons, maybe they're just shy but thats up to them.
How many times does something you just got used to, eg Facebook, 'update' and its a big step backwards that you hate? I've taken my laptop back and had windows 7 put on because 8 is too brilliant for its own good and it sucks.

Make the forum a subscription service and it will have to come with 'tumbleweed' gifs. Any club group or forum like this always has the 10% who bother and the 90% who don't, you may lose a lot of the 10 and you still won't hear a peep from the 90.

[Zookman]

So maybe don't change what ain't broke

But it is broke ! That's the point, its been broken since it started with these horrendously slow loading times.
All people want is for the forum to work properly. Its not a lot to ask, all the other forums I use seem to manage it.

[-Ralph-]

There's a bottleneck somewhere. If it hasn't been looked into and identified already then it needs to be, then if investment is needed in new infrastructure to fix it, then tell us what it needs and see how many people would be prepared to chuck a tenner in the pot to help fund it.

I'd make a donation to keep the site running, but If you made it subscription based it will just die a death, there are so many other free bike forums.

[-Ralph-]

There's a bottleneck somewhere. If it hasn't been looked into and identified already then it needs to be, then if investment is needed in new infrastructure to fix it, then tell us what it needs and see how many people would be prepared to chuck a tenner in the pot to help fund it.

I'd make a donation to keep the site running, but If you made it subscription based it will just die a death, there are so many other free bike forums.

That said I've just done a DNS lookup on the domain and it looks like the site is hosted out of 1&1's datacentre in Baden, Germany. They don't tend to limit bandwidth and if there were a comms bottleneck it would be down to 1&1 to fix it. I suspect therefore that Alun is paying for a hosting service on an Opex basis and the site has reached the limits of CPU or RAM that he us paying for and needs to pay for more resource. It's difficult therefore from a cash flow perspective to fund an increase in Operational costs using a donation system which essentially gives you sporadic Capex budget.

I still don't think the site should be subscription based, but I can see why not having a subscription based income can be a barrier to increasing the spend on this site.

[Freeloadeur]

Will and I were chatting about this place the other day and about "commercial postings" when it suddenly occurred to us that we might have found a solution.

Why not have a "Traders' Area"? I've seen them in other fora. It's simply a subscription based area where commercial posts are permitted. It could be offered to all the current magazine and website advertisers and it would be a place where they could post about latest products/services/events etc. safe Iin the knowledge that their threads will be permitted.

Ideally the forum software could be set up to allow them thread starting rights within this zone whilst still allowing the rest of us to then comment on threads started which would allow for a fully automated system. Failing that it would have to be down to a moderator to police the area.

Two birds, one stone. Advertisers get a method of two way communication with their potential customers, hugely important in this day and age and the site gets an extra income stream.

And the rest of us get the benefits of a better site for nothing.

[Willandkate]

....

Why not have a "Traders' Area"? I've seen them in other fora.

Is "fora" really the plural for multiple forums or did you make that up?

Yeah, I think its a good idea - Makes sense and is a win win situation for everyone. Guess there might have to be some grading of costs - Small one man business vs a BMW dealership or big company who stands to make much more from posting on there but that's a bit of a detail. I don't know which other forums do/don't have it as I don't go on many except ADVRider which does. It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of it....

[-Ralph-]

I see we already have a advert for 1&1 hosting at the top, but with the performance of the site sometimes, it's not much of an advert, even if it isn't 1&1's issue.