The UU Forums need a Patreon!
I could get behind that.
The UU Forums need a Patreon!
Ryan
I have no interest in a live chat group. I’m here specifically for this forum.
A forum can be a relaxing place to check in and follow topic, threads, posters we’ve come to know. Live chat is a completely different concept. I feels completely different. It’s not moving to a better structure. It’s like closing a neighborhood hamburger stand and opening a art gallery for hamburger paintings.
Being retired I can’t afford anything more than a token sign up fee.
Perhaps uke related businesses can become sponsors although this may be a very tough time to ask them to step up. What is happening to a store like Uke Republic based in a mall must be frightening. I hope places like HMS or Mims can do well based on the need for a stress reducing hobby of playing and buying ukuleles but for many here now is not the time to buy.
With the current crisis situation I feel now is a terrible time to bring this up. I don’t really know what the behind the scenes is like for you. I do appreciate, very much, that this forum is here and that based on your posts it must be time consuming and possibly very annoying to keep it here.
Being brought up at this time makes it seem that there must be an emergency threat to its existence. Is that the case?
Cutting off a dynamic group experience in this time of social distancing, job loss, recreational loss, gathering loss, uncertainty, would be a real blow to active members be they readers or posters.
The large data base seems to be the most discussed aspect. Can that be managed to be less of a problem?
Possibly split off and archive posts and threads that are old to be maintained as a seperate entity? Are there other things to be tried? I don’t even know if this is a silly idea.
Again, thanks to all who have worked to maintain this safe and very usable space. I really appreciate it.
Like others here, I am grateful for the work you've done to provide this forum. The knowledge that has been captured here is a tremendous resource for the global ukulele community. It would be a shame to lose it.
Am I correct that there are several different issues here? From reading this thread it seems like these are the problems. Please correct me if I'm wrong, since I am only writing this to seek clarification:
1. It costs too much money to provide server space to host the UU content archive.
2. The current bulletin board platform is outdated and cumbersome to maintain; you want to migrate to software that's easier to work with.
3. You don't have enough qualified people who volunteer to be forum moderators.
These are all fixable problems but it would be difficult to tackle them all at once. What is the one most pressing immediate problem, and how can we help to fix it? You are not alone here.
I could get behind that.
If we could find a new forum software with better security, it. could potentially solve some of the issues for the mods as well. I sent an email to vbulletin to see if they would help me move this forum to their hosted solution with their new software.
If that issue is taken care of and we can find new mods and a way to pay for the additional hosting charges that that will bring, this forum can go on as is.
What about Tapatalk? How does it compare on pricing?
Quoting myself to say whatever you do, don't go with Tapatalk.Xenforo is an actual forum software option, but you would likely need to run your own servers. I don't know the average number of concurrent users here, but the size of the forum db is only part of the issue, as I'm sure you know. I don't know enough of the administrative details for this forum to know whether Xenforo would make things better, and it is entirely possible overall costs could be higher than running UU on this vBulletin software.
Whatever you do, DO NOT go to Tapatalk. They will steal your intellectual property, and then eventually convert access to pay only.
I just looked at how few people actually are VIP members. All I can say is shame on all the folks that use this forum regularly and are not willing to pay the paltry $45 annual membership donation fee. UU should have started charging for membership long ago, this is a business that provides a great service to the Ukulele community yet some folks think it should be free??? This is the third such forum that I’ve belonged to that has had to close or start charging, the one that now requires a fee is flourishing, it’s not the end unless we the members make it so, send in $45.00 for goodness sake. - Brian
As stated before, I will donate to cover the cost of upgrading to the latest version (version 5) of vBulletin. However, I fully recognize that there is a lot more (time-wise and cost-wise) to running a forum than merely the software.Here are the main issues to keeping the forum up. ... 2. The software that is running the forum is end of life and no longer is receiving software updates. ... ...
That forum looks promising, and it does have some recent posts re ukuleles. 793 pages of ukulele posts. 4 ukulele posts so far in March 2020 -- doesn't hold a candle to UU but, as EDW said, it may become more lively if UU turns into a chat room.... ...Years ago https://www.fleamarketmusic.com/bulletin/default.asp used to have lots of activity, but these days it seems pretty quiet over there. It was a great resource, but as UU gained popularity it is likely many moved over. It may become more lively again if this is shut down. ... ...
"Patreon" is explained YONDER.I pay the annual fee ... but I could pay the Patreon instead.